We first wrote about the idea of seasteading (building new countries offshore on oil platforms) in 2009.

At the time, I had this to offer…

No doubt it’s an interesting notion, but is this practical? Living on the sea? Just think of how much risk that could entail. Of course you’d do the research to make sure you’re settling in a place that isn’t prone to natural disaster, but it’s still THE SEA. Talk about a wildcard if there every was one.

Commenter Tully had this to say…

Yeah, [...] a small settlement of massive egos all working together in perfect harmony! What could possibly go wrong? :-)

Could be fun to watch, though. From a distance. Like a too-full cage of fight-trained angry pit bulls.

Well, guess what…

Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters, according to a profile of the billionaire in Details magazine.

Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch–free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be “a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons.”

“There are quite a lot of people who think it’s not possible,” Thiel said at a Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) “That’s a good thing. We don’t need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don’t think it’s possible they won’t take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it’s too late.”

Here’s the thing…even if it is possible…why would anybody want to live there? What are the benefits? Fewer taxes? Legal prostitution and drugs? Also, can you really be free if you can’t enjoy all that America has to offer?

Sorry, I still don’t get it. But if you do, tell me how this would work.

It’s come to the attention of this reporter that the Rapture is, in fact, going to occur.

Documents leaked earlier today describe how a bi-partisan team of Senators, dubbed the Gang of 14, working closely with President Obama have developed and set into motion a plan to save Humankind – FROM GOD!

It seems a heretofore unreleased portion of the Apocryphal manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, brought to the President’s attention by a Muslim scholar studying in Jerusalem, clearly and believably lay out God’s rapture plans. In all likelihood the Rapture will occur on May 21.

The plan developed involves the US Space Shuttle Endeavor and it is very clever. The budget crisis? TARP? The deficit? Nothing is what it seems. All the money spent by the US government in the past two years has been on outfitting Endeavor for it’s last and most important mission.

Endeavor is currently docked at the International Space Station, packed like Noah’s Ark with plants, animals and people – ready in a moments notice to speed away toward Gliese 581g. Upon their arrival on this Earth-like planet they will begin “seeding” it with Life, effectively saving Humankind.

The shuttle has been modified with upgrades such as an FTL drive to get us there fast and advanced weaponry in the event that Gliese 581g is already blessed with Life. All the partisan bickering and childish behavior from inside the beltway lately has been a distraction to keep the electorate busy while our government saves life as we know it.

Russ Feingold, who continues to lead the Gang of 14 despite being ousted from the Senate last year, said yesterday “If God wants a fight we’ll give him a fight.” John McCain, standing behind him looking grim but resolved, nodded his head in agreement. “As a conservative I don’t like this,” he said, “but as an American I have a duty to my country to ensure that God doesn’t destroy the way of life of everyone left behind.”

This reporter says “God speed Endeavor!” and also “Thank you Mr. President and the Gang of 14. I’ll be thinking of your bravery and cunning as I and my family are swallowed up by the hot lava of God.”

Note the big drop in the past week. Obama had been bumping along at around pretty much even approval/disapproval, but then he made a principled, correct stand on what religious freedom means to us a nation…and his approval drops?

And, by the way, this isn’t even a mosque. It’s a small prayer center inside of a muslim community center. Think of a YMCA with a chapel in it. That’s all that’s being proposed. I think when people here “mosque” they think of a big domed building that’s sitting right across from ground zero…but that ain’t it. This thing is two blocks away on a side street and tucked inside of a much larger proposed complex.

But wait…there’s more!

Pew finds that more Americans now think that Obama is a muslim.

Wanna know why?

When asked how they learned about Obama’s religion in an open-ended question, 60% of those who say Obama is a Muslim cite the media. Among specific media sources, television (at 16%) is mentioned most frequently. About one-in-ten (11%) of those who say Obama is a Muslim say they learned of this through Obama’s own words and behavior.

The ignorance is just jaw dropping. What’s more, this study was taken BEFORE the mosque thing popped up. So who knows what those numbers look like now.

It’s weeks like this that make me think this country could be doomed. Because if people are this uninformed (or willfully misinformed), how is any politician going to be able to sell us on what really needs to happen over the course of the next couple decades?

Those in the know realize that we have major pain ahead and that the course we’re on is unsustainable. However, Americans have been brought up to be selfish and greedy, and while that works at the corporate level to power innovation, it divorces us from the reality of what it means to be a unified nation. We are individuals, yes, but we must also understand that even though we have a huge amount of cultural, spiritual and political differences…we’re all in this together and it’s going to take all of us to dig ourselves out of the hole we’ve created. And it shouldn’t take something like 9/11 to rally us again.

Excuse me, but I’m now going to reread Watchmen.

Forgive me, but right now all I can think of is this.

You can almost hear the meeting that this was cooked up in…

“All those in favor of paying homage to a terrorist to rally the anti-government right so they’ll vote for us in November say aye!”

Now, before you claim the same thing that many on the right are saying…that the allusion to Fawkes wasn’t intentional…yeah, I’m sure they weren’t paying any attention to Ron Paul supporters in 2007. I’m sure they didn’t check Google for the words “Remember November”. And none of them saw that movie or read the comic either. All completely innocent…nudge nudge wink wink…sure.

Also, the claim that young staffers did this in house…sure. As long as those staffers spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours learning After Effects and Final Cut Pro. Certainly not impossible, but the suggestion that this was just slapped together by some interns is ludicrous. You don’t entrust novices and cross your fingers when creating something that the entire world will be paying attention to.

Okay, well, I take that back.

By the way…TIME says this about the vid…

One other note, RGA message wizards have intentionally not circulated this video on YouTube or made an embed version of it publicly available. (Swampland asked for, and was granted, special dispensation.) They want people to view it on their site, RememberNovember.com, in the hopes of building a grassroots army.

Ummm…well, here’s the publicly available link to the video. Not too hard to find.

Tip for the wizards…free technology exists where you can host videos on your own site so nobody can embed them on theirs. It’s like magic…only without any actual magic!

Remember when I was talking about impotent rage on the left and the right in a post about Glenn Beck a couple days ago?

Well, now we’ve got an analog to that and it comes in the form of this shameful screed by one of MSNBC’s newest commentators…

The Republicans lie! They want to see you dead! They’d rather make money off your dead corpse! They kinda like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for her…My God, Democrats, what’s wrong with you?! You can’t deal with these people, at all!

Isolated incident? Well, here’s more Ed unplugged a while back…

MSNBC is becoming unwatchable these days. I still like Hardball and Morning Joe, but good lord…what the hell is wrong with these people?

(h/t: NewsReal)

As this Technorati chart shows, discussion of the terms ‘Obama Birth Certificate‘ in the blogosphere is rising. And fast. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only blogger out there who seems interested obsessed with the Birther conspiracy movement.

But why the uptick in discussion? What are the true roots of the movement, and where are these people coming from? TechPresident:

The news that American southerners are the most likely to question whether President Obama is actually a native-born citizen got a lot of attention last Friday, when a Research2000 survey on that question was released by DailyKos. Eleven percent of all Americans apparently do not believe Obama was born in the United States, but 23% of southerners (compared to roughly 5% of people from the other regions of the country) share that belief. I thought it would be interesting to see what various trend-culling tools might add to this picture.

A look at Google Trends is certainly illuminating. The top ten states where people are searching on the phrase “Obama birth certificate” are:
1. Louisiana
2. Mississippi
3. Colorado
4. Oklahoma
5. Alabama
6. Tennessee
7. Arkansas
8. Missouri
9. South Carolina
10. North Carolina

Of those, only Colorado is not part of the American South.

There has been much speculation and analysis about what all of this means. However, I think there are two basic factors at play here:

1. Racism. Pure and simple. There are some folks who cannot accept that a black man is President of the United States.

2. Hyper-partisanship. While I think that race plays a small part in the Birther movement, I think the larger chunk of this unstable pie-chart is related to the mostly sane, but excessively partisan conservative segment of the GOP.

People do and say crazy things when they are in power — but they also do say crazier things when they are not in power. See: ‘9/11 Truthers‘.

Right now, the far-right-wing of the conservative movement is out-of-power and — understandably — freaking out about it. The problem is that there are so many other more constructive ways to criticize this president without calling into question his eligibility to hold that office.

In addition, the Birther movement is inadvertently giving Democrats the upper-hand. By spouting off all of this nonsense, Birthers are forcing Republicans in the the House, Senate and elsewhere in government to weigh-in on the issue, at possible risk to their (re)electability.

Now that the MSM has picked up on this highly dubious yet extremely entertaining issue, I think that we’ll see more and more elected Republicans being asked over and over, ‘Do you believe that President Obama was born in the United States?’ This certainly plays into the Democrats hands.

It would do the GOP well to come together and denounce the nonsense for what it is: nonsense. Sure, the Republican party may lose a small part of the fringe of their base, but I highly doubt that Birthers are going to rush over the Democratic party.

[cross-posted at ThePajamaPundit.com]

I thought it was a joke when I first heard about it, but “Seasteading” is a serious idea, it’s being backed by Milton Friedman’s grandson and they’ve apparently already raised more than a half a million dollars to realize their dream of building communities…on the sea!

Here’s more from Reason:

Patri Friedman was doing all right himself, living with his wife and child in a mini-commune of sort—the kind people today call an “intentional community”—in Mountain View, California, a bit south of San Francisco. He had a great and challenging job with a great company, Google. But his preoccupation, his passion, lay elsewhere. He thought he had figured out the real underlying problem bedeviling society, and it went deeper than just governments themselves. The real solution, he came to think, would involve the lure of the bounding main, the unbounded horizon, our vast and empty oceans.

Remember those high exit costs? Friedman wondered: What if you could just move—not just you, but everything you own, including your home, and, if your neighbors agreed with you, your whole community? What if you could move all of it where no government would bother you at all, and you could make a new, better society?

Friedman called his theory “dynamic geography.” He remembered a line from his dad’s book The Machinery of Freedom about how differently terrestrial government would behave if everyone lived in trailers and could easily flee state oppression. If land itself could get up and go, the incentive structure of government would change even more, moving it in a libertarian direction.

No doubt it’s an interesting notion, but is this practical? Living on the sea? Just think of how much risk that could entail. Of course you’d do the research to make sure you’re settling in a place that isn’t prone to natural disaster, but it’s still THE SEA. Talk about a wildcard if there every was one.

Still, this may represent a better chance to live the libertarian life than via electoral change, as Patri points out…

Libertarians, he says, expend precious time and energy on truly and self-evidently impossible paths toward political change. “Like the Ron Paul movement,” he says. “Lots of libertarians’ effort and millions and millions directed in a way that’s hopeless! For real change [electoral politics is] totally hopeless. Think how much more likely to succeed [libertarians would be] if that amount of resources were put into something that could actually work.” By which he means seasteading. And you have to admit: When you compare it to the likelihood of creating a libertarian world through American politics, seasteading starts to look more and more sensible.

Is it really that hopeless? I certainly don’t think so, but I will say that the Ron Paul movement was unrealistic to the point of being damaging to the libertarian cause. So maybe taking to the seas does have some benefits after all. :-)

In any event, here are some more articles about the movement…

• Live Free or Drown: Floating Utopias on the Cheap
• Seastead, Ahoy!
• Welcome aboard a brand new country

More as it develops…

At the center of President Obama’s overhaul strategy for Wall Street are the “stress tests” which will be applied to all financial institutions. But how accurate will the test results be? That will depend on whether the treasury takes off-balance-sheet assets into account, experts say.

This is Danielle Ivory, reporting from the American News Project and Alternet.

Back in February, in the House Financial Service Committee, when asked a question about the value of Citigroup’s assets, CEO Vikram Pandit provided a less-than-clear response: “It’s an extraordinarily difficult question.”

Click the video below to WATCH the exchange between Rep. Louis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Vikram Pandit.

Rob Weissman, director of the corporate watchdog group, Essential Action, and author of a new report called Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America, said that, in addition to what Pandit said, there’s an additional factor that could fog the test results: off-the-book assets.

“If you don’t include the off-balance sheet assets in the stress test, then it’s not a legitimate stress test,” Weissman said. “It’s pretty plain that the off-balance-sheet operations are a central part of the story of why we don’t know what the banks own.” The Treasury Department declined to comment on whether they would take off-book-assets into account when running the stress tests.

Weissman says that recipients of bailout money, like Citigroup, Bank of America and JP Morgan, have been engaging in “fanciful accounting” of what they owe and what they own by relocating of their less-than-healthy assets off the books, in shadow corporations. Rep. Brad Sherman has described the process as, “apples on one balance sheet and oranges on another.”

According to RGE Monitor, off-balance-sheet operations have skyrocketed over the last 15 years. From 1992 to 2007, on-balance-sheet assets grew by 200 percent, while off-balance-sheet assets grew by 1,518 percent. In 2007, it was estimated that there was 15.9 times more money parked in off-balance-sheet operations than in on-the-book operations. Not all off-book assets are toxic. Some financial institutions might park assets off their books if they are planning, for instance, to sell them. However, in rough economic times, off-balance sheet accounting allows banks to veil their losses from investors, regulators, and even insiders.

“This turns out to be a really important benefit [for a bank] if it happens to be insolvent,” Weissman added. “And many believe that if you total Citigroup’s assets and liabilities, it is insolvent.”

As of July, Citigroup appeared to have the most off-book assets — an estimated $1.1 trillion. But they aren’t alone. As of July 2008, JP Morgan Chase & Co. had more than $400 billion off their books. Bank of America had $48.2 billion off the books before it bought Merrill Lynch. “If you start adding up all the potential exposures, it’s a huge number,” Sam Golden, former ombudsman for the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, told Bloomberg. “The banks will say that it was disclosed. Investors are saying, ‘Yeah, but it was cryptic.’”

Disclosure rules for off-balance sheet operations are notably less strict than those for assets on the books. Neri Bukspan, chief accountant for Standard & Poor’s told Bloomberg, “A lot of information tends to disappear.”

The use of the off-balance-sheet assets was a core part of the Enron scandal, where they were able to wrap debt inside of debt, using obscure corporations, so no one could track what they owed and what they owned. After the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was set in place, there were efforts to address the problems with off-book assets. But after heavy lobbying by two main trade groups, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the American Securitization Forum, banks were given special exemptions.

In September of 2008 as the financial crisis was coming into full view, the Senate Baking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee held a hearing, discussing off-balance sheet operations. Senator Jack Reed recalled Enron: “This phenomenon of moving assets off the balance sheets is eerily familiar. We recall back in the days of Enron that its schemes to manufacture false profits included special purpose entities that conducted transactions off-balance sheet. The goal was to avoid financial reporting. While no one is necessarily suggesting scandals of the Enron kind, we cannot fail to admit the irony. We are dealing with a similar problem yet again, only six years later.”

George P. Miller, Executive Director of the American Securitization Forum, said that moving assets off-book back on to the books would cause dangerous swelling of balance sheets. He added, “There are many other steps that the industry can and should undertake to promote broader and better transparency about risk exposures in these vehicles, whether they are on or off-balance sheet.”

But Donald Young, former member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board countered, “We just had an investment bank [Lehman Brothers] go bankrupt with a fair value balance sheet that showed it had plenty of assets and liabilities. And it almost seems like financial reporting is out of control and not trusted and not believed in. And I think what we do here has got to establish transparency. If the transparency is such that we’re going to bring out some bad news that wasn’t there before, that’s a risk. But I think the benefits of reestablishing confidence in the markets will overwhelm that.”

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) are revising the rules so some off-book assets will have to be reported on the books. However, the changes won’t be effective until January 2010 at the earliest. In March at a House Financial Services Subcommittee hearing, Rep. Sherman complained about this lag. He told the chairman of the FASB, Bob Herz, “If you guys can’t act quickly and logically, perhaps the regulatory accountants need to act and depart from what is a somewhat illogical and certainly slow process that you’ve got.”

In the meantime, in a recent letter to his employees, Pandit has said Citigroup is having its best quarter since 2007 and the bank had conducted its own internal stress tests with positive results. But Weissman says something doesn’t add up. “Either they’ve done a lot of due diligence in a short amount of time that they hadn’t done before, or the stories are incompatible.”

Crossposted at Alternet.

Seriously. I just don’t get it Mr. O’Reilly.

Let me see if I can follow this logic: You are alleging that Jeff Zucker of NBC News is part of a cabal of liberal meanies who are out to smear you (and other conservatives). ‘Far left bloggers’ are also part of this group of ne’er-do-wellers as well, and they, in turn, want to hurt the victims of rape crimes.

Do I have that right?

I complain about O’Reilly on occasion (read: often), and it’s usually for something trite or trivial that really is of no consequence to, well, anyone. Then I saw this clip from last night’s Factor, in which a producer tracks down a ‘far left blogger’ (while she is on vacation) and confronts her with a camera.

This is why I loathe O’Reilly and his Factor. It’s not his politics by which I am so repulsed — he seems to be a reasonable conservative (even if he won’t admit his conservative stance). It’s not his guests. It’s not even his smirky-smug face that I mind. No, it is the gotcha-style ‘journalism’ that he tries to pass off as legitimate. What kind of person sends a camera crew to ambush a political rival/enemy/someone who talks poorly about them?

Read the rest of this post at ThePajamaPundit.com.

Sure, tomorrow there could be a picture more awesome than this, but today this one is grand champion.

Bringing this back around…

The young boy is AIG, the dancing lady is the GOP, the shortsless guy is Geithner and the older woman just coming into the room is the American public.

Discuss.

Okay folks, I don’t care what party or political philosophy you subscribe to, but it’s time we all roundly shun this clearly fascist hack.

Here’s the transcript…

Back in the day, really, when people would talk about our military in a poor way, somebody would shoot ‘em. And there’d be nothing said about that, because they knew it was wrong. You don’t talk about our troops. You support our troops. Especially when our congressmen and senators sit there and say bad things in an ongoing conflict.

Let’s just forget that Wurzelbacher is giving a thumbs up to violent fascism and instead put the lie to what he’s saying happened in America. Because who reading this post remembers a time in our history when people were routinely shot for criticizing the military? Anybody?

Sure, that happened in socialist states like China and Russia (still happens in China), but this has never been the standard operating procedure in the US. I suppose one could argue that Americans have been injured or accidentally killed for protesting against military action, but not without massive public backlash. And why Joe doesn’t realize this is beyond me.

As I’ve said in the past, McCain should apologize to the country for elevating this guy as the “Everyman” when he’s anything but.

(h/t: Below The Beltway)

If you thought $700 billion was a lot of money, well..

It is.

But $2 trillion is.. ridiculous.

This is Danielle Ivory from ANP.

Congress and the new administration have been focusing their attention on strengthening oversight for the Treasury’s TARP program, but meanwhile few are paying any attention to the Federal Reserve.

Since September, the Fed has lent out about $2 trillion (Bloomberg reported 1.2 trillion in November), but it’s keeping the names of its recipients a big secret.

And while the Treasury’s bailout package has a $700 billion cap, there’s no limit to how much money the Fed can lend.

The American News Project sat down with Washington newcomer, Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL), who actually used his five minutes of valuable Q & A time in a Financial Services hearing to do some serious Fed fact-finding.

You can see the story or get the embed code here.

Or follow Danielle’s reporting on twitter here.

And visit Acorn Project for more music like this.

Bernie Madoff scam artist action figure

In this economy, would you pay $149.99 for a Bernie Madoff action figure?

Would your answer be influenced if you knew it was a limited edition action figure?

Herobuilders.com is no stranger to controversy, brazenly giving G.I. Joe collectors the meanest enemies possible to wage war on — Saddam, Osama, Hugo Chavez.  Without bad guys, who are the good guys gonna fight, right?

But as brash toymaker Emil Vicale tells the Boston Herald, not everyone wants real-world evil (corrupt CEOs like Lex Luthor are fine) represented in the playroom.

“Everything we do offends somebody,” he says. “If you are looking for a company not to offend somebody, it’s not us.”

(Darren Garnick, who has an Apollo Creed bobblehead on his desk, can be reached at www.cultureschlock.com)

You’d think that Ron Paul, CEO of Eagle Bank, would be thrilled to receive $38 million dollars in TARP funds. But, it turns out, he’s pretty frustrated.

This is Danielle Ivory from the American News Project.

As another $350 billion goes out the door, ANP looks at one small bailed-out bank. Eagle Bank is having trouble making loans. Its CEO, Ron Paul, says that the government has not taken fleeing depositors into account and, as a result, small banks and their surrounding communities will suffer.

Follow Danielle’s reporting on twitter.

http://americannewsproject.com/node/190

WATCH:

Hi, this is Danielle Ivory from the American News Project. My colleague, Lagan Sebert, and I just published a new video on the bailout and a lack of serious oversight.

Today, Henry Paulson urged Congress to release the second half of the $700 billion of the bailout money. But no one seems know what banks have done with the first $350 billion. Despite the fact that Congress wrote more than one hundred pages about oversight in the bailout bill, they left a gaping hole.

All of the content on ANP is available for free! If you like the piece, please feel free to post it on your blog, or replay on the radio or tv.

http://americannewsproject.com/videos/186

I’m sure you’ve seen this by now, but if not…it’s a must watch. If only Bush’s reaction time to our economic crisis was this quick.

Here’s more about the reporter and what he said…

“This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog,” the journalist shouted (in Arabic), Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times reported in a pool report to the White House press corps.

Myers reported that the man threw the second shoe and added: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”

Journalists at the scene said the hurler was Muntadar al-Zaidi, a reporter for Al-Baghdadia TV, an independent satellite channel based in Cairo.

A producer for the channel was murdered in Baghdad last year.

My question: why did Bush pop back up after the first shoe was thrown? Aren’t Presidents taught to hit the ground if somebody attacks them?

By the way, isn’t smacking people with your shoe a particularly demeaning insult in the Middle East? Because if I remember correctly, the Iraqis who were riding the statue of Saddam’s through Baghdad were hitting it with their shoes.

Moving on…

Do far right conservatives really think that setting the bar so low for an Obama presidency is a wise move?

Because let’s go down the list of things that Obama has to prove: that he’s an American, he’s not a terrorist, he won’t take away people’s guns, he’s not like Hitler and that raising taxes 3% on the wealthiest 2% isn’t socialism.

In any event, enjoy the crazy because there’s plenty to go around…

Presidential candidate Alan Keyes, vice-presidential candidate Wiley S. Drake, and the Chairman of the American Independent Party, Markham Robinson, have filed suit in California Superior Court in Sacramento seeking to bar Secretary of State Debra Bowen from certifying to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger the names of Electors, and from transmitting to each presidential Elector a Certificate of Election, until documentary proof is produced and verified showing that Senator Obama is a “natural born” citizen of the United States, and does not hold citizenship of Indonesia, Kenya or Great Britain.

In addition, they have asked that the court issue a peremptory writ barring Senator Obama’s California Electors from signing the Certificate of Vote until such documentary proof is produced and verified.

In response to questions about why the suit was being filed, Ambassador Alan Keyes commented, “I and others are concerned that this issue be properly investigated and decided before Senator Obama takes office. Otherwise there will be a serious doubt as to the legitimacy of his tenure. This doubt would also affect the respect people have for the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. I hope the issue can be quickly clarified so that the new President can take office under no shadow of doubt. This will be good for him and for the nation.”

Wow. That was some delicious crazy. I can’t wait to see what the right wing dishes up next.

Also, congrats to Mr. Keyes. You made the news cycle!

Now then, let’s talk about tort reform…

(h/t: Below The Beltway)

This from Powerline’s John Hinderaker…

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not.

In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed.

If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.

Oh. My. God.

What else can you say to that level of crazy? It’s obviously so divorced from reality it makes your head spin wondering how anybody could watch Bush over the past 8 years make one verbal gaffe after another and think he’d be an “excellent model” for Obama.

Excuse me, but I have to go beat my head against a wall.

“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force. I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism.”
- Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) in an interview with the AP

Well, he’s got one thing right…it does sound both crazy and off base.

But wait…there’s more!

“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

And still more!

“We can’t be lulled into complacency,” Broun said. “You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential.”

The ignorance is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

First off, any national security force wouldn’t be answering to Obama…it would answering to the President. And that President changes every 4 to 8 years.

Second, if Broun honestly thinks that something anywhere close to what happened in Germany and Russia could happen in America, he’s either not a student of American history or he needs to get on some powerful anti-anxiety meds immediately.

Moving on…

Danielle, here!

I’m back in Philly, my home away from home, sitting in a swanky hotel lobby, facing a wall, like a crazy person, in order to borrow wireless. And I’ve just published a piece for ANP.

Here’s the scoop…

Today, registered voters in Philly found their names missing from local poll books, which are apparently notorious for being out of date. When those names were checked with the central database, they were verified as registered. Nevertheless, according to election observers in the campaigns and independent of the campaigns, the local election board decided to assign provisional ballots to these voters, which means that their votes probably won’t be counted this evening. If the election is close in Pennsylvania, that’ll make a substantial difference.

This is, yet again, the responsibility of the Philadelphia City Commissioners’ office, led by Marge Tartaglione. Democrats in Philly have a curious way of eating their own..Click here for ANP’s previous coverage of voting in Philly.

Click here for Steven Rosenfeld’s article on Alternet

http://americannewsproject.com/videos/171