NIGHTMARE TIME: IS THIS THE KITCEN SINK!? NEW HILLARY 'RED PHONE' AD A FRIGHT NIGHT FEVER PITCH!
The ad about experience hit a nerve with the Obama campaign..
The ad, being dubbed the 'red phone ad,' shows a child sleeping in a peaceful room while a phone rings .. the phone symbalizing the red phone ringing in the White House.. it plays into fear that Obama is not ready, ending with "who will answer the phone"..
This will be historical. John McCain will be the GOP nominee, unless of course the miracle man Mike Huckabee gets the scandal he's praying for.
But the Democrats will nominate a candidate or two of historical proportions: An African American and a woman. The first at the top of the ticket.. history being watched and voted on by the country.
Precisely why it's going to be a tough year. The crazies are all coming out.
The emails are flying. Already almost a dozen times, my inbox has told me that Obama is a Muslim, regardless of how many times I "reply all" with the snopes.com site explaining it all, a lot of people are convinced.
After all our years of independence from England, we're being faced with photographs of Barack Obama in traditional Somalia garb, words from eccentric talk show hosts about Obama's middle name, John McCain saying sorry for it, and Hillary Clinton going from a range of emotions of mock and humor to appearing on CBN, the 700 CLUB network.
What in the world is happening.
Ford is not in his flivver..
Is it possible one photo can change an election. I guess Mrs. Clinton hopes so.
No way over for Clinton: Polls in Ohio and Texas showing Hillary maintaining advantage over Obama.. Internal hopes of a comeback and win in both states..
Two frightening news snips from the AP.. two choices. .what has your vote?
The oil prices? "Oil futures shot higher Tuesday, closing above $100 for the first time as investors bet that crude prices will keep climbing despite evidence of plentiful supplies and falling demand. At the pump, gas prices rose further above $3 a gallon"
...Or the satellite shootdown ..
"An attempt to blast a crippled U.S. spy satellite out of the sky using a Navy heat-seeking missile — possibly on Wednesday night — would be the first real-world use of this piece of the Pentagon's missile defense network. But that is not the mission for which it was intended."
No one expects your steak coming to plate in a nice clean way, but the video of the horrid conditions that the downer cattle were going through would make even Upton Sinclair cringe with disgust.. forklifts shoving them into the grinder .. prodding them .. kicking them. All to get the sick cattle that can't walk into the food chain along with younger healthy cows. After all, unless you are getting meat from small town independent butchers, the chances are your Big Mac or Whopper has parts of a plethora of cattle, not just one.
These causing major fears of Mad Cow disease .. If you study the causes of Mad Cow, two possibilities of the disease: Cows eating themselves in feed, and sick and downer cattle being ground up and put into the food chain along with other cows.
I was most interested in how international media has reacted to this.. One headline in India blared "MAD COW FEAR RAISED IN LARGEST US MEAT RECALL EVER"... Shouldn't we, as a country, be clean..? Shouldn't we serve the cleanest and most properly killed beef in the world? Shouldn't our standards be higher than any other nation in the world?
Instead, we're addicts. The government won't let people smoke pot, but damn they let aspartame and high fructose roll into our stores without regard to safety.. Mercury in the flu shots--and now we're told this year the shots aren't even working! Cloned cattle.. cloned tomatoes.. you can't even trust the seeds anymore! Years ago watermelons with seeds were eaten at picnics. .now cut into your watermelon and you won't find those seeds anymore. Science gave us a way to get rid of them.. Annoyances, I suppose. I liked them.
But I'm off target.
Focusing on the meat industry is something we don't, as a country, do until something like this recall happens. Instead we go to the store, buy the food, the meat, the steaks.. We rarely think. I am not exempting myself from this either.. There are too many times I don't read labels or think about the process before I buy.
Maybe not anymore.
But of course.. if that matters. Remember, the beef recall extends back two years .. How many McDonalds trips have you made? How many medium cheeseburgers did you digest? How at risk are the kids at schools that ate these burgers?
And the next question (as it happens so many times with recalls) what is next? Will it be expanded? Will fast food chains have to worry?
And with no evidence, I STILL CAN CONCLUDE: This happens at other meat packing houses. I have no doubts. It wasn't just Chino, CA, that had downer cattle being ground up..
We may all have re-think this whole process before we buy again.
I remember when Oprah questioned the meat packing industry.. In 1996, the Queen of Talk worried aloud about Mad Cow.
We need some more muckrakers.. And with that in mind, thank God for the Humane Society.
If you eat meat the Humane Society video may be the worst video you have ever seen.. But the most important video you may ever watch.
Perhaps the new charges directed and Obama are a sign of desperation? The top political story until this bomb dropped was the Bill Clinton protester "pop" bomb.. Bill Clinton sparred with an Obama supporter . . Text of the MSNBC first read on the incident:
"I think he even hit me in the face with his hand," he said. "He did give me a little pop. It was okay, because I understand his tenacity for his wife." Clinton did engage Holeman for a few minutes, at times pointing directly at him. It was unclear whether he did make physical contact, however."
Classic Clinton.. angry angry Clinton. Again ruining his wife's chances.. is this on purpose? Does he maybe not want her to bask in the same glory had for years? Is he that obsessive about himself? Each and every time there is a major primary coming up, he explodes with some form of crazy anger..
But of course they want us to believe that Obama is a plagairist! It's not just that, though, it's more of an attack on his words in general. Hillary Clinton feels that if she can convince people some of his words are meaningless, then all of his words will be, too.
I have predicted it before.. I still think we're going to see McCain vs Clinton in 2008's November election.. The 20th Century boy vs the 20th Century girl.. as much as we wished, this will not be an election of ideas or the future, but instead the past vs .. the past.
I could still be wrong. But.. the Clintons always seem to get lucky in the end.
Large car sales.. furniture sales .. all at discount prices. This is what President's day means to most people. That and skiing.. however, in Schmuckraker home base today of NE PA, the snow that was on the ground has completely vanished.. along with all the Presidents of the past..
But with all that bad stuff.. It's president's day.. cheer up and be happy..Today's holiday means winter is almost over.. so the Spring lovers should rejoice (Although we never did get that snowy superstorm I hoped for this year) .. life is too short not to be happy..
All the news unfit to print for Sunday, February 17, 2008
BEEF: IT'S WHAT FOR DINNER.. UNTIL THIS..
A Southern California slaughterhouse that supplies meat to cafeterias and fast food stores the subject of a major beef recall .. Some of the beef may be up to 2 years old ..
143 million pounds of beef being recalled tonight..
BEEF RECALL: The WESTLAND HALLMARK MEAT BASED IN CHINO, CALIFORNIA the company in question.. NO ILLNESSES HAVE BEEN REPORTED.. INVESTIGATION ONGOING..
More questions than answers at this point..
Interesting that the government chose to make the announcement on a Sunday during a holiday weekend.
THE DETAILS:
The United States Department of Agriculture issued the beef recall to products that came from the meat plant..
The accusation: Company broke rules on cattle inspections.. The plant is being investigated over alleged animal cruelty..
The recall is on meat dating back to February 1, 2006..
Most of the meat: Already eaten and passed..
The reason for the recall: "Downer" cattle, which are at a greater risk of E. coli, salmonella or contracting mad cow disease, were ground up along with healthy cattle..
The recall because of Westland/Hallmark not removing the downer cows from the grinding process..
This is major .. this is huge. This is a lot of ground beef.. And the fact that school lunches and, at least at this point who knows who else got it is chilling..
The Midwest getting crippled with blizzard conditions today while the Northeast United States lucks out again .. a massive storm only dumping rain on the big cities. Of course, lucking out won't be the term used if snowmelt happens fast and furious..
There are hints on weather models of a potential storm later in the week in the Ohio Valley, Mid Atlantic, and Northeast.. The intriguing model also hints that cold air will stay in place .. a developing story for anyone along the East Coast that wants a snowstorm before the warm air takes over the nation in only a few more weeks...
The New York Board of Elections confirmed to the NY POST that the fact Obama got 0 votes in so many places, including Harlem and other places with high African American population, is off the mark.
From the POST: "Truth is, in some districts getting a recount, the senator from Illinois is even close to defeating Hillary Clinton.
Initial results in the 94th District, for example, showed a 141-0 sweep for the New York senator, but Board of Elections spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez said today that the ongoing recount had changed the tally to 261-136.
As yet, none of the results has been certified, Vazquez said, adding that the Board of Elections had begun a painstaking ballot-by-ballot canvassing of all voting machines four days after the Feb. 5 election.
"We are doing a recanvass, and we will be counting all paper ballots, including absentee ones," Vazquez said.
"Some initial tallies had zeros, but it was most likely due to human error. Those were unofficial numbers, and no confirmed results have been released yet."
In a predominantly black Brooklyn district for which Clinton was given credit for a 118-0 victory on Primary Night, the Board of Elections' latest figures indicate that she may not even come out the winner - Obama currently has 116 votes to her 118. "
All the news unfit to print for Saturday, February 16, 2008
FREE SPEECH WILL COST YOU
You've got to pay it to say it.. at least on public grounds.. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania's city council passed a new ordinance requiring a group of 2 or more people pay a fee before they publicly protest.. The ordinance faced some criticism .. Some feared it was a violation of civil liberties at the least and Constitutional rights of assembly at the most.
According to the Wilkes Barre CITIZEN'S VOICE, changes can be made before council votes on the ordinance on final reading on February 28 .. this according to Assistant Solicitor Bill Vinsko.
The reason for the fee requirement, says the city, is not to limit freedom of speech but instead to have a police presence in case of violence or disorderly conduct.
The VOICE however, also reporting that Wilkes-Barre activist Tim Grier fears loopholes.. The VOICE reports, "Political activist Tim Grier also questioned the need for the ordinance. 'Loopholes' would allow the city to deny permits and block certain areas that may be a "more effective place for somebody to draw attention to their cause," Grier said."
The VOICE noted that during the council meeting, Grier addressed the Council. The Council's Chairwoman asked him to take off his hat. He didn't.
Not only a schmuck .. but a major disappointment as well.
For months there were many happy that the presumed GOP nominee, regardless of a stance on warfare, would be anti-torture. The man who endured so much when he was the captive of Vietnam. Bones broken and re-broken to the point where now he can't even move them in certain ways.
John McCain angered fellow Republicans at a few debates, too. Mitt Romney even argued at one point (though not in a straight-forward way but when did he?) that the United States must leave everything on the table. McCain always tabled one thing: Waterboarding. It looked like no matter who won in November, the era of waterboarding would be left with the former Administration officials that introduced America to the practice.. Romney and company argued, though, that America was just and moral. McCain argued correctly that no matter how wretched a person we were dealing with, when we delve to their levels we won't get back out of the mess we created.
Fast forward .. McCain this week had his chance to do the right thing, stand up, be the maverick, and hold firm: He did just the opposite.
McCain said that while he remains opposed to waterboarding, "We always supported allowing the CIA to use extra measures."
The maverick .. not so maverick anymore. The front-runner. .a little schmucked up now.
What those 'extra' measures may be isn't for me to ponder. He led us all down the road by hand, we believed he was on the good fight side.. only to find out his straight talk express doesn't take the same exit that most of the country does. Who exactly is driving the bus?
A new pattern on the Obama campaign trail: People fainting with excitement..
Each time, apparently used to this, Obama calmly asks if the person's ok.. asks for a medic. .tells them to get some water.. and assuredly and proudly continues with this speech.
He does always ask the polite and revved up audience to make some room.
The audience cheers now and then when Obama throws the faint-ee some water.
We're watching Britney Spears crumble.. We're seeing Presidential campaign coverage 24/7 to the point where it's nausiating .. All the while a war rages on..
And now, new revelations are shocking --- at least to those paying attention.
The Associated Press reporting this morning: Hundreds of Marines may have been killed without reason due to fact they didn't have blast-resistant vehicles.. vehicles that were requested by commanders.. rejected by Marine Corps bureaucrats that refused the requests.. It wasn't until Defense Secretary Gates said MRAPs would be the Pentagon's number one acquisition priority..
The flawed Secretary Rumsfeld getting a lot of blame in the report, written by Franz J. Gayl..
"Budget and procurement managers failed to recognize the damage being done by IEDs in late 2004 and early 2005 and were convinced the best solution was adding more armor to the less-sturdy Humvees the Marines were using. Humvees, even those with extra layers of steel, proved incapable of blunting the increasingly powerful explosives planted by insurgents.
_ An urgent February 2005 request for MRAPs got lost in bureaucracy. It was signed by then-Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, who asked for 1,169 of the vehicles. The Marines could not continue to take "serious and grave casualties" caused by IEDs when a solution was commercially available, wrote Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005.
Gayl cites documents showing Hejlik's request was shuttled to a civilian logistics official at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in suburban Washington who had little experience with military vehicles. As a result, there was more concern over how the MRAP would upset the Marine Corps' supply and maintenance chains than there was in getting the troops a truck that would keep them alive, the study contends.
_ The Marine Corps' acquisition staff didn't give top leaders correct information. Gen. James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, was not told of the gravity of Hejlik's MRAP request and the real reasons it was shelved, Gayl writes. That resulted in Conway giving "inaccurate and incomplete" information to Congress about why buying MRAPs was not hotly pursued.
_ The Combat Development Command, which decides what gear to buy, treated the MRAP as an expensive obstacle to long-range plans for equipment that was more mobile and fit into the Marines Corps' vision as a rapid reaction force. Those projects included a Humvee replacement called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and a new vehicle for reconnaissance and surveillance missions."
Without question, the news from Iraq has gotten better. But it's infuriating to think that since there's no bad news the media is not focusing on any news. Especially news of previous years' mistakes that cost lives .. lives forever gone and families back home now coping with whether or not they even had to die.
War is war.
But when we go to war, shouldn't we give our forces each and every ability to wage that war we seek for them to win? Shouldn't we give them every avenue to live and fight? Shouldn't we stop tying the old yellow ribbons to the oak trees and instead make materials that they could wear or vehicles they could drive in that would keep them safe?
This may all go back to how the war was introduced to the public: It was a PR campaign aimed at convincing people Saddam had nukes and weapons .. I distinctly remember journalists on TV ready with their chemical masks in case Saddam would launch some of his arsenal. Arsenal he didn't have.
The issue of mismanagement of this war should be one of the top campaign issues in 2008 .. and if John McCain keeps saying he wants us in Iraq for 100 years, maybe it will be. That's a lot of MRAPs. That's a lot of lives.
According to the NY POST: Kimmel is striking back with a song called "I'm [bleep]ing Ben Affleck." Our source told us the video for this song, set to the theme of "We Are the World," will star Affleck, Robin Williams, Don Cheadle, Harrison Ford, Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz..
Silverman and Kimmel.. the funniest couple of the 21st century?
President Bush today signed the economic stimulus bill.. It won't help pay for your Valentine's Day gift, but will help out come spring with the credit card bill. That's the goal for the checks to be mailed out..
The Clinton campaign still reeling from the events of yesterday. .Not only did Senator Obama score knockout punches against Hillary Clinton in Virginia, D.C., and Maryland, but he tossed her campaign to the side like an old bag of garbage.. Something from the 20th century that was still hanging around..
Great statues of Mrs. Clinton being toppled .. Great icons of the 1990s becoming that of history. And only history.
In present tense, Obama has now been crowned the new king of front-runners..
The media is crazy over him. Chris Matthews' coverage of Obama's landslides last night included comments that his legs were tingling from the Obama-mania.
He definitely won over the media. Coverage of his speech last night continued from beginning to end.. no networks broke away to show the victory rally that John McCain held.
He's even winning over Republicans. In the 1980s, the Reagan coalition was broadened with "Reagan Democrats." In 2008, there are Obamacans.. Republicans turning to him due to his stance on the war.. and on 'change' and hope. Just what that hope is .. or that change is .. is still in high-powered words.
But in Texas.. Ohio .. Pennsylvania .. Maybe he can be.
A few things are still unclear: PA Governor Rendell, a Clinton supporter, suggested that some whites may still not be ready for a black president.. Texas still has a huge voting block of Hispanics.. Ohio and PA have a lot of elderly people. Obama's final test will be these states. If he pulls it off, Hillary is effectively done. He would show he has a broader coalition than she can ever imagine having.
But.. with three weeks to go, and two desperate Clintons, this entire thing can quickly turn around.. leaving us with the dull choice of 20th century candidates in November.
Random rakings
A Southern California slaughterhouse that supplies meat to cafeterias and fast food stores the subject of a major beef recall .. Some of the beef may be up to 2 years old .. 
Not only a schmuck .. but a major disappointment as well.
Always random.. always filled with chocolate covered heartache. .more than most hearts can take.