Reality-Based Engineering: 2006/09

Jon Stewart's Take On Bill v. Chris Wallace of FOXNews

When Republicans Eat Their Own, '06 Election Edition

Of course, this is in regards to Rep. Foley from Florida...you know, the sexual predator. Or, as Walter Sobchak would call him, a "pederast". Already, Hastert and his subordinate, NY rep Reynolds, can't get their act together...since it'll be impossible to watch this implosion myself, here are some searches on MyDD, AMERICABlog, and DailyKos. That should cover it.

If Iraq, Bush and Katrina didn't do it, this should sink the House for the goopers...well, and there's Woodward's book, on sale now!

Scientists And Engineers For America

Something for me to investigate...found on scienceblog. We'll see if it's a "Sound science" group or not and I'll report back later...

NASAs Next Spacecraft: Orion

So Bushie Can't Use A Lever to Raise and Lower Gas Prices?

So sayeth one Vijay Vaitheeswaran who writes for The Economist magazine. You'll have to listen to the entire audio article (follow the link to the title above) as he has a lot of things to say about how gas prices get to where they are when we're at the pump. Two facts that shook out of the story for me that I was unaware of:

* The original Ford Model T got 25 MPG - beat that HUMMER. For me, that means we should make SUVs count as cars for CAFE standards, and that those standards need to be raised dramatically over the next 10 years. We're horribally energy inefficient as compared to western Europe and Japan.

* The Saudi State oil company is around TWELVE TIMES as large as Exxon-Mobil, and that 90% of the world's oil is controlled by governments (via government-controlled companies) and not by private corporations.

NIE Actually Bad News For Bushie; 250th Post!

I am copying this from Aravosis, but it's so poignant since the NIE that was just declassified by Bushie directly contradicts his rosier-than-rosy outlook on the Iraq War making us safer, but he said JUST MONDAY that the NIE actually agreed with him - which, like I said, it does not. It's pretty much what the NYT article claimed it to be - a sobering assessment that actually predicts what I thought would happen after the 2003 invasion; namely, that we will just make a jihadist training complex that happens to be named Iraq.

So now, they're losing on the War on Terror as well as everything else...I hope that Dems can capitalize on all the anti-bushie sentiment and unseat the GOP Congress.

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Here is AP's headline: "Iraq is 'cause celebre' for extremists." And here is what AP had to say:
The war in Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment of the U.S. that probably will get worse before it gets better, federal intelligence analysts conclude in a report at odds with President Bush's portrayal of a world growing safer....Bush and his top advisers have said the formerly classified assessment of global terrorism supported their arguments that the world is safer because of the war. But more than three pages of stark judgments warning about the spread of terrorism contrasted with the administration's glass-half-full declarations.

And there's more:
Iraq Is Fueling Muslim Radicalism Globally, US Report Says
Bloomberg - 1 hour ago
By Brendan Murray and Jeff Bliss. Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Anger over the war in Iraq is fueling Muslim radicalism, and the dispersal ...

No longer a secret: Iraq war breeds terror threat
USA Today - 1 hour ago
In Washington today, politicians too often just stand their ground. Liberal strategist Bob Beckel and conservative columnist Cal Thomas provide a better model. ...

Waging the War on Terror: Report Belies Optimistic View
New York Times, United States - 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — Three years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote a memo to his colleagues in the Pentagon ...

Iraq war fuels terror - US report
BBC News, UK - 2 hours ago
The Iraq conflict has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic militants worldwide, declassified parts of a US intelligence report say. ...

Declassified report says US presence in Iraq fuels global ...
San Jose Mercury News, USA - 5 hours ago
By Ron Hutcheson and Margaret Talev. WASHINGTON - The Iraq war is fueling a growing threat of global terrorism and "shaping a new ...

Iraq Is 'Cause Celebre' for Extremists
Forbes - 6 hours ago
By KATHERINE SHRADER , 09.26.2006, 07:02 PM. The war in Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment ...

Iraq Is 'Cause Celebre' for Extremists
ABC News - 6 hours ago
President Bush gestures as he speaks during a news conference with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC ...

Iraq is 'cause celebre' for extremists
Houston Chronicle, United States - 8 hours ago
By KATHERINE SHRADER Associated Press Writer.
WASHINGTON — A declassified government intelligence report says the war in Iraq has ...

NIE says Iraq is 'cause celebre' for jihadists
U.S. News & World Report, DC - 6 hours ago... National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism done by the US intelligence community last April say the Iraq conflict has become "the 'cause celebre' for jihadists ...

Iraq war has become a 'cause celebre' for extremists, US report ...
Arizona Republic, AZ - 8 hours ago
WASHINGTON - A declassified government intelligence report says the war in Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment ...

And my personal favorite, Pravda on the Hudson weighs in:
Iraq a 'Cause Celebre' for Extremists, Intel Report Says
FOX News - 7 hours ago
WASHINGTON — A newly declassified and controversial intelligence report says that the Iraq conflict has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists, but ...

Armey Blasts Dobson; Only Crickets Heard

From My Media Matters Box...Republicans eat their own and we hear nothing about this. Also, where's the Mass press with Romney going out to that rediculous religious gathering of theo-cons like Dobson and others this past Sunday?

UPDATE: Oh, here's some things about it, but nothing in the mainstream media...

Great anti-Burns ad

More Evidence of CNN Dumb-Dumbs?

Just riffing off a previous post. CNN is on crack if they think this is true:

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An AP story carried by CNN shows that the White House was paid many visits by “Republican activists Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed” over the past 6 years. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino had an odd way of excusing the visits by Mr. Norquist:

He is one of a number of individuals who worked to advance fiscal responsibility, which is one of the key aspects of the president's agenda

I seriously doubt Mr. Norquist asked Karl Rove if the pork barrel spending for his clients could be reduced.
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OK, my update - the previous paragraph of the article is this:

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, however, it was possible some of Norquist's meetings might have been directly with Karl Rove, the president's longtime confidant and political strategist.

So this Dana person is obviously going to say stupid things to advance the schrub agenda...but I dont agree with PGL's implied assertion that CNN is being a total stooge - CNN should have edited that comment out since it has nothing to do with the story. Kind of the reverse of what Lemon Lymon discussed below - there was no dissection of the quote at all and it therefore allowed that baloney bullet point to get through.

The Wifey Got This Robocall From The Gabrielli Campaign...

(h/t to BlueMassGroup)

This will probably be the only post I make on favoring or disfavoring a candidate for any Massachusetts office this cycle, but my wifey took this robocall AFTER 8:30 PM...and mind you we have an infant that should be sleeping at that time - but the call woke the baby up! Wifey tells me that "He should know better - he's got 4 kids- and that's the reason NOT to vote for him." I cannot agree more. Sorry, Chris...

Great Quote re: Bushie "Terra" Speaches

"Another terrorism speech by the president is sort of like reruns of Seinfeld. It's on every night and we've memorized most of the lines."---Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford on Countdown

Template Changes With Election 2006 Coming...

I've added several tools provided by the League Of Women Voters, who usually do a great job with getting voters all the information they need to make a choice at the ballot box. But, try several of these tools and here are a few other links as well:

http://capwiz.com/lwv/e4/

http://capwiz.com/lwv/home/

http://www.lwvma.org/

http://www.votinginfo.info/

Disney/ABC "9/11" Fiasco

If you have not been hearing about this, just go check out Americablog as Aravosis has been updating ebout 4 times an hour, or so it seems, about this issue.

Here are two other links as well: a WaPo article about the fundamental flaws in this thing, and an interview snippet from Scarborough Country regarding this mockudrama that was apparently written by two Grover Nordquist clones.

Best thing that I heard thus far was that ABC is distributing this to 100,000 or so schools across the US and touting it as learning material. Sounds like its more like ass wiping 101 material, tho.

UPDATE: Click here if you want to do something about this - lotsa email addys to send your strong concerns to.