Psych! I already early voted, which I'll discuss in my next political post.
What's on the far side of the moon? Well, not darkness.
49 minutes ago
One-stop viewing of frivolous and useless stuff!
'I don't care about his beer, I care about his intelligence.'
'We've had many democratic presidents, and we will still have our guns.'
'He is brilliant. And he's not an elitist, though he has the education to be.'
'We need to build the economy from the bottom up, none of this trickle down business. Just because you're white and southern don't mean you have to vote Republican.'
'I like boobs and so does Obama.'
'McCain wants Cold Wars. Obama wants cold nipples.'
'Obama supports the economy and breasts. He'll use his head for both.'
'Obama motorboats.'
Operator: 911. State your emergency.
ET: Well, it's not an emergency but do you know why this country would elect old, Puritan, elitist idiots again?
Operator: Sir, are you calling 911 to complain about politics?
ET: Fuck you.
“I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention? To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."
"Since early spring, maybe late winter, there's just been an increase, and I believe it might have something to do with the economy," he says. "A lot of the Wall Streeters use sex as a way to cope with stress. Bankers do tend to rely on pretty unhealthy ways of coping with stress - drugs, sex.
The study's lab tests on 10 brands of bottled water detected 38 chemicals including bacteria, caffeine, the pain reliever acetaminophen, fertilizer, solvents, plastic-making chemicals and the radioactive element strontium. Though some probably came from tap water that some companies use for their bottled water, other contaminants probably leached from plastic bottles, the researchers said.
A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state's public safety commissioner. The investigative report concludes that a family grudge wasn't the sole reason for firing Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan but says it likely was a contributing factor. The Republican vice presidential nominee has been accused of firing a commissioner to settle a family dispute. Palin supporters have called the investigation politically motivated. Monegan says he was dismissed as retribution for resisting pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor's sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.
The general co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign, former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), led the charge in 1999 to repeal a Depression-era banking regulation law.
Gramm’s role in the swift and dramatic recent restructuring of the nation’s investment houses and practices didn’t stop there. A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled [merged with] up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm.
Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006. During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.
For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. In the past year, UBS has written down more than $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 jobs.
Apparently immune to all the [economic] turbulence was Iraq . The government has little if any investments in the institutions affected by the crisis and a barely functioning stock market. Most Iraqis keep their money in their homes rather than trust banks.
"We don't believe it will affect our bank balance," said Minister of Industry Fawzi Hariri . "In the short term we'll be one of the least affected nations."
The Iraqi government has more than $25 billion in cash reserves. Even with oil prices dropping below $90 a barrel, the Iraqis forecast oil revenues to be in the neighborhood of $80 billion .