My Stuff

Guess the religious right’s abstinence before marriage message got missed, eh?

Literally.

The weak dollar and our weakening economy are underwriting the great American yard sale. Investors from Dubai are behind the June purchase of the General Motors Building in New York City for $2.8 billion. The Abu Dhabi Investment Council’s sovereign wealth fund bought a 90% stake in the landmark Chrysler Building. General Electric’s plastics division is gone, and its famed appliance unit could soon be in the hands of China’s Haier or South Korea’s LG. Chrysler is hoping to hook up with India’s Tata Motors or Italy’s Fiat. Switzerland’s Roche Holding is offering about $44 billion to acquire the 44% of the biotechnology outfit Genentech that it doesn’t own.

The surge of foreign buying spans the economy. Since 2003, foreign-led mergers and acquisitions have increased more than sixfold. Last year there were over 2,000 foreign-led acquisitions of U.S. companies in deals worth some $405.4 billion, twice the value of deals in 2006 and up from $60.8 billion in 2003, according to Thomson Reuters, the financial-information company. Unlike the 1980s panic about the Japanese buying up American landmarks like Rockefeller Center, the response of the financial establishment has been to welcome the latest rush of foreign investment. “The U.S. needs these flows, particularly now,” says Bank of America chief market strategist Joseph Quinlan. “It helps create income and jobs for Americans.”

Doesn’t look like it.

UGH!! I’m watching the GB/CIN MNF game, and I just saw two little girls, about 10ish, dancing in the stands wearing PINK FOOTBALL JERSEYS!!

Horrible.

You can’t tell one team from another.

The only way I’d wear a pink football jersey is if 100% of the price I paid for it went to cancer research.

If they wanted to market to women, they could cut a regular jersey to fit us, rather than thinking that we all want that pink crap. We don’t. Not us real fans, at any rate.

Yeah, I’m disappointed.

However….

This is what I want to know: How many times in the next few days, while we hear about Edwards’ affair ad nauseum, will we also be told that Newt Gingrich actually left his wife, but only had the cajones to tell her over the phone!!

Republican. Lest you miss that in the twelfth paragraph.

In the indictment, Stevens is charged with lying about receiving gifts worth more than $250,000 from Veco, an Alaska-based energy company on whose behalf he intervened in Washington.

The indictment, returned Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Washington, says the veteran lawmaker “schemed to conceal” the fact that Veco paid for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work on his home.

The indictment follows a wide-ranging investigation into ties between the company and lawmakers in Alaska.

In the midst of all the crap (wars, famine, high fuel prices, pollution) there is still good being done.

BlueVoice.org:

For some twenty five years members of the BlueVoice team have worked both to end the killing of dolphins and whales and to explore the universe of dolphins in the open sea. We oppose keeping dolphins in captivity as we would oppose capturing human beings for display in circus-like shows. Ample evidence now exists to show that dolphins are highly intelligent, social and sentient animals with brains and minds of equal magnitude to those of humans.

Our films have brought this point of view to millions of viewers around the world. We have spent hundreds of days at sea with dolphins, killer whales and sperm whales. We have experienced dolphins protecting us from sharks, met newborn calves and swum eye-to-eye with these magnificent animals from the Bahamas to Norway’s fjords to the Galapagos Islands. For all of us the work to protect dolphins and whales is very personal. We are dedicated to informing the world about the marvel of these animals and ending the threats to their lives.

At a time in history when we are constructing the world’s most sophisticated communications infrastructure on the internet we are dangerously neglecting the “infrastructure” which supports life on our planet. This is particularly true in the marine environment. Life in the oceans is in serious jeopardy and none of it is “backed up.” If it is destroyed it will not be recoverable.

…include giving away semi-automatic rifles?

Windsor Hills Baptist had planned to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle until one of the event’s organizers was unable to attend.

Glad my family’s Catholic.

Three links in a row, from Crooks and Liars, ’cause it’s just so damned poetic.

One:
George Bush.

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

January 2009 cannot come soon enough.

Two:
People that answer the Pew Research Poll. I was gonna just say “Americans”, but there are some of us that actually pay attention.

“Now, thinking about Barack Obama’s religious beliefs… Do you happen to know what Barack Obama’s religion is? Is he Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, or something else?”

Christian 57%
Muslim 12%
Jewish 1%
Something else 2%
Don’t know - Heard different things 10%
Don’t know - Haven’t heard enough 15%
Refused 3%

43% of the Americans that answered this question thing Obama is something other than Christian?? What’s really shocking to me is that one in four don’t know what his religion is? Not that it should matter. But come on people. Wake up!

Three:
The Democrats in Congress.

Historians writing about the Bush era were given a great gift yesterday — an iconic headline that explains so much of what has happened in this country over the last seven years:

Their rationale for doing that is that it prevents the Republicans from depicting them as “weak,” because nothing exudes strength like bowing.

‘Nuff said.

swings further to the right.

Speaking to reporters on his campaign plane, Obama said mental health exceptions—which are a real battleground issue in the abortion debate–can be “rigorously” limited to only those women with “serious clinical mental health diseases.” He said mental health exceptions are not intended permit abortions when a woman simply “doesn’t feel good.”

“It is not just a matter of feeling blue,” Obama said.

Wow. Does he really think that an abortion is the result of a woman “feeling blue”??? Really? Bet Clinton’s lookin’ better and better to those rabid Obama supporters.

And, at the same time, he’s gonna expand on Bush’s Faith Based funding program, “while insisting that those groups not discriminate against aid recipients or aid workers. ” Sure.

Four:
1. campaign finance
2. FISA vote
3. choice
4. “faith” based initiaive programs.