Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Another sweet photograph from the International Space Station

By Mona Goldwater
Aerospace Editor

The ISS Expedition Three crew captured the setting sun on a digital still camera, and the thin blue airglow line just at the Earth's horizon. Some of the station's equipment is in silhouette in the foreground. This image is from three days ago.  Click on the image to see a much larger one. . .


click to enlarge - image courtesy of NASA (your tax dollars at work)
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Monday, September 19, 2011

Teabagging For Jesus

thanks to jeff clinton...
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What Democrat will take on President Obama in the Presidential contests?

By Pablo Fanque
National Affairs Editor


Unless something REALLY goes wrong, say, worse than it already has, in his last year in office, President Barack Obama will run for the White House for the Democrats, against, quite possibly, Governor Rick Perry or Ex-Governor Mitt Romney. . .and maybe an indie like Ron Paul.  Where is the opposition?


The big question, as Presidential Candidates.Org, wrote:
"Do we give President Obama his second term to reap the projected returns of his policies, or should we wipe the slate clean and bring the Republicans back into power again in the hope that this time, things will be different?"
Painting by Jack Brummet - click to enlarge

There seems to be a fair amount of support for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to throw her hat into the ring.  But Clinton told ABC News recently that the odds of her running are “. . .below zero. One of the great things about being Secretary of State is I am out of politics. I am not interested in being drawn back into it by anybody,” she said. (We get what she means, but it seems disingenuous to claim that the SoS is "out of politics.")

In recent weeks, there have been more and more calls by Democrats--including, predictably, Dennis Kucinich--for someone to step up and run against the President.  Congressman Kucinich, who ran for President in 2004 and 2008, told CNN that a challenge to BHO would “make him a better president.”

Representative Peter DeFazio from Oregon told The Hill that growing numbers of Democrats believe Obama needs a challenge. “It’s a common refrain, and it’s certainly common in my district among Democrats,” he said. “They want the guy back that they voted for.”

During the debt ceiling fiasco, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said , “It would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.

Democratic strategist James Carville in a CNN column last week asked the President to 'wake up' and 'panic' and to  clean house, and circle back to the "Democratic principles that got him elected."  Carville wrote "The time has come to demand a plan of action that requires a complete change from the direction you are headed."  And, finally, "Fire somebody. No — fire a lot of people."

Ralph Nader said earlier this year that if The President is challenged in some of the early primaries  “it is harder for him to say no.  His strategists can say, ‘Don’t fight it, Barack; use it, revel in it; you’re good on your feet.' ”

The problem with all this, as Newsmaxx pointed out last week, is "The re-election attempts of Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were all undone by primary challenges, while Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all won second terms after avoiding any serious internal party fight."
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If Only. . .No. 3: President Mario Cuomo

By Jack Brummet
Democratic Affairs Editor


As Number 2 in our series "If only. . .",  we want to present former New York Governor Mario CuomoHe was a master speaker, but he was bright (150 watts), with a heart of shimmering gold.  I used to listen to him on his radio show in NYC (what we'd now call a side-project) and got a pretty good measure of the man over many hours listening to him at night.  I voted for him for Mayor in the fall of 1977, a few months after I moved to NYC. 

Why did he decline to run for President, even when it seemed likely he could at the least capture the Democratic nomination?  We'll never really know; but we probably know,  or we can guess:



  • The best guys never run for President.  For all the reasons you've heard before.  Don't get me wrong--there have been plenty of ringers. . .good-hearted, decent, and very bright men (men, so far).  
  • The timing is never right. This is a perennial problem in Presidential politics--when do you make the contest? There are scores of factors (all of which, in reality, boil down to $$$) and infinite variations exponentiated with chicanery, skullduggery, treacherous to inept boardroom and office politics, and when and to whom various levels of payoffs, grease, compromise, blackmail, and even physical and psychological harm should be applied).
  • Skeletons rattling in the closet? Those skeletons were often alluded to, but none ever materialized.  If you ran for Mayor and Governor in New York, the rattling bones would have been shaken from the closet.  I never believed in those skeletons.
  • He didn't want to know if he would win or not. He wanted to keep that aura, which would  be sullied by jumping in to The Snake Pit.  For me  at least, this was one of the great political heartbreakers of all time.  OK, not RFK heartbreaking, but a little sad.  You don't throw yourself off a cliff over a woulda-shoulda-coulda. . .but still, I often think about Mario and wonder "what if..."
Check out text of Mario Cuomo's 1984 keynote address, here if you need convincing.  It is one of the greatest speeches of our time.


Other ATIT articles on Governor Cuomo:

The Man Who Should Have Been King
Mario Cuomo Nominates Bill Clinton at the convention
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Halloween costume ideas (probably NSFW)

By Mona Goldwater,
Fashion Editor

It's time for our annual post on Halloween costumes.  Our criteria is mainly that the costume needs to be weird.  We did not include the many costumes that you would consider cute, or dressed up animals, and, believe or not, we left out most of the really sick costumes, or costumes where you might say "it's too soon!" (9/11 costumes, Michael Jackson, etc). 


Little Hitler


Illegal Alien

Twisted Family Costume(s)

The Tooth Fairy

Kind Of A Katamari Babies Costume

Goldilocks

Bomber

Hawaii's Favorite

Priapic Frog

Naughty Bits

Man-sheep

Caged

Man-horse/Centaur

Birth
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Sunday, September 18, 2011

If Only...No. 2: The Wallop

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Ren Cummins is giving it away!

By Jack Brummet, Language Arts Editor


Steampunk author Ren Cummins takes Crazy Eddy one step further.  He's not practically giving it away, he IS giving it away.  The first novel--Reaper's Return--in his Young Adult series Chronicles of Aesirium is available as a free download at the site below.  It is available in various e-book formats from plain text to Kindle, Palm Reader, Nook, etc.

Naturally, he hopes this generous taste will drive you to actually buy the rest of the series.

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The Spokane River Bigfoot

By Jack Brummet
Bigfoot-Yeti-Sasquatch Editor


 


A YouTube user--Samantha13950 --says she and some friends encountered a Sasquatch while hiking along the Spokane River.

"While hiking, we accidentally caught an image of Bigfoot walking through the woods. I didn't even notice until I got home and saw it on the computer! This scarred the crap out of us! Video uploaded by samantha13950 on May 23, 2011."


Some Bigfoot investigators and aficionados are skeptical of this one, for the usual reasons.  And, they say, there doesn't appear to be a large enough area to sustain a Bigfoot habitat near this sighting.   It's interesting--they have theories of the breadth of its range...although no one has actually examined one or studied them as a group (depending on whose stories you believe).


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Saturday, September 17, 2011

One of the sixteen sunrises you see each day at the International Space Station

International Space Station astronaut Ron Garan used a high def camera to film one of the sixteen sunrises astronauts see each day at the international space station in August this year.

This image shows the rising sun as the station flies along a path between Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.  Image, courtesy of NASA.

click to enlarge
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Rick Santorum's Folly



Sending out feelers
    And testing the ground
The right place was the one
    Place he could never be found.
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Five favorite (U.S.) World War II propaganda posters





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KUOW interview with Daryle Conners: "Scale Over Fidelity"


An interview on KUOW 94.9 with our good friend Daryle Conners where she discusses her awesome home theatre, screening movies for groups, and two of our favorite movies, Dr. Strangelove and Stingray Sam.

Daryle Conners: Scale Over Fidelity
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