Health care spending to top $4 trillion by 2017 - of course Reps will all tell you that our privatized healthcare system is just fine and in no need of reform.

last night. I just read an e-mail she had sent me from her Blackberry stating she was inside and waiting for the show to begin. She's funny. She wondered why the crowd seemed so OLD!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with that pairing and like rock, run out (don't walk) and buy the Blind Faith self titled album (oops! sorry, showing my age again), CD or better yet the two disk Re-masterd version. Can't Find My Way Home is worth it by itself.

Oh yea...I told her I was completely jealous.

Crackerland. This is the funniest twist on a political controversy I've seen lately . Special bonus points for:

"Hussein X’s first act in office should be to free Mumia and appoint him as the first official Secretary of the Kill Whitey Department."

As per...well...several discussions both here and at the Forvm on Obama...especially with Bernard, I saw this article this morning and thought of you.

So, I thought you might want to read it.

I'm not going to call Obama the second coming of Lou Dobbs and never have...yet...I do think and have always thought that you give him a little too much slack on this matter.

Luckily for him, there are bigger fish to fry...

by amerciablog:

What the hell has happened to the Republican party that this is one of the party's key intellectual organs?

[F]or a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics.

So, blacks never married whites unless there was a communist involved? So does that make Clarence Thomas the communist or his wife? I'm actually surprised the conservative brain trust didn't find a way to weave in a bit of Jew-bashing too. Oh wait, they did:

[A]ll of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father.

Someone call Nedra Pickler at the Associated Press and see if she'd be willing to do a story on whether all inter-racial couples are communist Jews, or just the liberal ones.

Nice to see the deep racism of the GOP base on proud (goosestepping) parade.

According to this TPM link, Obama has now tied Hillary in Texas . Since she HAD to win Texas AND Ohio (and every state after that) to win the delegates she'd need to be nominated, it just appears that it won't happen.

I think she should run till after the 3/4/08 primaries and then graciously conceed the race. Actually, I think that's exactly what she'll do.

New York is about to gain a new (same old) Senator (again). Reminds me of that Who line in Baba O'Riely: "Welcome to the new boss. Same as the old boss."

On the other hand, the right wing machine will be crying in their martini's tonight. Hillary was their dream almost come true.

Show report? I didn't know that As 60 Minutes was putting its show together, the White House put pressure on CBS -- the parent company -- to kill the show. Not only that but:

"If you recall, Ms. Simpson testified, under oath, to Congress about Karl Rove's involvement in politicizing the DOJ. What you may not know, however, is that her house mysteriously caught fire and she was run off the road in the weeks leading up to her testimony."

The bush43 Administration is no different than a Soviet era Premier, no different than a 2nd world dictatorship. When Obama wins the Presidency, I pray that he completely opens up all the books to show us all what a vile bunch of tyrants and mafiosos that bushco was.

Great Digby update:

"The Attorney General, by the way, has said he would rather let the case go through the normal appeals process rather than open an investigation."

except:

" It has been 20 months since Siegelman’s trial ended and no trial transcript has been produced by Fuller's court. This is in violation of the rules of criminal procedure which require a transcript within 30 days of sentencing. Siegelman can't appeal his conviction with out an official trial transcript."

Gee, how could THAT happen?

fun:

A new stretchy material can be cut and rejoined at the same spot just by pressing the broken ends together for a few minutes. The self-healing rubber stays stretchy even after being severed five or six times, or cut and left on the countertop overnight, French researchers say. A chemical manufacturer is already working to create large batches of the material for still hypothetical applications such as sealants and self-healing rubber duckies.

The material's secret is its molecular structure, which resembles a plate of spaghetti, says physicist Ludwik Leibler of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, who led the research team. The strands straighten out when pulled, but they relax back to their tangled shape when the tension is released. The result is a rubber that can stretch to six times its resting length, the group reports in the journal Nature.

The self-mending occurs because each strand consists of numerous small molecules of vegetable fat linked to each other and to far-flung neighbors via relatively weak hydrogen bonds, the same chemical bonds that give water molecules their cohesiveness. When the material was cut or ripped, the severed bonds remained chemically sticky for each other.

ABINGDON, England -- Jordan Webb can predict the exact time of day his head will start aching. If the 10-year-old lingers outside the Reynolds grocery store past 5 p.m., a small black device latched onto the storefront and operated on a timer will emit a high-pitched sound that makes the boy's skull feel like it's popping.

"It sounds like 'Eeeeeeeek' and gives me a big headache," said Jordan...

Jordan is referring to the Mosquito, a $975 transmitter designed to disperse young loiterers by making a loud humming noise that most people older than 25, such as his 41-year-old mother, can't hear. The Mosquito has sparked a new sort of buzz in Britain, this time among political and civil rights groups that say the device is discriminatory and treats young people as second-class citizens.

...

Aynsley-Green's counterpart in Scotland, Kathleen Marshall, started her campaign five months ago. "This is a war on young people," she said, noting that some of the slogans for the device -- such as "teen tormentor" -- did not go far in winning the hearts or minds of the teenagers who have told her through her Web site that they feel demonized.

Does anyone doubt that if such a device targetted any group but kids that it would be found immediately illegal? What the hell are people thinking using a device that causes physical pain to herd kids? Why not just hit them with a good old fashioned cattle prod?

Turkey has military forces in northern Iraq, effectively invading the Kurdish areas to go after the support for kurdish terrorist groups that operate in Turkey.

IRBIL, IRAQ -- Lawmakers in northern Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region authorized their military Tuesday to intervene if Turkish forces pursuing anti-government rebels bring their battle into civilian areas.

The move heightened fears that the conflict could draw in Iraqi Kurdish forces and destabilize the one region of Iraq that has been relatively peaceful since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

story

So it looks like the Peshmerga may be getting involved, and we may have open warfare between a US NATO ally and a part of Iraq, which is under US occupation.

What will the US do? We could come to the aid of the Kurds, afterall they've been our supposed success story in Iraq so afar. But that means opposing Turkey which would be hard. Alternately we could play another round of betray the ally and throw the Kurds to the dogs, hoping that we can now keep baghdad from exploding and use it as our example of success. I suspect the Iraqi government as a whole can be relied upon to twiddle their thumbs, both because that's all they seem to do anyway and because the shia and sunni have no love of the kurds anyway.

That in action might change if the Turks start hitting Kirkuk (although it's pretty far inland). Iran has their own animosity towards the Kurds but I'd guess they'll just sit back and enjoy the show while their own hands remain clean.