We already have people squeezed between paying bills and going to work (ooh! irony!), truckers paying out the wazoo for fuel, and rate increases for mass transit.  Now we can add mom and pop gas stations to the growing list of people getting directly reamed by the rising gas prices.

For a couple of months now (not necessarily here) I've been calling Lieberman "JoJo the Turncoat Monkey," for reasons that should be obvious.  Based on what has been going on with this whole "Appeaser" flap, maybe it's time to come up with something new.  I'm thinking "JoJo the Hypocritical Assclown," or something similar.

While every good democrat has been jumping all over Bush for not only his remarks, but where he chose to make them, The Ruggedly Bipartisan Independent Republican Sycophant Senator from Connecticut has taken a different tack, both from the Democratic narrative and from his own previous words.

I live in IN, and actually voted right after the polls opened at 6:00 AM.  I'm home watching the kids now, and got a phone call from the Clinton campaign a Clinton phonebanker asking if I could count on their vote.  I told them no, I would not be voting for Hillary Clinton.  They asked if I would be voting for McCain.  I said, "Oh heavens, no!"

That's when the fun started.  Below the fold is a paraphrasing of the conversation.  My responses are in italics.

(Eeek!  I'm on the rec list for an angry rant!  You out-of-touch, bitter, elitist, latte-sipping folks are too kind!)

UPDATE:  I almost forgot the most important part, about Hillary losing the independent vote.  I did mention it, Markos!  Thanks for that story!

UPDATE II: As mentioned below, I'm sure it was just some phonebanker, and not some official higher-up in the campaign.  They still ought not teach those people to lie like that.  :-P

Tonight, thanks to Mrs. Praxxus agreeing to stay home with Things 1 & 2, I had the chance to go see Barack Obama speak at Jefferson High School here in Lafayette.  For those of you unfamiliar with the Greater Lafayette Area, West Lafayette, IN is home to Purdue University."

There were 2500 tickets handed out yesterday in two separate locations.  News reports say that they were gone within 90 minutes.  Today I arrived at Jeff about 20 minutes after the doors opened, and only had a 10 minute wait in the rain to get through security.  Watching the news reports later, they mentioned people standing in the rain for "hours."  Ooof.

As a cruel joke, people had to leave their umbrellas at the door before they went through the metal detectors.

I hope that I don't get into some kind of micro-copyright trouble with Mark "Micro" Penn for conducting this.  Does he have a license on micro-polling micro-trends, or just on using them to drive campaigns into a ditch?

Every now and then public consciousness and repetition will converge at a given point in time, and phrases become very popular.  Insanely popular.  Annoyingly popular.  OMGSTFU!!! popular. Phrases like "Not!" or "Where's the beef?" or "Go fuck yourself."  I believe that a certain phrase, oft repeated this Primary season, has skidded down the hill of acceptable use and now teeters on the edge of Ad Nauseum Gorge.

More below the fold . . .

So what "bold" or "innovative" approach will they take to boost their sagging poll numbers?  What "decisive" "from the gut" initiative will they lay out to enthrall the voting public?

Let's find out . . .

. . . and they're not pretty.  I had noted last Tuesday that some of the Preznit Pissypants Administration's proposed rule changes for the National Parks system had been abandoned, but didn't have enough details to decide whether or not I was happy with the news, or merely smiling pessimistically.

Definitely just smiling pessimistically, except I quit smiling.  Find out why below the fold . . . .

On Saturday, there was a horrible article in the Washington Post about how farkin' awesome Michael Behe, Intelligent Design's poster boy, performed on the witness stand recently in the Dover school board case.  The author of this treacly bilge, Michael Powell, does provide some dissenting viewpoints but all in all it is just a crap piece that seems to serve no other purpose but to fluff up¹ Behe and the ID movement.  Seriously, the sub-head for this story might as well have been "Michael ♥'s Michael."  I'm going to share snippets of Powell's article with you, and contrast that with the York Daily Record's coverage of Behe's testimony in the case, which has a bit of an anti-ID bias to it.  That should balance things out, right?  heh

The fun begins below the fold . . .

As chairman of the House Committee on Resources, Congressman Dick "Dick" Pombo has tremendous influence over US environmental laws.  Unfortunately, Dick's motto seems to be, "I've never met a blade of grass I wouldn't divvy up for spare change."  Money always trumps conservation with him, as is evidenced by the new "Endangering Species" act he recently got passed in the House.

Only this time, Pombo (R-Gave to Delay Defense Fund) may have let his greed get the better of him, and violated him some tax laws to the tune of $23,000.  It seems like a pretty clear case of "he done wrong."  Now we just need to get the word out!  Read more below the fold . . . .

The Senate voted today on a proposed amendment by Arizona Senator Jon Kyl (R-Stealing Feingold's Thunder) to forego their annual pay raises (i.e., freeze their salaries).  This is something that realistically doesn't have a huge impact on the national budget.  However, given the dire straits the United States is in monetarily the symbolism is huge.  So it is with some disgust I report to you that the "Let's Not Get Raises" proposal only passed by 92 - 6 (two not voting).

Who were the six greedy assclowns that voted "nay?"

Another in the series (see also:  Alaska and Florida) of stories about enviro-rape disguised as energy security, this one courtesy of the LA Times.   It would seem that the US (de)Forest Service has approved oil exploration/development on 52,000 acres in the Los Padres National Forest.

More on the flip side . . . .

I think Monkeypants has worked himself into a public relations hole.  He's managed to get so many people upset with him that most situations he encounters will get filtered through a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" lense.  It doesn't help that his Disministration seems woefully off balance politically (too many pending subpoenas, perhaps?), to the point that one could make a case that they are casting about wildly, hoping the poll numbers will bite on something.  Take this hella-lame photo op stunt he pulled this morning, ostensibly to "rally the troops."  Rally the troops?  You mean those 11 troops on the other end of the video conference?

More below the fold . . .

I posted a rant the other day about how the oil whores are once again tossing around numbers completely devoid of context to make things seem a lot more impressive than they really are.  Now I see, courtesy of Dedalus' latest post at Blah3, that there is more tomfoolery to debunk.

See the debunkery of the tomfoolery below the fold . . . .

There's an article over on The New York Times (free login required) website that might set off some alarm bells, were I more conspiracy-minded.  Even if I keep a level head while reading it, a close examination of the article and the facts that it presents --sifted through the suppositions-- it's far too easy to come to the conclusion that the only reason for writing it is to put a happy feel-good spin on overturning Roe v. Wade.

Summary, rant, etc. below the fold . . .

The New York Times had an article yesterday about yet another environmentally sensitive area in Alaska that is "brimming with oil."  The area in question --called Teshekpuk-- is 217,000 acres on the North Slope of Alaska that is the summer home to 50,00 - 90,000 migratory birds.  This area has been off limits to oil companies for presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton.  But now they say the available oil has quadrupled.

Quadrupled!  Wow!  That must be a lot!  How much oil are we talking, total?  Find out below the fold . . .