Wesley Snipes Skips

It's interesting to check out the tax protest patriots from time to time.

In 1992 and 1993, my girl friend Katherine was employed by the Pilot Connection. I remember attending a Pilot Connection Christmas party in Stockton and how enthusiastic everyone was about untaxing ourselves.

Nevertheless, in 1996, the main players were sentenced to prison. Katherine, fortunately, was too busy with her ultimately-successful efforts to pass the California bar exam to become a main player, and never faced indictment.

Fast forward to 2008. It looks like Wesley Snipes won't go to prison, but Eddy Ray Kahn and Douglas Rosile will do so, for something quite similar in nature....

LA Times Endorses...

Obama:

With two candidates so closely aligned on the issues, we look to their abilities and potential as leaders, and their record of action in service of their stated ideals. Clinton is an accomplished public servant whose election would provide familiarity and, most important, competence in the White House, when for seven years it has been lacking. But experience has value only if it is accompanied by courage and leads to judgment.

Nowhere was that judgment more needed than in 2003, when Congress was called upon to accept or reject the disastrous Iraq invasion. Clinton faced a test and failed, joining the stampede as Congress voted to authorize war. At last week's debate and in previous such sessions, Clinton blamed Bush for abusing the authority she helped to give him, and she has made much of the fact that Obama was not yet in the Senate and didn't face the same test. But Obama was in public life, saw the danger of the invasion and the consequences of occupation, and he said so. He was right.

And McCain:

Indeed, McCain's suitability for the presidency at this moment begins with how he would conduct the nation's foreign affairs. As noted, we do not support his determination to fight on in Iraq, but we welcome his insistence that America's military posture be matched by its moral purpose. Alone among the Republican candidates, he would close the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has become an international symbol of U.S. arrogance. He has waged a principled and persistent effort to end the Bush administration's embrace of torture as a weapon of war, a frightening concession to terrorism and an abdication of basic American values. He alone among the Republican candidates has condemned torture in all its forms; he alone among all the candidates in this race has endured it.

McCain's revival is the most remarkable in the last half-century of presidential politics. In November, he borrowed money to keep his campaign afloat and was required to purchase a special life insurance policy in the event he passed away during his campaign. My, how times change! Now, Republican officeholders from coast-to-coast are falling over themselves to make endorsements before Super Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Back On Mars

Poking along in Southern Utah... uh.... Mars' Victoria Crater....

Coulter: I'll campaign for Hillary if McCain is the nominee

Ann gets analytical about Hillary and John.

Craving An Endorsement

Not a surprise:

At a Los Angeles news conference, Obama said that he has specifically asked Edwards for his endorsement, although "we haven't had specific conversations about an Obama administration.... He and I share a fundamental view that it is not enough to just change political parties."

The Obama campaign is courting Edwards' supporters heavily.

I figured that Edwards dropped out before Super Tuesday in order to allow Obama enough time to gather Edwards supporters, but he decided not to endorse Obama, in order to keep his options open in the event Hillary wins the nomination. Now, it will be interesting to see what Edwards does. He has to act today, or tomorrow, to have much of an impact. In any event, watching Hillary distort history regarding her vote for the Iraqi war in last night's debate was enough to chase most Edwards supporters into Obama's camp.

January Rains In Oz

The Charleville and Coraki floods really show up, but what is even more striking is the rainfall gradient: NSW wet; SA dry - Central Queensland, a sodden, miserable mess; Western Queensland, utterly arid.

Strange pattern. In the U.S., these things tend to be driven by geography, but in Oz, this thing looks more like caprice.

Yes, in Spanish, La Niña means The Niña....

Illegal Things In Clark County, Nevada

Not as wide open as you thought:

• [A] county law (Clark County Code 10.32.100) says even spectators at [organized dog fights] can be arrested.
• A Las Vegas law has reserved a special place in hell for you (Las Vegas Municipal Code 7.32.110) if you referee an organized dog fight.
• While it's illegal for locals to shoot most animals here unless it's to defend life and limb or as part of an organized hunting party, county leaders have no problem with you blasting ... each and every serpent you come across (10.32.110).
• Luckily, baby chicks, rabbits, duckling or other young fowl are slightly more protected here. According to local codes, it's illegal to dye them a different color either for ... giggles or -- we kid you not -- "to conceal their identity" (County Code 10.32.200 and Las Vegas Municipal Code 7.32.240).
• [Y]ou'd better not trip old Trigger or try to push him over. That's one equine indiscretion that could cost you up to $1,000 and six months in county jail (10.32.250).
• County Code 10.36.020 and Las Vegas Municipal Code 7.36.040 issue a stern warning - almost an edict, really - against letting Mr. Bojangles drop a biscuit on your neighbor's yard. If Scooter does take his morning constitutional during your daily stroll together, you'd better pick that ... up. Failure to do so can cost you $1,000 and up to six months behind bars.
• Well, if you give that revolver to (drunken) Harry for his birthday, you can be prosecuted under County Code 12.04.050, forced to pay a $500 fine and serve six months in jail.
• [You] might consider buying a musket or flintlock rifle, which are exempted from the (72-hour waiting period) law.
• For example, we bet you didn't know that masseurs/masseuses can't wear transparent clothing. It's right there in the Clark County Code (7.08.045). Nope, no see-through duds.
• [S]econd-hand store owners have to make sure they never, ever accept any items from drunks or the criminally insane (7.16.090).
• [All teen] dance clubs countywide must have enough ambient indoor light to ensure these young'ns don't swing too deeply into some hardcore jungle boogie (8.40.080).
• Women in unincorporated parts of Clark County can't carry or possess mace, nunchuks, truncheons or other bludgeoning devices. Drug users living in these same areas can't possess or use stun guns, either (County Code 12.04.185).
• While using illegal drugs is risky enough, just snorting, smoking or injecting fake junk is enough to land you in the pokey for six months (County Code 12.07.030).
• For the past 33 years, name calling has been illegal in Clark County (12.33.010).
• Horsemen who want to smoke in forested areas of Clark County must dismount their trusty steed first before lighting up (13.16.010). Hikers in these same areas must stop moving forward before taking their first drag.
• Since 1965, shifting your car into neutral and coasting down county roads has been illegal (14.60.090).
• [I]f you're gonna drop a load in your buddy's bathroom, you'd better be sure to get permission first. Failure to do so is a misdemeanor (Las Vegas Municipal Code 10.40.040).

Fiscal Stimulus

Joel Stein discusses getting a check in the mail from the Feds:

But the government doesn't want us to bank that money or use it to pay off debts. It believes we will go out and spend the money, and that will make our houses worth a lot again. The idea is this: Say, for instance, I got $600, and I spent it on strippers. Those strippers would then buy clothes at Bebe, and the person who owns Bebe would buy the crappy house I overpaid for and get me out of the financial predicament caused by unscrupulous mortgage lenders and not by my addiction to strip joints.

...Unless we find a new bubble to invest in -- and may I boldly suggest reams and reams of freshly printed newspaper -- we're not going to spend our way out of this recession. We got here for the same reason people always get in trouble, from prom night to the blackjack table to Iraq: We got over-excited. We ignored centuries of data saying real estate is a worse investment than stocks, and instead based our investment strategy on the fact that our neighbor totally just sold his house for a serious ton of money, for real. If only someone had invented an easy way to access investment history charts from our computers, this might never have happened.

So as fun as that stripper check sounds, we'd be smart not to take it, and to tell Bernanke that he's good-looking and funny and we'll love him no matter what he does or doesn't do with short-term interest rates. We need to prevent our government from going deeper into debt, thus further devaluing our currency and risking the foreign investments that help support us. So homeowners need to accept that they're not moving into a bigger house in three years, stock owners have to learn that their portfolios are going down for a while, and large tech companies have to stop paying hundreds of millions for social networking sites that kids get sick of after a while.

An empire that believes spending is a patriotic act is perilously close to its end. But at least we will have left future civilizations the invention of the 10-year interest-only adjustable-rate sub-prime mortgage.

Kylie Behind The Scenes

Video named "Wow".

Sparky Goes To The Vet Today

A very persistent, but unproductive, cough. Could it be kennel cough, on top of the other heart disease issues? Well, let's try the antibiotics and see what happens....

Listening To The Democratic Debate

On CNN.... Hillary tells whoppers about her vote to authorize military force against Iraq, gets called on it by Wolf Blitzer, yet Obama doesn't close in for the kill.

Hillary desperately needs to get her ass handed to her next Tuesday....

Clinton asked, in the context of "judgment," why she didn't vote for the Levin amendment to tie the AUMF to the findings of the UN weapons inspectors. This is Clinton's Achilles' heel, and after a comment about not wanting to cede authority to the UN--please, that's sooooo rightwing radio circa 1993--she pivots around to try to differentiate herself from the Republicans.

Wolfie gives Obama an opportunity to respond, but puts it in the context of Petreus' claims that we've had progress in Iraq. Obama makes the correct point that there's been almost no political progress, so even though we're happy with the lessened violence, that we're not happy with the lack of political progress. Then he says it's about judgment, and he thinks he'd be the strongest nominee on national security, because he's always been right in opposing the war in Iraq.

New Railgun Tested

A 10.68 Megajoule, Mach 7, kick in the pants.

Dawn Of The Blue-Eyed People

Interesting:

Everyone with blue eyes can be traced back 10,000 years to the Black Sea region.

...According to a team of researchers from Copenhagen University, a single mutation which arose as recently as 6-10,000 years ago was responsible for all the blue-eyed people alive on Earth today.

The team, whose research is published in the journal Human Genetics, identified a single mutation in a gene called OCA2, which arose by chance somewhere around the northwest coasts of the Black Sea in one single individual, about 8,000 years ago.

The gene does not "make" blue in the iris; rather, it turns off the mechanism which produces brown melanin pigment. "Originally, we all had brown eyes," says Dr Hans Eiberg, who led the team.

And most people still do. The finding that a rare mutation, probably dispersed in the rapid wave of colonisation that followed the end of the last ice age, highlights one of the great mysteries of human evolution: the oddness of Europeans.

Those from Europe and the Near-East have many characteristics that set them apart from the rest of the human race.

Not only are Europeans far more likely to have blue eyes (95 per cent in some Scandinavian countries), they also have a far greater range of skin tones and hair colour than any other ethnic grouping.

It is only in Europe that you will find large numbers of blondes and redheads, brunettes, pale skins and olive skins, blueeyed and green-eyed people living together in the same communities. Across the rest of the world people are almost uniformly darkhaired and dark-eyed.

"Bitter - Table For One!"

Hillary is really beginning to creep out Matt Taibbi:

Right, that. The whole prose-not-poetry deal. It's working for Hillary, just like her tears gambit worked. After all these years in public life, the only time Hillary Clinton sheds a tear is when her own political career is on the line? I didn't notice her crying when kids started coming home from Fallujah in rubber bags because of a war she voted for.

That was where it all came rushing back. Hillary's stunning victory had been in the books for mere minutes before we were all suddenly reminded of all the reasons we came to hate the Clintons over the years -- why there were scores of very smart people who by November 2000 were actually willing to pull a lever for Ralph Nader rather than go anywhere near a Democratic Party ticket. Seven years is, it turns out, a long time, just long enough to forget that Clinton fatigue was what saddled us with George Bush in the first place.

The crying incident was Hillary's own personal Checkers speech, a painful bit of self-mutilation tossed off on the last step before the political gallows -- a pure sea-cucumber tactic, scaring us off with a display of vulnerable green guts. We missed the chance to finish her off, and now she's back in charge, setting the tone for a campaign that gets dumber and meaner and dirtier by the day. Thanks to you, New Hampshire, the Clintons still have us to kick around.

Metal Skool, Jessica Simpson and Tony Romo

Bad celebrity karaoke with the likes of Spinal Tap.

New Rasmussen Poll

If this new poll is even close to reality, it's a major advance for Obama:

Clinton 43%, Obama 40%, Edwards 9%

How Arnold Won the West - USA

More Recall Election memorabilia. I'm going to get the DVD, because they show some of the alternative candidates....

Oz, The Great And Merciful, Speaks

Radio's ultimate snake-oil elitist drives into the ditch:

RUSH: In fact, it looks to me like Fred Barnes' candidate, Rudy Giuliani, has now dropped out. It looks like David Brooks' candidate, Mike Huckabee, has no traction -- he hasn't won anything since Iowa -- and he needs to get out. Tom Brokaw's candidate, Hillary Clinton, she's in deep trouble going into Super Tuesday. The race card didn't work. She needs the "firewall" of the Latino vote. But Tom Brokaw's candidate is floundering. Tim Russert's candidate, Barack Obama, seems to be doing better than expected. Good for you, Tim. I'm proud of you. Olbermann's candidate, Kucinich, is now gone. He's back in Ohio, trying to keep his seat against a primary challenger. Mort Kondracke's candidate, Ron Paul, gets weirder by the minute. (boos) Thank you. And I want to stress once again, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for your support, and I want to assure you that I cannot -- and I will not -- leave the Golden EIB Microphone. (applause) I will not retire. I will not concede. (cheers and applause) I will not drift away! I will not fade away, until every American agrees with me --

AUDIENCE: Rush! Rush! Rush! Rush!

RUSH: -- as I have always said.

AUDIENCE: (cheers and applause)

AUDIENCE: Rush! Rush! Rush! Rush!


RUSH: Thank you. Thank you. (wild cheering) Here is the bottom line, ladies and gentlemen. I think this is it. There was a lot of anxiety among a lot of conservatives about Senator McCain. It's simply indisputable. But there was no figure in our roster of candidates who rose up to challenge him or galvanize conservative support. All the candidates on our side, for various reasons, are uninspiring or worse -- and so, just as I predicted, the base has fractured. Some going here, some going there. Senator McCain's been able to cobble together enough votes to win in a few states. Fine. He deserves credit for that. But to pretend that Senator McCain is the choice of conservatives when exit poll data from every primary state show just the opposite... He is not the choice of conservatives, as opposed to the choice of the Republican establishment -- and that distinction is key. The Republican establishment, which has long sought to rid the party of conservative influence since Reagan, is feeling a victory today as well as our friends in the media. But both are just far-fetched and wrong. Thank you. Thank you very much for your steadfast support, and I trust it shall continue because I shall.

Surprisingly Liberal-John McCain

Well, if John Edwards is going to take his ball and go home, I'll have to have fun some other way....

Tropical Cyclone Gene

Available modeling suggests this storm won't approach Australia, but instead will slowly veer south, clipping the SE tip of New Caledonia in the process, and eventually clip the north shore of the North Island of New Zealand.