McDonald's - wid da Red Chinese

From Crain's, July 23:

Ads airing on Chinese TV depict Chinese athletes chowing down on Big Macs and the like, amid catchy music and the tag line, “I’m lovin’ it when China wins.”

In addition to the “Cheer for China” TV spot, the firm in April flew to Beijing the one and only Ronald McDonald, McDonald's Corp.'s “chief happiness officer,” as a press release puts it.

Mr. McDonald met with the five winners of a nationwide talent search “to find unique individuals to cheer for Chinese athletes during the Olympic Games period,” the press release says. More than 1 million people reportedly competed for the honor.

The release adds that Ronald McDonald and the five cheerers “danced steps in time with McDonald’s Shake Shake Fries rattles and special McDonald’s Cheering Cups to add to the excitement of the program. From today, McDonald’s is also extending the ‘I’m lovin’ China Win’ cheer and dance to employees at its restaurants as a customer greeting.”

can bear meat be made into fuel?

Judge orders U.S. government to decide polar bear listing

(AP) ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A federal judge has ordered the Interior Department to decide within 16 days whether polar bears should be listed as a threatened species because of global warming...

A decision to list polar bears due to global warming could trigger a recovery plan with consequences beyond Alaska. Opponents fear it would subject new power plants and other development projects to federal review (i.e., communism -- ed.) if they generate greenhouse gasses that add to warming in the Arctic (why do polar bears hate our freedom? -- ed.)...

In response to the petition filed in 2005, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed in December 2006 that polar bears be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of the loss of their primary habitat, Arctic sea ice.

Summer sea ice shrank last year to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles in September, nearly 40 percent less ice than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000. Some climate models have predicted the Arctic will be free of summer sea ice by 2030.

A U.S. Geological Survey study generated in response to the listing petition predicted that polar bears in Alaska could be wiped out by 2050...

Look, we all know there won't be any more polar bears in a few decades, so why should we sacrifice our economic growth to a doomed effort to save them?

who's hating America today?

The good comrades of Brattleboro and Marlboro, Vt.

Vt. towns put Bush, Cheney on arrest list

Anudder one of dese tings?

Yes, apparently:
2008 SelectSmart.com Presidential Candidate Selector

Your Results:
1. Theoretical Ideal Candidate (SMIFF!) (100%)
2. Dennis Kucinich (withdrawn) (88%) Information link
3. Barack Obama (85%) Information link
4. Alan Augustson (campaign suspended) (80%) Information link
5. Christopher Dodd (withdrawn) (78%) Information link
6. Joseph Biden (withdrawn) (77%) Information link
7. Hillary Clinton (75%) Information link
8. John Edwards (withdrawn) (72%) Information link
9. Wesley Clark (not running, endorsed Clinton) (71%) Information link
10. Michael Bloomberg (says he will not run) (71%) Information link
11. Al Gore (not announced) (68%) Information link
12. Mike Gravel (66%) Information link
13. Bill Richardson (withdrawn) (59%) Information link
14. Ron Paul (50%) Information link
15. Kent McManigal (campaign suspended) (44%) Information link
16. Elaine Brown (42%) Information link
17. Wayne Allyn Root (32%) Information link
18. Rudolph Giuliani (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (31%) Information link
19. John McCain (30%) Information link
20. Mike Huckabee (28%) Information link
21. Tommy Thompson (withdrawn, endorsed Giuliani) (27%) Information link
22. Alan Keyes (22%) Information link
23. Mitt Romney (withdrawn) (21%) Information link
24. Chuck Hagel (not running) (18%) Information link
25. Sam Brownback (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (16%) Information link
26. Newt Gingrich (says he will not run) (15%) Information link
27. Tom Tancredo (withdrawn, endorsed Romney) (14%) Information link
28. Fred Thompson (withdrawn) (12%) Information link
29. Duncan Hunter (withdrawn) (9%) Information link
30. Jim Gilmore (withdrawn) (8%) Information link
31. Stephen Colbert (campaign halted) (2%) Information link

Wow, Alan Keyes slightly better than Willard Mitt Romney.... and no Ralph Nader (thank God).

pinko commie girlyman calls for socialized medicine

Gov. stumps for health reform

Hoping to build public support for a health insurance reform package, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger visits a local Kaiser Permanente hospital to implore Californians to rally behind his efforts. He's joined by Democratic state House Speaker Fabian Nunez.

Can We Do This Just Because We Hate Him?

I can almost hear Bill O'Reilly or a minion yelling in 2011 now...

The Moscow Times
Monday, October 15, 2007. Issue 3764. Page 10.
A Lesson in Russian History for Clinton

By Alexei Bayer

The war in Afghanistan was not the main reason the Soviet Union collapsed. Nevertheless, it bankrupted the Soviet state and pointed out the moral blight, skewed priorities and irrelevance of the Communist gerontocracy.

The United States is a vibrant society with a diversified and resilient economy. But it currently stands on the brink of considerable social and economic upheaval, and the Iraq war reveals the fault lines within the world's only superpower. It is a nation living beyond its means by exploiting the status of the dollar as the global reserve currency. The war is costing some $3 billion per week -- all of it borrowed from more productive nations.

The United States is the leader of the free world, which the rest of the world refuses to follow. Even the pathetic "coalition of the willing," a bunch of mostly third-tier nations Washington assembled to back it in Iraq, has crumbled.

Iraq occupies a far more important place in the political debate in the United States than Afghanistan ever did in the Soviet Union. It is divisive, and frustrations on both sides have been exacerbated by the fact that no victory, however defined, can be achieved. Nor can U.S. forces leave without plunging a strategic, oil-rich region into chaos.

U.S. overconsumption and unilateralism predated President George W. Bush. But it was Bush who turned federal fiscal surpluses into deficits -- literally, with a stroke of a pen -- by granting his disastrous tax cuts. He plunged the United States into the irrelevant global war on terror, started the unnecessary and wasteful war in Iraq and created the moral climate in which Americans stand accused of torture, war crimes and atrocities.

Bush has been called the worst president in U.S. history. But now he has devised a clever plan to rescue his legacy. His troop surge in Iraq is designed to create a sense of stability and even progress. His economic policy, aided and abetted by the U.S. Federal Reserve, has been to stretch the liquidity bubble for another year or so. He could then credibly claim that he left office with Iraq on the mend and the economy booming and that his successors dropped the ball.

The next occupant of the White House will have to fight back in self-defense. He -- or most probably she (meaning Democrat Hillary Clinton, who is currently the most credible candidate) -- should study recent Russian history. Gorbachev withdrew troops from Afghanistan, but he never put those responsible for the war on trial. Boris Yeltsin ended communism and split the Soviet empire, but he avoided pushing for de-Stalinization. Even a symbolic condemnation of communism by Russian courts would have allowed the country to turn over a new page and rejoin the community of nations in much the same way West Germany did after World War II.

As a result, in post-Soviet Russia, Brezhnev's reputation is being revived, Stalin is widely venerated and former KGB officers rule the Kremlin. Gorbachev and Yeltsin, meanwhile, are reviled for "destroying a great country."

If Clinton doesn't want to share their fate -- which in the U.S. context would mean a failed one-term presidency -- she would need to start de-Bushification. Her first act in office should be to put Bush and his entourage on trial.

When I recently suggested this to an audience of New York lawyers, the room exploded with laughter. It would be unconstitutional, they said, and also so un-American, to be stuck in the past.

On the contrary, putting blame where it belongs would be a step toward the future. It would, first of all, extract the next president's reputation from the rubble of failed policies. More important, a guilty verdict passed on the Bush administration by an impartial and independent U.S. court might put an end to unilateralism and restore the United States' rightful place in the community of nations. Both would benefit.

Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.

Utter Madness

Selling an album without a record label? Having fans "name their price" to download it? Sheer Lunacy. This will never work...

Radiohead fans to pick album cost

uh, who isn't with the tarrists?

These nuns better watch it - Dick Cheney hasn't shot anyone in the face lately (that we know of).

Coalition of nuns calls for impeaching Bush and Cheney

A progressive group of U.S. nuns has called on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney because of their roles in the war in Iraq. “The National Coalition of American Nuns is impelled by conscience to call you to act promptly to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for ... high crimes and misdemeanors,” the group wrote in a letter written on behalf of its board members. The letter says that impeachment is warranted for their “deceiving the public under the false pretense that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction” and “destroying” the reputation of the United States and the good will of other nations. “The time for impeachment is now — before the example of George W. Bush’s regime is set in stone,” they wrote. “Future generations will thank you for preserving the freedom of our nation and its relation to the entire human community.” The coalition was founded in 1969 for individual nuns dedicated to issues of social justice and human rights. The letter was approved during a mid-August meeting of the board, held in Chicago. During that same meeting, the board unanimously adopted statements opposing all war and affirming peacemaking efforts. “Rather than continuing support of a just-war theory, a more compassionate church would oppose all war and teach peacemaking skills for all levels of government and interpersonal conflict resolution,” the statement reads. The board also adopted statements pledging to work to “moderate the impact we make on planet Earth,” and supporting nuclear disarmament and relief efforts for the poor in Africa.

Don't forget the REAL enemy

Travelocity Pays Fine for Bookings to Cuba
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 16, 2007

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 (AP) — In a first for an online travel company, Travelocity.com has been fined by federal regulators for booking trips between the United States and Cuba in violation of a 45-year-old embargo.

Travelocity.com paid $182,750 this month to settle a complaint brought by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury Department, which said the company had violated the prohibition nearly 1,500 times from January 1998 to April 2004.

“The trips to Cuba were unintentionally permitted to be booked by consumers online because of some technical failures several years ago, and it’s just now being finally settled” with that office, a Travelocity spokesman, Joel Frey, wrote in an e-mail message. “In no way did the company intend to allow bookings for trips to Cuba, and the company has fully cooperated with O.F.A.C. and implemented corrective measures.”

Travelocity, based in Southlake, Tex., is owned by the Sabre Holdings Corporation, which was taken private this year by affiliates of Silver Lake Partners and TPG.

Dream Ticket?

Well no, now that this guy's given the Republicans all the ammo they need...

Castro calls Clinton-Obama ticket 'invincible'
Castro wrote a Clinton-Obama ticket is "seemingly invincible".

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Add another name to the list of political observers who think a Clinton-Obama ticket would be unbeatable: Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In an editorial in Cuba's communist party newspaper, Granma, the ailing dictator said the pairing of the two White House hopefuls seemed "invincible," according to an English translation on the paper's Web site.

Castro, who has overseen communist rule of Cuba since 1959, did, however, make it clear that he is no fan of the two Democrats' support of democratic reform in Cuba.

"Both of them feel the sacred duty of demanding 'a democratic government in Cuba,'" Castro wrote. "They are not making politics: they are playing a game of cards on a Sunday afternoon."

The two Democratic candidates actually disagree over America's policy toward Cuba. Obama, a senator from Illinois, wants to grant Cuban-Americans "unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island." Such activities are strictly limited by current U.S. policy.

Meanwhile, Clinton, New York's junior senator, said through a spokesman that "we cannot talk about changes to U.S. policy" unless and until Castro passes from the scene and a new government demonstrates its intentions.

Castro also weighed in on the “will-he-or-won't-he” debate on former Vice President Al Gore’s potential candidacy.

"I don’t think he will do so," Castro said, but added that Gore, "better than anyone, he knows about the kind of catastrophe that awaits humanity if it continues along its current course."

Castro was not, however, entirely full of praise for the 2000 Democratic nominee, conceding, "When he was a candidate, he of course committed the error of yearning for 'a democratic Cuba.'"

Castro, 81, has not appeared in public in over a year. Intestinal problems forced him to hand over power on the island to his brother, Raul, in July, 2006.

– CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney

real patriots

donors to the Kucinich campaign...it's an eclectic group:

NEWSMEAT Hall of Fame Donors — 2008 Campaign
Larry Flynt Hustler publisher (world's creepiest person? after Cheney, of course)
Paul Haggis screenwriter, producer (made the widely overpraised Crash and wrote the widely overpraised Million Dollar Baby--like all Clint Eastwood films, except the one with the monkey)
Casey Kasem radio host ("Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars, comrade!" Also, an Arab, Catholic, VEGAN! Let's hope he's being secretly wiretapped...)
Alexandra Paul actress (a Baywatch babe; was also in docu Who Killed the Electric Car?, made by commies)
Mark Ruffalo actor (today's greatest actor? i tells ya, he should be Lou in The Sweet Lou Story: Mount Piniella Erupts)