Class Today at No Bull U on WEBY

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- No political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will be on air today, Friday, from 4:05 to 6 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line, courtesy of Cyber Smart Computers.

Tune in, call in, but only if you can handle the truth!

SNL Does It Again, on Thursday

Political satire goes where the press won't.

Bush endorses McCain, with Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond and Tina Fey as Bush, McCain, and Palin. SNL does it again, absolutely hilarious!!

Obama Won't Raise Taxes for Joe the So-Called Plumber, But Amy the Palin Hairdresser Better Watch Out

What is the average annual wage for a plumber? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean annual wage for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters in the United States in 2007 was $44,090. And for hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists it was $22,210.

But Amy the Palin Hairdresser was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone. That's equates to $592,800 annually. That's more than George W. (The Worst) Bush makes!! Of course, Amy hasn't screwed things up as much as Bush.

Ask the Parrot, Part Deux

You may remember that I blogged about PollyVote.com several weeks ago. I didn't realize that Alfred Cuzan, a professor of political science at the University of West Florida, helped develop the forecasting model and website.

Polly's latest prediction, Obama 53.0% vs. McCain 47.0%, with a forecast that Obama will win 354 Electoral Votes compared to McCain’s 183.

UPDATE: Professor Cuzan will be a guest on today's show at 5:05 PM on 1330 AM WEBY and on line.

Doomacrats And Republigrins

Who is happiest? Read Washington Post, A Happiness Gap: Doomacrats And Republigrins, to find out why "[s]elf-certainty is like a happy pill."

Is The Unholy Alliance Coming Apart

The modern Republi-con Party is nothing more than an unholy alliance between corporate interest and social conservatives, the former using the latter to gain power to promote corporate interest. You need look no further than the economic bailout.

So is the unholy alliance falling apart. Read Washington Post, Civil War on the Right, which says:

"For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war against "liberal elitists" and "leftist intellectuals." Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.

The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity -- and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces."

Is Palin Just Another Miss South Carolina

Remember Miss South Carolina Teen USA, whose mangled response to a pageant question about why Americans are so bad at geography became an internet hit, and made beauty queens everywhere proud.

Is Palin any smarter?

She appeared on Denver's KUSA-TV on Monday during a feature called "Question from the Third Grade." The subject of the vice president's duties came up when the interviewer asked, "Brandon Garcia wants to know, 'What does the vice president do?'"

Listen to Palin describe what she thinks are the duties of the president.

Keith Obermann concludes that after nearly three months and four attempts to explain the duties of the VP, Palin is not smarter than a third grader.

Maybe she should read the Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Section 3.

So after three months and four tries Palin still doesn't know what her duties will be. Which makes one wonder how McCain came to select Palin as his running mate. Perhaps it is to befuddle. Studies show that a pretty face can cause a man to 'discount the future.' So the question is, did John McCain pick Sarah Palin because he understood that principle, or was he a victim of "nature's power to befuddle."

We will know soon enough.

The Rats Are Abandoning Ship, Cont., Part II

The latest rat to jump from the sinking Republi-con ship, former Bush White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

Politically Speaking: Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road???

SARAH PALIN: I'll find ya a reason and bring it to ya.

BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change! The chicken wanted change!

JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?

JOE BIDEN: I'm tired of walking on egg shells because of this chicken.

COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE: I invented the chicken.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he is acting by not taking on his current problems before adding new problems.

OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Did he cross it with a hare? Did he cross it with a bear? Did he check if the road was hot? I kinda doubt it, I think not! Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed, I've not been told. Just one more thing I have to say, it's been bugging me to this very day. If the Chicken is a she, why do we keep saying HE?

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.

JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth? That's why they call it the other side. Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay, too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like the other side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.

GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

JOHN LENNON: Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.

BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2008. This new platform is much more stable and will never cras#@&&%%......reboot email to:cras#@&&%%...... reboot

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?

SARAH PALIN: Because it could see Russia from there.

McCain Throws Bush Under the Straight Talk Express

There they go again, blaming Bush.

"Spending, the conduct of the war in Iraq for years, growth in the size of government, larger than any time since the Great Society, laying a $10 trillion debt on future generations of America, owing $500 billion to China, obviously, failure to both enforce and modernize the [financial] regulatory agencies that were designed for the 1930s and certainly not for the 21st century, failure to address the issue of climate change seriously. Those are just some of them." he said with a laugh

Except this wasn't some liberal, it was Bush's Republi-con successor. McCain made the statement above in an interview with The Washington Times aboard his campaign plane en route from New Hampshire to Ohio.

Too late though to distance himself from Bush. The latest Quinnipiac poll found Bush's approval ratings at 27 in Florida, 22 in Ohio and 21 in Pennsylvania.

Besides, the selection of Palin hurts McCain more.

Greenspan Admits He Was Wrong

I've said and I'll say it again, the primary cause of the economic mess was regulatory and oversight failures. See Washington Post, Greenspan: 'Crisis Broader Than Anything I Could Have Imagined', in which Greenspan admits that the failure of the expected self-regulation represented "a flaw in the model" he used to analyze economics.

Translated from Greenspan-speak he said he now realizes that the fox shouldn't be left to guard the henhouse.

Thanks for the insight. Someone should revoke his government pension.

Bush or Palin, Who Hurts McCain More

Which hurts McCain more, his selection of Palin as his running mate, or Bush. According to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, it's not Bush.

Maybe the McCain campaign should ask for a refund of the $150,000 wardrobe.

Where's Bush

Where's George W. (The Worst) Bush been hiding? He did not attend the Republi-con National Convention, appearing only by video. And to date, he has not appeared in public at a campaign rally for any Republi-con candidate. Read CBS News, The Invisible Man Of Campaign '08.

An appropriate end to Bush's presidency, don't you think.

What’s the Difference Between Sarah Palin and a Pit Bull?

Lipstick and $150,000 worth of designer clothes.

Read Washington Post, Neimansgate, and see how hard it is to spend $150,000 on clothes.

The Mistake is Presuming that Republi-cons Have Decency

Maureen Dowd is not usually so serious. But today she wrote an op-ed worth repeating here in full, in which she admires Colin Powell for pushing back on ugly innuendo. Read New York Times, Moved by a Crescent:

"Colin Powell had been bugged by many things in his party’s campaign this fall: the insidious merging of rumors that Barack Obama was Muslim with intimations that he was a terrorist sympathizer; the assertion that Sarah Palin was ready to be president; the uniformed sheriff who introduced Governor Palin by sneering about Barack Hussein Obama; the scorn with which Republicans spit out the words "community organizer"; the Republicans’ argument that using taxes to "spread the wealth" was socialist when the purpose of taxes is to spread the wealth; Palin’s insidious notion that small towns in states that went for W. were "the real America."

But what sent him over the edge and made him realize he had to speak out was when he opened his New Yorker three weeks ago and saw a picture of a mother pressing her head against the gravestone of her son, a 20-year-old soldier who had been killed in Iraq. On the headstone were engraved his name, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, his awards — the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star — and a crescent and a star to denote his Islamic faith.

"I stared at it for an hour," he told me. "Who could debate that this kid lying in Arlington with Christian and Jewish and nondenominational buddies was not a fine American?"

Khan was an all-American kid. A 2005 graduate of Southern Regional High School in Manahawkin, N.J., he loved the Dallas Cowboys and playing video games with his 12-year-old stepsister, Aliya.

His obituary in The Star-Ledger of Newark said that he had sent his family back pictures of himself playing soccer with Iraqi children and hugging a smiling young Iraqi boy.

His father said Kareem had been eager to enlist since he was 14 and was outraged by the 9/11 attacks. "His Muslim faith did not make him not want to go," Feroze Khan, told The Gannett News Service after his son died. "He looked at it that he’s American and he has a job to do."

In a gratifying "have you no sense of decency, Sir and Madam?" moment, Colin Powell went on "Meet the Press" on Sunday and talked about Khan, and the unseemly ways John McCain and Palin have been polarizing the country to try to get elected. It was a tonic to hear someone push back so clearly on ugly innuendo.

Even the Obama campaign has shied away from Muslims. The candidate has gone to synagogues but no mosques, and the campaign was embarrassed when it turned out that two young women in headscarves had not been allowed to stand behind Obama during a speech in Detroit because aides did not want them in the TV shot.

The former secretary of state has dealt with prejudice in his life, in and out of the Army, and he is keenly aware of how many millions of Muslims around the world are being offended by the slimy tenor of the race against Obama.

He told Tom Brokaw that he was troubled by what other Republicans, not McCain, had said: " ‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?"

Powell got a note from Feroze Khan this week thanking him for telling the world that Muslim-Americans are as good as any others. But he also received more e-mails insisting that Obama is a Muslim and one calling him "unconstitutional and unbiblical" for daring to support a socialist. He got a mass e-mail from a man wanting to spread the word that Obama was reading a book about the end of America written by a fellow Muslim.

"Holy cow!" Powell thought. Upon checking Amazon.com, he saw that it was a reference to Fareed Zakaria, a Muslim who writes a Newsweek column and hosts a CNN foreign affairs show. His latest book is "The Post-American World."

Powell is dismissive of those, like Rush Limbaugh, who say he made his endorsement based on race. And he’s offended by those who suggest that his appearance Sunday was an expiation for Iraq, speaking up strongly now about what he thinks the world needs because he failed to do so then.

Even though he watched W. in 2000 make the argument that his lack of foreign policy experience would be offset by the fact that he was surrounded by pros — Powell himself was one of the regents brought in to guide the bumptious Texas dauphin — Powell makes that same argument now for Obama.

"Experience is helpful," he says, "but it is judgment that matters.""

Without fear, anger, and hatred, the Republi-cons would be lost.

Shop Baby Shop

First Palin charged the state of Alaska for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.

Then she billed the campaign for more than $150,000 in purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Macy’s, Barney’s New York and Atelier New York (a men’s clothing store) for her family's clothes.

And now it is revealed that the McCain campaign paid $13,200 for Palin's make-up. (And you thought she was just a natural hottie.)

So much for the no-frills hockey mom who sold the state plane and fired the official cook, celebrity has gone to her head.

Can't wait to see what she can do with $700 billion!

Economic Models Explained With Cows, 2008 Update

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbor.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows.
No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.

THE ANDERSEN MODEL
You have two cows.
You shred them.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

Whining Republi-cons

Have you ever heard such whining, it is incessant, the poor Republi-cons are 'victims' of bias in 'unreal' America. Charles Gibson, Katie Couric, Jim Lehrer, Gwen Ifill, Tom Brokaw, Bob Schieffer, Kathleen Parker, and Colin Powell (to name a few) are all bias. Who next, God.

I for one am tired of it. Republi-con should stand up and accept responsibility for what they have done to this country, starting with 9/11, Iraq, secret prisons and torture, Katrina, budget deficits, and now the economy. Instead it is ignore, manipulate, deny, conceal, hide, suppress, silence, undermine, distort, then lie.

Is that 'real' America?

Al-Qaeda Praises Bush and Supports McCain

Al-Qaeda praises the foreign and economic policies of George W. (The Worst) Bush and supports McCain as "the presidential candidate best suited to continue that trend." See Washington Post, On Al-Qaeda Web Sites, Joy Over U.S. Crisis, Support for McCain.

Who needs the communist middle class when you have corporate interest and Al-Qaeda on your side.

Republi-con America

John Stewart on the Republi-con's so-called Real America. Then visit Real America in Wasilla, and see real American stuff, including tattoos of your naked ex-wife and girlfriends, meth addiction, and a secessionist group. It will make ya proud to be a Real American.

Then after you are done, you can take a quiz to find out if you're a real American or a fake one.