First Looks category archive

Give the Republican Party a 20, it will give you back five fours.

You dodge, weave, lie, and attack.

It’s a Republican thing. They got nuttin’.

. . . with less than a month to go and McCain losing ground in opinion polls nationally and in some of the critical battleground states in particular, the Republican has gone negative. During the week of Sept 28 through Oct. 4, “nearly 100 percent of the McCain campaign’s advertisements were negative,” the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin reports today. “During the same period, 34 percent of the Obama campaign’s ads were negative.”

And they are leaving the rest of us with the same:

One year to the day after climbing to its peak of 14,164.53, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 678.91 points, its third-largest point loss on record, to finish at 8,579.19, pushing the blue-chip index under the 9,000 level for the first time since August 2003.

The Dow’s close leaves it 5,585.34 points, or 39.4%, under its year-ago high.

The Republican Party, the party of fiscal responsibility.

Yeah.

Right.

The National Debt Clock near Times Square has just run out of spaces to add more zeroes to its running count of our national debt, thanks to the one-two punch of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and the $100 billion used to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before that.

Incompetent lying hypocritical bastards.

If my wording is too circumspect, please use the email link at the top of the page and I’ll tell you what I really think.

Right over there—->

And carry it proudly.

said the Firesign Theatre.

It’s also happening here in Philly.

Like here and here.

The Family Windows box died.

“Hard Drive not found.”

Made sure everything was plugged in tight inside the box.

It was.

I ran out to Second Source and got another one. After a week-and-half playing IT Tech to my webserver, I really didn’t feel like playing bench tech to what is almost certainly a failed hard drive.

When I get a little energy, I’ll remove the harddrive, jumper it to slave, slap it into another computer, and see if I can salvage anything. All my important data is backed up in two or three different places, but I can’t say that about all the computer users in the house. . . .

(I was going to link to an article about Candidate McCain, but the website appears to be down. Never fear, I’ll certainly be linking to it later).

I will be drinking liberally tomorrow at Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard Philadelphia, Pa., starting at 6 p. m.

The fireflies are out tonight.

What Brendan said.

I remember Steny Hoyer when he was a crusading young politician.

That was before he sold out.

Oh, it’s so much better over there:

A car bomb set to explode during the busiest time of day killed at least 51 people and wounded 75 Tuesday evening as shoppers were strolling through a Shiite neighborhood market in Baghdad. It was the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital in more than three months.

The blast struck a crowded bus terminal near a market in Huriya, a northwest Baghdad district that once had a large population of Sunnis but after the American-led invasion saw horrific ethnic cleansing by Shiite militias and death squads, who killed or drove thousands of Sunnis out.

Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, 6 p.

No one in this house is in the hospital or on restricted duty this week, so I might actually make it.

Check out this great picture over at Susie’s Place.

Glad I live on the East Coast.

You know, the one Bush chose not to finish:

Taleban militants have attacked a jail in the Afghan city of Kandahar and set hundreds of inmates free, reports say.

Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai and Kandahar provincial council president, told the BBC 1,000 inmates were in the jail and all escaped.

Of the inmates, about 350 were believed to be Taleban.

There have been a number of casualties among security forces. A lorry bomb blew open the main gates of the jail and about 40 Taleban stormed inside.

A state of emergency has been declared in Kandahar city.

Police and troops are on the streets and all residents have been ordered not to leave their homes.

True, he has had second thoughts about Hagee, at least in public.

Or was that about Heinekein?

Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, 6 p. m.

Somehow, I don’t think persons will be dining al fresco. In fact, I doubt Al will even show up. It’s too hot.

Millions for Halliburtion and Swampwater, but no cents for tributes. From ASZ:

From the Army Times:
The sound of a gun salute at funerals for Rhode Island veterans could soon be heard less frequently, due to a federal funding cut.

The Rhode Island National Guard has informed funeral directors that it can only supply firing squads for certain veterans, including those killed in action, Medal of Honor winners, general officers or those who served at least 20 years.

Local vets are livid over the new restrictions. But a National Guard spokesman blamed a cut in federal money for the military honors program — from $1.16 million to $775,000.

(ASZ Comments) Rhode Island state law requires a firing squad and a bugler for any honorably discharged vet, so long as the request has been made by the vet’s family. It looks like the Bush Administration has decided this isn’t a very good law.

Phillies 6, Braves 2.