deadissue.com

The war on under-age drinking is getting out of hand, now not only is is a crime to drink if you are under 21 some people would like to see drinking out of red cups that may contain alcohol turned into a crime.

Dustin Zebro, 18, said he staged the party after friends at D.C. Everest High School got suspended from sports because of pictures showing them drinking from red cups.

The root-beer kegger was “to kind of make fun of the school,” he said. “They assumed there was beer in the cups. We just wanted to have some root beer in red cups and just make it look like a party, but there actually wasn’t any alcohol.”

Of course the fact that they were drinking root-beer didn’t stop the police from searching the house and giving breath tests to 90 students. The best part is a police officer trying to justify his stupidity.

Nearly 90 breath tests were done, and officers even searched locked rooms for hiding teens.

“It was a tremendous waste of time and manpower, but we still had a job to do, and our officers did it,” Joling said. “If one kid had come there, even hadn’t drank there, but had come there and had been drinking and had left and crashed and burned, then what would the sentiment be? Why didn’t the police check everybody out?”

Why not just give everyone in the country a breath test everyday. I pobably should not joke about that, somewhere their is proably some anti-drinking zealot trying to require breathalyzers on all vehicles sold in the US.

The entire article can be seen here

The carpetbagger report sums up the coverage of Hillary Clinton

Sometimes, you can see a meme coming, but you don’t quite know what to do about it. The meme is big and bad, and likely to do some harm, but there’s no real defense to soften the blow. I’m referring, of course, to the notion that Hillary Clinton is a serial exaggerator. We haven’t heard much about this, but I have a strong hunch it’ll soon be unavoidable. Consider the headlines from just the past few days. There’s this AP item from this morning about Clinton exaggerating her work in bringing peace to Northern Ireland…

”It’s crazy for Hillary to say she played a role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland…. She seems to be confusing her record with her husband’s,” said Robin Wilson, founder of a Northern Ireland think tank, Democratic Dialogue…and this item published in The Hill this morning about Clinton exaggerating her role in passing the Family and Medical Leave Act…The former congressman who shepherded the Family and Medical Leave Act through Congress sought Thursday to debunk Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) claim to the legislation, saying she “never had anything to do with it.”

Former Rep. William Lacy Clay, Sr. (D-Mo.) is circulating an email disputing Clinton’s claim that the law is one of her more meaningful domestic accomplishments.

…and this item in Newsweek about the ‘96 Bosnia trip…

Is it possible that Hillary Clinton really thought she risked her life disembarking from a plane and running for cover “under sniper fire” at the heavily fortified U.S. Air Force base at Tuzla? Clinton has been telling the story of her visit to Bosnia in 1996 for many years, gradually adding embellishment and changing details. Perhaps she may have actually come to believe it.

…and this item from the Boston Globe about Clinton and S-CHIP.

Hillary Clinton, who has frequently described herself on the campaign trail as playing a pivotal role in forging a children’s health insurance plan, had little to do with crafting the landmark legislation or ushering it through Congress, according to several lawmakers, staffers, and healthcare advocates involved in the issue. There seems to be a common thread here. In case this wasn’t awkward enough, the AP’s Ron Fournier, one of the more widely read and respected members of the media establishment, wrote a column about this the other day with a very unfriendly lede. Why wasn’t the truth good enough for Hillary Rodham Clinton? That’s a question worth considering as the former first lady tries to contain damage to her credibility after getting caught exaggerating the danger of her 1996 trip to Bosnia. […]

To be sure, Clinton is not the first American to pad a resume. She’s not even the only candidate for president to do so…. What makes Clinton’s situation unique — and the Bosnia embellishments so damaging — is the fact that the New York senator has built her candidacy on the illusion of experience. Any attack on her credentials is a potential Achilles heel. Complicating matters, Clinton’s claims about her work in Rwanda and Kosovo have also been subject to criticisms regarding possible exaggerations. I’m certain I’m not the first person to have noticed these examples and tie them together. The question is whether any of this will matter.

Al Gore didn’t have a record of exaggerations, but the media skewered him anyway. Rudy Giuliani had an actual record of exaggerations, but the media never picked up on it. It’s hard to know what kind of treatment Clinton is in for, but given the fact that there’s a “D” after her name, we can probably guess. I’m just not sure what the defense is going to be. The evidence suggests Clinton really has stretched the truth in some of her claims about her experience. With one or two examples, it’s embarrassing. With five or six, it’s starts to look like the kind of issue that might undermine her credibility and look like a general-election hindrance.

Hillary Clinton never really had to campaign before she ran for president. Her Senate runs were mostly uncontested, a seasoned politician probably would not have made the same mistakes that Hillary Clinton made. I think many people assumed the Hillary had Bill’s political skills she obviously does not. Now that the race seems almost over I find myself feeling sorry for Hillary, she was in over her head and it showed in many ways. If she had been anyone else she would have been forced to drop out after Iowa, but because of who she is and what she has met to the Democratic party people continued to give her financial support and encouragement. It was inevitable that someone with as little experience as Hillary Has, would eventually make a big mistake.

It seems like many people in the Democratic party are trying to figure out a way to give her a graceful exit, I hope she takes them up on the offer. If Hillary stays in the race until August one can only guess how bad the meme will get.

I got this via TPM I wonder if the Bosnian sniper fire claim is leading to some of this, in the end I think Hillary’s sniper claim was a major mistake because it was easy to disprove and made her look like a lier; plus it was easy to report on. Worse if she really believed that she was under fire in Bosnia one had to question her sanity.

also senator Leahy seems to be offering Hillary and Olive branch if she quits soon.

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), an Obama supporter, was rather blunt on Vermont Public Radio this morning: “There is no way that Senator Clinton is going to win enough delegates to get the nomination. She ought to withdraw and she ought to be backing Senator Obama. Now, obviously that’s a decision that only she can make frankly I feel that she would have a tremendous career in the Senate.”

It seems like things are starting to happen because of her Bosnian “misstatement”, I think most politicians can see what the GOP would do with that during the general election and they realize that Hillary is unelectable. My guess is that in the next few weeks Hillary will drop out of the race, if she doesn’t the super delagates will start pledging in mass to support Obama and force her to drop out. At least that is my prediction, of course I also thought the Patriots would win the super bowl.

The problem with religion is that it allows people to spout nonsense and no one challenges them, out of respect for their beliefs.   This time it looks like respect for religion killed somebody.

Police are investigating an 11-year-old girl’s death from an undiagnosed, treatable form of diabetes after her parents chose to pray for her rather than take her to a doctor.

An autopsy showed Madeline Neumann died Sunday from diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition that left too little insulin in her body, Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said.

She had probably been ill for about a month, suffering symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness, the chief said Wednesday, noting that he expects to complete the investigation by Friday and forward the results to the district attorney.

the entire can be seen here

Karl Rove(no relation) has a some suggestions for Hillary Clinton on ways to smear Obama. Here is the deal, if Karl Rove thought it up, it is probably dishonest, sleazy and bad for the country.  I wonder how long it will be before the Clinton campaign takes Rove’s advice.   Hopefully Hillary has some standards left somewhere and will ignore Mr Rove, but I would not bet on it. 

Given some of Hillary Clintons’ recent comments, especially when she talked glowingly of McCain carrying her over the commander and chief threshold, I wondered if she was going to endorse her vodka drinking buddy, John  McCain, at least right now she is saying Democrats should unify behind the eventual nominee.  Hopefully she will continue to preach party unity when she is not the nominee

What a jackass:

A state appeals court upheld sanctions Tuesday against a pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills to a woman and wouldn’t transfer her prescription elsewhere

Later in the story they try to paint the moron pharmacist as a victim becuase he can’t get a job.

Noesen said the discipline “critically devastated” his business as a traveling pharmacist because some pharmacies refused to hire him and he lost his liability insurance, court records said.

If you are apposed to doing your job, which in the case of a pharmacist is to dispense medication, you should get into a new line of work. It is interesting that this mans “morals” enabled him to do less work, seems like he using his religion as a an excuse to be lazy.
see the entire article here

Some people do not seem to like the idea of the super delegates going along with the pledged delegates(after all the little people should not be allowed to decide elections)

Twenty top Hillary fundraisers and donors have sent a scathing private letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, chastising her for publicly saying that the super-delegates should support the winner of the pledged delegate count and demanding that she say that they should make an “independent” choice.

What kind of promises has Hillary Clinton made to these people that they are trying to blackmail the speaker of the house into helping Hillary get the nomination? Or, more to the point why are they trying to get cover so the super-delegates can overide the will of the a majority of people who voted in the primaries and caucus’s? Maybe they are hoping that for a “small” donation some of the super-delegates can be persuaded to vote for Hillary. Or maybe they figure just threatening to withhold funds in the future will be enough to get the super-delegates on their side.
This is politics at its worst, perhaps the most stunning thing about this letter is the sense of entitlement “we bought and paid for you, now you owe us” seems to be the tone of the letter. If tactics like this are allowed to succeed it proves all the things that people like Nader and all the cynics on the right have been saying, and will probably turn another generation off on politics and allow more self dealing people like Bush, McCain and Hillary to keep screwing the country for the benefit of a few rich donors.

The college student who got a stinging brushback from Chelsea Clinton when he asked about the Monica Lewinsky scandal said Wednesday he’s a Clinton supporter who was trying to get her to show ”what makes Hillary so strong.

see it here”

From 360 blogs

The Bosnian episode is a watershed event, because it indelibly brings to mind so many examples of this tendency– from the White House years and, worse, from Hillary Clinton’s take-no-prisoners presidential campaign. Her record as a public person is replete with “misstatements” and elisions and retracted and redacted and revoked assertions…

When the facts surrounding such characteristic episodes finally get sorted out — usually long after they have been challenged — the mysteries and contradictions are often dealt with by Hillary Clinton and her apparat in a blizzard of footnotes, addenda, revision, and disingenuous re-explanation: as occurred in regard to the draconian secrecy she imposed on her health-care task force (and its failed efforts in 1993-94); explanations of what could have been dutifully acknowledged, and deserved to be dismissed as a minor conflict of interest — once and for all — in Whitewater; or her recent Michigan-Florida migration from acceptance of the DNC’s refusal to recognize those states’ convention delegations (when it looked like she had the nomination sewn up) to her re-evaluation of the matter as a grave denial of basic human rights, after she fell impossibly behind in the delegate count.

The latest episode — the sniper fire she so vividly remembered and described in chilling detail to buttress her claims of foreign policy “experience” — like the peace she didn’t bring to Northern Ireland, recalls another famous instance of faulty recollection during a crucial period in her odyssey.

Hillary Clinton seems to have spent a good deal of time forgetting about her failures while claiming credit for things she did not do. Sort of like Bush claiming to be a successful businessman. Her public life seems to be one mistake after another, much like George Bush’s life before he became president and since his election as well. The nation does not need four more years of incompetence.

I got this from Atrios via Kevin Drum:

Remember back in junior high, when you had that friend that the bullies picked on all the time? And you defended that friend, who really never did all that much for you, which led to you getting your ass kicked a few times yourself? And then you got to high school and your friend joined up with the bullies? It’s kind of like that.

…just make it stop

.

One thing that seems to get missed in the health care debate, many countries spend less than the US on health care yet, they still have better or at least equal health outcomes.  Matthew Yglesisias points this out with regards to Mexico, where in fact Mexico is surprisingly close to the US in health outcomes despite being a fatter country than the US and being substantially poorer.

I wonder if the afternoon siesta in Mexico doesn’t compensate for the lack of health care spending and the poor diet.

I wonder if  This  will make into the mainstream news.  Hillary Claims to have faced sniper fire in Bosnia, yet their is no record of it anywhere.  A gaffe like this has the potential to sink her campaign, hopefully it will so that Obama can get to the important business of running against McCain.

Truckers are slowing down to conserve fuel usually once a or twice a week I wind up driving a couple of hundred miles on the highway. Lately I have noticed that it is not as stressfull. Maybe part of that comes from the fact that trucks are not going by at 90 miles per hour. Maybe I should thank Bush and Cheney for making our roads safer.

Bill Richardsonendorses Obama. Why is it that people who have worked with Hillary Clinton keep endorsing Obama? Maybe they know something.

I got this from TPM:

From the earlier post there seems to be some confusion. No one is saying that John McCain’s service as a Navy pilot shows or suggests that he lacks the grasp of strategy and national interest to be president. What I’m saying is that the available evidence, and there’s a lot of it, shows that McCain is unable to see beyond immediate tactical questions to any larger grasp of strategy. His myopia about the ‘surge’ is simply one example of that. I raise the issue of his Navy pilot service because McCain has based so much of his campaign on the premise that that service gives him a unique insight into foreign affairs. But the strategic sense he lacks is not one you’d get from that kind of service.

Meanwhile TPM Reader RW says that the real issue isn’t so much short-term tactics vs. broader strategy as the military vs. the political prism. But I actually think this a disservice to all the military men and women who’ve got no problem in this department. This is a stereotype people have about career military people that’s seldom been born out by my experience. This is something about McCain, his myopia. He can’t see the big picture or anything else that’s going on in the world except Iraq. And even there he doesn’t want to grapple with what the goal of the surge even was.

I don’t think it is so much the milatary exerience that makes McCain clueless as the fact that he has never worked or lived outside of the government. Even as a child his housing and medical care was furnished by the government. It is unlikely McCain can understand a world where most of your needs are not met by a government providor, as such it is unlikely that he can understand a life where one finds meaning by taking care of oneself or others. In the case of John McCain the only way life means something is if you sacrifice for you country because in the world he comes from almost everything else is taken care of by your country a world like that would be almost devoid of challenge or accomplishment unless you are at war.  The world John McCain knows is not the world most of us live in nor is it a world most of us would want to live in.   

I have been trying not to talk about Hillary Clinton other than documenting her crush on John McCain(The three way love affair between her McCain and Leiberman is the the stuff of nightmares) but this article that I found Via Matthew Yglesias seems to good to pass up.  Hillary claims to have helped pass the family leave act, although the legislation was written while she was a first lady in Arkanasas. 

…anyone familiar with the law should have already realized Hillary’s very limited involvement. The non-profit organization the National Partnership for Women and Families originally drafted the bill, which was then championed in the House by former Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder and in the Senate by Chris Dodd and Ted Kennedy. These three were at work trying to pass the FMLA from the late-1980s on, while the Clintons were in Arkansas and running a national campaign. So while Hillary did indeed have a history of involvement with work-family issues, she couldn’t have possibly been a big player in the original Beltway push to pass the FMLA.

In a general election McCain and the republicans would have a field day with this stuff, and unlike some of the stuff they said about Gore(he never claimed to have invented the internet) much of what they dig up on Hillary Clinton is true. She was a first lady. As such she did many first lady things but it does not seem like she had much to do with passing legislation. Very smart people are going to start looking at her calander and other documentation as to what she really did and it will probably not make her look like a commander and chief. By the time the right-wing is done with her it is going to look like all she did was bake cookies while her husband was off doing whatever with whomever.

Part of this is Clintons own doing, she does not seem to be very interested in policy or governing she mostly seems interested in getting elected, and even in that she seems to rely on her advisors way to much.  Hillary Clinton does seem to be like George Bush in that she is not engaged enough to understand when she is getting bad advice she seems to just do as she is told.  The country does not need four more years of George Bush, either in a panstsuit or with a bad white comb- ver.

It is hard to find anything positive from the Iraq war.  Yet John McCain wants to stay there for the next 100 years.  Why?  Other than creating terrorists and draining the US treasury what good is a US presence in Iraq. 

At this point I could see someone arguing that we broke it therefore we need to fix it, but that doesn’t seem to be what McCain wants.  He seems to want occupation for the sake of Occupation.  In fact some of his statements like the one mentioned below seem to imply that he does not even know who bank card credit providianinstant approval credit card,approval canada card credit instant,approval bad card credit credit instant onlinecheaper credit card ukdebt reduction solution credit card,card credit debt reduction solutioncapital one credit card applicationapply for student credit cardbest business credit cardorchard bank credit card servicesapplication card credit mbnacard credit debt free livingconsolidate credit card debt consolidateprovidian bank credit cardcard credit gas stationcitibank credit card online applicationsouthwest airline credit cardcard credit fleet online services,online credit card services,card chase credit online servicesaccount bank card credit no,account bank card credit credit no nobank card citi creditdiscover credit card account,discover credit card account logincard consolidation credit debt programcard consolidation credit freediscover secured credit carddiscover credit card payment center,card credit discover paymentcard credit number valid,valid credit card numberscash back visa credit card,cash back credit card,capital one cash back credit cardcard consolidate consolidate credit debtapplication bank business card credit na,business credit card applicationcard credit debt servicescard credit debt help onlinecard credit payment searscredit card debit processing merchant account,credit card merchant account,account account card credit merchantfirst premier credit card applicationcard credit debt negotiationno credit check credit card,canadian card check credit credit no,business card check credit noapplication aspen card creditzero apr credit card,zero percent apr credit cardapply credit card bad creditfree logo nokia phone ringtones,free nokia phone ringtones,free ringtones for sprint phone nokia 3588idownload free sprint ringtonesfree motorola real ringtonesbanana phone ringtones,free banana phone ringtonesmp3 cell phone ringtonesfunny chinese ringtones,funny info personal remember ringtones voice,funny ringtonesdownload free nokia ringtonescreator free ringtones softwarevirgin mobile real ringtones,real ringtones,cheap real ringtonesfree ringtones for nokia phonecingular free mp3 ringtonesfree mobile motorola ringtonesfree nokia mp3 ringtones is fighting whom in Iraq, and he doesn’t care.  All he seems to care about is that people are fighting and it is a chance to sacrifice for ones country, or in his case sacrifice his country. 

McCain seems like an old man who has watched too many war movies and wants desperately to be John Wayne, when is reality he is more like Colonel Nicholson

John McCain does not have what it takes to be president. Hillary Clinton’s praise of him is more proof of her bad judgement.

For the third time in two days, the Arizona Republican has pushed the definitively false statement that the terrorist group Al-Qaeda was getting assistance from Iran, even though he was publicly ridiculed for the same false assertion on Tuesday.

It is time for people to stop pretending that that McCain is qualified for anything but retirement.

If you listen to conservative talk radio all you hear are people yacking about Barack Obama’s minister and his “anti-american” statements. As near as I can tell the guy didn’t say anything that different from what Jerry Falwell said after 9/11, when Mr Falwell said that 9/11 was punishment for gays and abortion, or something to that effect. Therein lies the problem with taking religous people serious, the entire focus of most major religions is the next world, which ultimately has nothing to do with this world. Sure in theory if you are “good” in this world you can look forward to 70 virgins in the next, but ultimately following a certain religion is probably not going to make much difference to you in this world. In fact the obsession most religous people have with being a martyr probably drags the rest of us down.

Most of us are quite happy to enjoy to enjoy this life, and still can find meaning in this life without being a martyr. Religous people for whatever reason can only find meaning in their life by sacrificing themselves, and they don’t seem to understand that most of us would rather enjoy are current life. These ministers are always angling for that extra chit that will get them into heaven; I guess when they are at the pearly gate they want to be able to say “look Peter I really wanted to sleep with my best friends wife, but I didn’t, so can I get into heaven and get together with her now please”.

Any religous persons view of this world will be skewed, and it is probably not fair to hold anyone accountable for what their ministers say. Interestingly enough Obama seemed to have no problem distancing himself from comments that the reverend Wright has made. When are McCain and Clinton going to admit that their ministers are also like a “crazy uncle”. Maybe most of us can at some point make the admission.

This editorial encourages people to spy on their children
This part makes me wonder what is the real purpose of spying on your kids:

Parenting has never been for the faint of heart. One friend of mine, using spyware to monitor his college-bound, straight-A daughter, found out that not only was she using drugs but she was sleeping with her dealer. He wisely took a deep breath before confronting her. Then he decided to come clean, to let her know how he had found out, to speak with her about the dangers inherent in her behavior. He’d had these conversations before, of course, but this time he had context. She listened. There was no anger. Things seem better now.

Isn’t the whole point of keeping kids off drugs so that they will be straight “A” students and go on to college. “Things seem better now”? how could things be better ? she was a straight “A” student. Sounds like a controll freak parent congradulating himself on maintaining controll.