A MUCKRAKER OTHER

WARNING: No minced words here. İ rake the muck of the 'other', the so-called open-minded side who's preference is to whine and distort reality. If still suckling mom's tit or warped by delusions of polıtıcally correct equality you WİLL be offended by such materıal. Welcome to Reality.





The hutzpah of McCain -Pt.9 (anti-science)

Below is a recent article by the ever seemingly soused Christopher Hitchens on the GOP's bold-faced contempt for science and reason. Enjoy!
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In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."

It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly. Scientists of various sorts continue to find it a very useful resource, since it can be easily and plentifully "cultured" in a laboratory, has a very short generation time, and displays a great variety of mutation. This makes it useful in studying disease, and since Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature "issue" of disability and special needs, she might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent. It's especially ridiculous and unfortunate that the governor chose to make such a fool of herself in Pittsburgh, a great city that remade itself after the decline of coal and steel into a center of high-tech medical research.

In this case, it could be argued, Palin was not just being a fool in her own right but was following a demagogic lead set by the man who appointed her as his running mate. Sen. John McCain has made repeated use of an anti-waste and anti-pork ad (several times repeated and elaborated in his increasingly witless speeches) in which the expenditure of $3 million to study the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana was derided as "unbelievable." As an excellent article in the Feb. 8, 2008, Scientific American pointed out, there is no way to enforce the Endangered Species Act without getting some sort of estimate of numbers, and the best way of tracking and tracing the elusive grizzly is by setting up barbed-wire hair-snagging stations that painlessly take samples from the bears as they lumber by and then running the DNA samples through a laboratory. The cost is almost trivial compared with the importance of understanding this species, and I dare say the project will yield results in the measurement of other animal populations as well, but all McCain could do was be flippant and say that he wondered whether it was a "paternity" or "criminal" issue that the Fish and Wildlife Service was investigating. (Perhaps those really are the only things that he associates in his mind with DNA.)

With Palin, however, the contempt for science may be something a little more sinister than the bluff, empty-headed plain-man's philistinism of McCain. [read more...]

Mexicans arrest ruthless drug leader

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Months ago I cautioned readers to avoid more than the water in Tijuana referring, namely, to the brutal gangland drug wars between the Arellano-Felix cartel and rival cartels.



On Sunday, October 26, the federal authorities and soldiers captured the Tijuana drug leader, Eduardo Arellano-Felix after a shoot-out. The drug leader and killer was flown to Mexico City. What's even more amazing about this bust is that it was actually accomplished by MEXICAN soldiers and federal police. Who knew?!




Shown at right is Eduardo's nephew, Luis Ramirez, who was also captured and, as is custom in Mexico, showcased to the media en route to incarceration.


Read all about the arrest here.

Lucky to be Obama -Pt.14 (Alaska approves)



As if being picked as a trophy running-mate or flumbing interview questions from Katy Couric weren't supercilious enough, Sarah Palin has to be smarting from the public diss of Alaska's LARGEST newspaper, The Anchorage Daily News, which "soberly" endorsed Mr Obama.

Booyah!

The newspaper described her and Mr McCain as too risky to lead the country:

Gov. Palin's nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency — but it does not overwhelm all other judgment. The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation.

Mrs Palin is a perfect example of the Peter Principle. She's apparently good in her present post but will be outside of her league outside of Alaska and is a disaster-in-waiting should the Republican ticket win the general election.

Lucky to be Obama -Pt.13 (Colin Powell)



In a move that is probably stunning to both black and white Americans, and democrats and republicans alike, Colin Powell has just publically endorsed the Democratic ticket over McCain-Palin for the White House race.

Once overhyped to become our first black president, a golden apple on which he characteristically and deftly passed, the shining black example of Repulican tolerance expressed during his "Meet the Press" interview dissatisfaction with the McCain camp and negative Sarah Palin in particular, saying she is not ready to be president if necessary.

General Powell's credentials are sterling and his words carry the weight of Greenspan's. Therefore when this career soldier, unassailable world diplomat, registered Republican, and cabinent member of Presidents Reagan's, Bush's and baby Bush's administrations it has got to smart when he explained



Old wrinkly white dude

Will somebody please put gramps back in his upstair room! ...or maybe he's just hunkering for change, too.

The hutzpah of McCain -Pt.8 (Plumber Joe)

Mr McCain, longtime U.S. senator, was so eager to play up to blue-collar voters last night that he trumped out average "Joe the Plumber" as American Everyman. Only problem is, Mr McCain don't know Joe.


First starters, the man's name isn't even Joe. It's Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. For another thing, this ambushed posterboy for Middle American average lacks a plumber's license...and registration. And, as regards the spark that lit this dud M-80, Mr Wurzelbacher's annual income falls so far under the radar of Mr Obama's tax hike on $250,000 that he shouldn't have thought up the question let alone asked it.

Jury slams O.J. Simpson

Mr Simpson was found guilty of his botched memorabilia take-back exactly thirteen years to the day of the famous murder trial. Damn! Talk about bad mother#%*! karma.
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