Wow. Why can’t the left let go of this myth. Charlie Rangle (D-NY) digs in further:
I want to make it abundantly clear: if there’s anyone who believes that these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment. If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.
A decent career like a professional football player?
The advertising agency that produced the Gears of War commercials certainly earned their money. The extended cut is superb. The song is Mad World originally by Tears for Fears and covered by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews for Donnie Darko.
Thanks to the Requiest for tracking down the info.
From the SciFi News:
Strike Entertainment and Universal Pictures will remake John Carpenter’s SF horror movie The Thing, with Battlestar Galactica executive producer Ronald D. Moore writing the script, Variety reported. The 1982 original dealt with a shapeshifting creature from outer space that terrorizes researchers at an Antarctic station. That film in turn was a remake of the 1951 classic SF movie The Thing From Another World, which was adapted from the 1938 short story “Who Goes There?” by legendary SF author John W. Campbell Jr.
So it is a re-make, of a re-make, of an adaption. And Hollywood wonders why people are less willing to pay the outrageous ticket prices to see movies…
But man can he take a beating…
Don’t trust robots. Our Roomba has a stair detector so that it shouldn’t drive off the stairs. It seemed to work fine the first time we tested it upstairs, but after work today I set it loose, and after cleaning most of the upstairs it drove off the edge of the stairs and came plunging down. Fortunately it is a tough little bot, after it hit bottom it started vacuuming the main floor — though the dirt container had come off.
Untrustworthy and hardy — not a good combination…
Looks like the Democrats are doing better than I had predicted. Congrats! Both parties are at 48 seats in the Senate (Including both Independents as Democrats), and there are three outstanding seat that are still a toss up. In the House, the Dems are up +20 or so right now. If they can get to +30 they’ll have a much more stable majority.
The Democrats didn’t do anything to deserve this victory, but the Republicans certainly deserve the loss.
Their are 14 “vulnerable” Senate seats that I’ll cover below. Removing those 14 seats leaves us with 47 Republicans, 38 Democrats, and 1 Independent. We’ll start with the seats with the most lean and finish with the toss-ups
- PA (R -> D): One of the Senate’s most annoying Republicans is finally going down to defeat. It has been clear for months that Rick Santorum was unlikely to return to the Senate. And while he’s narrowed things a bit he is still far behind. The US, the Senate, and the Republicans are better off without him.
- WA (D hold): Maria Cantwell will be returning to the Senate (unless King County loses all their ballots). I really don’t like her and will be voting against her primarily for spite rather than any interest in seeing Mike! win or the Republicans maintain their majority.
- MI (D hold): Debbie Stabenow also is way ahead and will be going back to the Senate. I don’t have much interest in the race…
- MN (D hold): This open seat could have been a Republican pickup if the season had been more favorable…DENIED!
- CT (D -> I): The completely retarded nutroots campaign to drive Joe Lieberman from office has backfired. Lieberman will coast to an easy win as an “Independent Democrat”. He will caucus with the Democrats so this isn’t a real loss but it just shows how completely ineffective the nutroots are.
- AZ (R hold): Jon Kyl will be back. This race is far closer than it should be — a testament to how badly the Republicans are doing.
- TN (R hold): The Corker(R)/Ford(D) race has been bouncing back and forth all year, but in the final weeks Corker seems to have built a solid lead. This is too bad because Ford really tries to be a balanced politician that can work across party lines.
- NJ (D hold): Another corrupt NJ politician seems to be on his way to victory. This is really a shame. We should be getting rid of corrupt Republican AND Democratic politicians.
- OH (R -> D): Speaking of corruption…the Ohio Republican implosion will take out Mike DeWine. Ohio Republicans have consistently broken their word and produced a corrupt and incompetent government and the people of Ohio are finally tired of it. Ohio Republicans are probably going to be brutalized tomorrow — and they absolutely deserve it.
- MT(R -> D): I suspect that Montana’s Conrad Burns will lose as well — or maybe I’m just being to hopeful. With the Abramoff scandal Burns had to return more than $150,000 in contributions, and he has been behind ever since. Burns has been closing recently with some brutal anti-tax commercials. Looking at the current polls on RCP, Tester has the advantage (though as usual I have no confidence in USA Today/Gallup or Zogby). If you only look at Rasmussen and Mason-Dixon it is a very close race. It could go either way, but I’m guessing that it won’t be enough.
- VA(R -> D): The Virginia Race has been a complete nightmare. Neither candidate deserves to be elected, after running races that had nothing to do with the issues of the day. Both candidates (and all of the press coverage) focused on trivialities. At least this campaign (no matter who wins) should squash any hope Allen has to be the Republican Candidate for President. Mason-Dixon and Rasmussen show the race to be dead even, but I’ll go with Webb.
- MO(R hold): This race has also been all over the place. Currently Rasmussen has Talent(R) up by one and Mason-Dixon the opposite. I suspect that Talent will pull it out. Just a hunch.
- RI (R hold): In the last couple weeks Linc Chafee (Mr. RINO) has come from very far behind to make this a horse race. He has lots of momentum, and he is well liked. Mason-Dixon has him up by one, so I think he’ll win.
- MD (D -> R): This is a total gut guess — none of the polls have him ahead — But I’m going to give this race to Steele (R). He has garnered some last minute endorsements from major local Black Democratic officials. I’m guessing that Steele is able to carry enough of the disaffected MD African-American community to win the election.
Honestly I don’t care too much which party has the majority, I’m rooting for a slim majority that results in gridlock.
A quick look at the RCP Battle for the House page shows that the Democrats are in what seems to be an excellent position. RCP considers only 6 seats currently held by Democrats to be potentially vulnerable — and only 2 of those are currently toss ups. On the other hand the Republicans have 48 potentially vulnerable seats, and only 21 are leaning Republican. I am going to rely solely on the RCP evaluation of the seats because I have neither the time nor inclination to research each seat. Combine the RCP evaluation of each race with my general impression of what will happen tomorrow night, and you get a Democratic Majority — but possibly an ungovernable one.
I suspect that the Democrats will sweep all of the “Leans Dem” seats, and the Republicans will get all (or almost all) of the “Leans Rep” seats — that leaves us with 213 Democrats, 205 Republicans, one Independent (that caucuses with the Dems). This puts the Dems (plus Ind) 4 seats short of a majority — with 16 toss-up seats. I’m just guessing (based of my impression of the election that they will split evenly: 8 Democrat, 8 Republican. This will give the Dems a 7 seat majority in the House.
A majority this small might end up being a pyhrric victory, for the Republicans had a hard time crontrolling the house with a 29 seat majority — and the Republicans are much more organized and ideologically coherent than the Democrats. It is even possible that with a majority of less than 10 seats that Nancy Pelosi might not be able to secure enough votes to become Speaker. The tiny majority would lead to one of two possible outcomes:
1) The moderates of both parties get together and forge a coalition and stuff gets done, or
2) (Far more likely,) The House degenerates and can not get anything done. The Democrats look just as incompetent as the Republicans, setting the 2008 election season with a very anti-Washington mood.
But, I’m getting a bit too speculative. We’ll find out tomorrow what the magnitude of the Democrats victory is.
The day before a major election is a good time for predictions. I’ll start posting some…
As Heather pointed out a couple days ago, John Kerry apologized for his botched joke and promptly disappeared. I’m not sure if the real John Kerry apologized or if a star chamber of Democratic candidates tried and convicted him of being a complete moron then hired some thugs to kidnap Kerry and lock him somewhere safe until the election is over. But no matter if the apology was from Kerry or a clone — it contained the words “sorry” and “stupid”, so since he isn’t on the ballot the issue is fortunately fading.
But of course the Seattle P-I can’t give up on the issue. They editorialize that not only was the corrected version of Kerry’s joke correct, but the original statement was correct too.
And wars, including this one, are often fought by those less privileged — albeit no less smart — than the sons and daughters of those who lead us into them.
Of course the PI doesn’t cite any statistics — because they are just repeating a standard myth that they don’t bother to try to verify. The Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank) has compiled the statistics. The poor are underrepresented in the military and the disparity is increasing. Oops. The Pi must be applying their mighty “post intelligence” to the matter.