bohnsack.com

What will Beef do, now that the new film by the Parker/Stone duo has outed them as right wing shills?

Good times? The best of times!

The (Bob and Doug McKenzie) Teresa Heinz Kerry Interview

A sequel to Strange Brew really must be made. I love those guys.

John Kerry in the second Presidential debate

"I have a plan to lower the cost of health care for you. I have a plan to cover all children. I have a plan to let you buy into the same health care senators and congressmen give themselves. I have a plan that's going to allow people 55 to 64 to buy into Medicare early. And I have a plan that will take the catastrophic cases out of the system, off your backs, pay for it out of a federal fund, which lowers the premiums for everybody in America, makes American business more competitive and makes health care more affordable."

How exactly does establishing a federal fund to fuel this program take the burden off our backs? Who pays for these federal funds? Isn't Senator Kerry's "federal fund" a burden bore by backs of US taxpayers by definition? I'd appreciate it if someone could explain how his plan "takes the catastrophic cases off our backs". It must be an amazing plan. Is there somewhere I can read about it?

John Edwards on MSNBC.s Hardball with Chris Matthews, October 13, 2003 (via LGF):

MATTHEWS: Were we right to go to this war alone, basically without the Europeans behind us? Was that something we had to do?

EDWARDS: I think that we were right to go. I think we were right to go to the United Nations. I think we couldn’t let those who could veto in the Security Council hold us hostage.

And I think Saddam Hussein, being gone is good. Good for the American people, good for the security of that region of the world, and good for the Iraqi people.

MATTHEWS: If you think the decision, which was made by the president, when basically he saw the French weren’t with us and the Germans and the Russians weren’t with us, was he right to say, “We’re going anyway”?

EDWARDS: I stand behind my support of that, yes.

MATTHEWS: You believe in that?

EDWARDS: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about-Since you did support the resolution and you did support that ultimate solution to go into combat and to take over that government and occupy that country. Do you think that you, as a United States Senator, got the straight story from the Bush administration on this war? On the need for the war? Did you get the straight story?

EDWARDS: Well, the first thing I should say is I take responsibility for my vote. Period. And I did what I did based upon a belief, Chris, that Saddam Hussein’s potential for getting nuclear capability was what created the threat. That was always the focus of my concern. Still is the focus of my concern.

So did I get misled? No. I didn’t get misled.

...

MATTHEWS: If you knew last October when you had to cast an aye or nay vote for this war, that we would be unable to find weapons of mass destruction after all these months there, would you still have supported the war?

EDWARDS: It wouldn’t change my views. I said before, I think that the threat here was a unique threat. It was Saddam Hussein, the potential for Saddam getting nuclear weapons, given his history and the fact that he started the war before.

I went to see this morning's Dawn Patrol and Mass Ascension at the 33rd Annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. It was damn early in the morning and a royal pain to weave my way between the dense throng of unwashed humanity, but because of the love I have for my loyal readership, my ass was out of bed at 4:30 AM to collect the material necessary to complete a nominal account of this yearly extravaganza.

There was a crazy number of "photographers" in attendance. Many were cute with their plastic-lensed instamatics, some were funny chasing the perfect shot with their freshly purchased digital marvels, and an alarming number looked plain ridiculous with giant, elaborate rigs:

Of course, before I could see people taking pictures well enough to take pictures of them, it was dark. In this dark, the sound of rushing propane accompanying the first burns signaled the start of morning's festivities:

And the balloons twinkled in the pre-dawn darkness and it was beautiful:

Finally, the sun came up and 700+ balloons took part in the Mass Ascension:

I was fascinated to learn that Shaolin monks have become ballooning and photography enthusiasts:

I was also happy to see ABQ's finest mounted officers on hand at Balloon Fiesta Park:

If you'd like to look at all of the photos I took during my one morning at this year's 10-day Balloon Fiesta, go here. Freaks may want to review all 400+ Balloon Fiesta pix I've taken over the course of the last three years (the largest free on-line high-res collection of Balloon Fiesta pix in the world?)

Mr. Anello seems to have taken a ton of Balloon photos this year.

Albuquerque area bloggers with pictures to show and/or things to say about this year's fiesta:

• America's Outback
• jfleck
• For the H*ll of It
• NewMexiken
• insidious_plots
• Quirky Burque

If I missed someone, please let me know about the omission, and I'll get you added to the list.

Today, there's news from the world's newest democracy:

An election official teaches women the voting procedures on a sample ballot as they prepare to cast their vote in a women's polling station in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

An Afghan election worker tries to hold back a crowd of women pushing towards the door of a polling center in Kabul, Afghanistan, as Afghans voted in the country's first-ever direct presidential election.

There's also some other news from a much older democracy:

Prime Minister John Howard has thanked the Australian people for his historic fourth federal election victory. Federal Labor leader Mark Latham conceded defeat after the Howard Government won an increased majority in the federal Parliament.

Sadly, there's also some outrageous news concerning our own democracy and media.

I saw something between a tie and a Bush victory tonight. Some will have a different view of the "score", but I doubt that anyone will deny that the dynamics of this debate where a lot different than the last one. i.e., Bush didn't get destroyed.

I look forward to compulsively checking http://www.electoral-vote.com/ all next week.

Favorite Bush mannerisms:

'member instead of remember
There's X things... instead of There are X things...

Stupidest Bush statement:

The Internets

Least favorite Kerry mannerism:

Pointing with his thumb

Kerry contradiction most likey to get heavy Republican-sponsored airtime:

Statement #1

KERRY: ... Well, let me tell you straight up: I've never changed my mind about Iraq. I do believe Saddam Hussein was a threat. I always believed he was a threat...

Statement #2 (ten minutes later)

KERRY: ... while the president has been preoccupied with Iraq, where there wasn't a threat ...

Bill Whittle's DETERRENCE, Part 1 and DETERRENCE, Part 2 (via LGF) are brilliant works.

It's my view that Mr. Vice President tore Senator Edwards a new one. Who knew that Cheney, in addition to being President Ford's chief of staff at age the 34, was also a union electrician, has been laid off, and has been in the hospital without health insurance? This man has mad experience across the board. I know you nutballs are going to be screaming about Halliburton. Scream all you want (and read this). Cheney was rock star tonight. Some think differently.

There was a tremendous hail storm in Albuquerque last night. It hit my home in the east foothills close to three in the morning. Clang, Clang on the skylights and a horrible banging on the tile parts of the roof. It was impressive. I was too lazy to get out of bed, but a colleague from work managed to take some photos, as the storm passed over his west side home near Petroglyph National Monument at around 1:00 AM:

Update Fri 10/8: Albuquerque had a hailstorm, but Socorro New Mexico got pummeled (courtesy of Charles Snider):

More photos of the Socorro carnage here and here.

I think this is the most important news of the year. More important than Rathergate, Jacketgate, the state of Islamofascism, or who wins November's election. Maybe more important that anything:

CNN's story
Slashdot's story

Future related events should be interesting and easy to attend.

The amazing debate spotter text analysis tool (via Metafilter). I recommend that my readers consider this query.

For your next debate party, I recommend Presidential Debate Bingo (via jwz) .

Good times!.

A Global Test

Tom Caudell from UNM

o Visualizing Parallel Programs and Information Visualization
Far and away the best speaker and possibly the post interesting talk of the week. It was quite a bit outside the scope of what I expected at a seminar like this, but a total winner in terms of the speaker and raw "coolness".

Ken Moreland from Sandia

o Large-Scale Visualization with Cluster Computer
Runner up for best speaker of the week. Excellent talk about the software architecture that enables parallel visualization on clusters

Milt Clauser from Sandia

o Terascale Visualization Clusters

Who knew the system architecture behind big machines drawing big pictures could be so interesting?