Spin City in a New Location

Mike Basford's Spin City is now an Isthmus joint. You can read it and blogs from their other stable ponies at http://www.thedailypage.com/daily . Spin City archives can be browsed here - http://www.thedailypage.com/search/searchAuthor.php?authorID=508

Thanks for checking this out. Hope to see you at The Daily Page.

Quote of the Day

Mr. 30% in 1999 (Hat-tip to Think Progress):

I don’t think there is any plot; I hope there isn’t,” Bush said. “But it’s an amazing phenomenon, I’ll tell you that. It’s like the flap over the foreign-leader deal. A guy gets up and quizzes me — it’s my fault for trying to answer — but John McCain says something about the ‘ambassador to Czechoslovakia.’ Well, I know there is no Czechoslovakia (there’s a Czech Republic and a Slovakia), but yet it didn’t make the nightly national news. I’m not going to gripe about it, but the media question is starting to pop up.

This is pointed out in the same post about how the candidate who's touting the "foreign policy experience" keeps bringing up a country that no longer exists. That, and how you never see anything critical about what pops out of his mouth from the McCainstream Media. Plus ça change and all that...

Read the Rude Pundit Today

And, as I say, read it every day. Today's take (along with a bunch of NSFW rudeness) is on the New Yorker and all that idiocy. A little taste:

See, the Rude Pundit's problem with the whole Barack-as-Muslim and Michelle-as-Black-Panther plus burning flag and bin Laden's picture in the Oval Office isn't that it's particularly offensive. It's that it's just not very funny. It's not even enough to make you go, "Hmmm." You glance at it once and think, "Yeah, some people think that, don't they? That's a shame." And there the whole joke ends. There's no more levels to it. It's like an Upper East Side version of South Park, an elitist attempt at crude humor, like an ironic fart at a wine tasting.

I'm back in the saddle again

Out where a friend is a friend
Where the longhorn cattle feed
On the lowly gypsum weed
Back in the saddle again

Ridin' the range once more
Totin' my old .44
Where you sleep out every night
And the only law is right
Back in the saddle again

Whoopi-ty-aye-oh
Rockin' to and fro
Back in the saddle again
Whoopi-ty-aye-yay
I go my way
Back in the saddle again

I'm back in the saddle again
Out where a friend is a friend
Where the longhorn cattle feed
On the lowly gypsum weed
Back in the saddle again

Ridin' the range once more
Totin' my old .44
Where you sleep out every night
And the only law is right
Back in the saddle again

Whoopi-ty-aye-oh
Rockin' to and fro
Back in the saddle again
Whoopi-ty-aye-yay
I go my way
Back in the saddle again

By Gene Autry and Ray Whitley

"Kicking Ass"

Delusional Commander Guy in Australia:

...This was obviously apparent to Bush, who arrived in Australia in a chipper mood.

"We're kicking ass," he told Mark Vaile on the tarmac after the Deputy Prime Minister inquired politely of the President's stopover in Iraq en route to Sydney.

Boycott La Hacienda

Best Mexican food in Madison - Worst labor practices as well.

Read about it here. Hopefully, management pulls its collective head out of its ass soon.

Cat Blogging

Sage with Gisele's legs. Sunday Morning.

Lazier than the French

I'm counting down the seconds. In two weeks, Sarah and I will take our first vacation in two years - an eight-day road trip to Arkansas (Little Rock and the Ozarks) and Memphis. I am completely needing it. It was over a year ago that I started my little campaign project and the day after the election I was back to work. On top of it, I'm still recovering from being sick last month and working through it isn't working. I'm physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted and cannot wait anymore. Totally. Burned. Out.

It makes me wish I was the (p)Resident. From the Houston Chronicle :

Bush on track to become the vacation president

President Bush tries to set an example for Americans whenever he can, in terms of physical fitness, faith, optimism and a certain overall moral rectitude. He also sets an excellent example on taking vacation.

On Thursday, Bush left for a weekend in Kennebunkport, Maine, and his family's summer compound, Walker's Point. On Monday, he heads to his Crawford retreat, where he has spent all or part of 418 days of his presidency, according to Mark Knoller, a CBS News White House correspondent and meticulous record-keeper...

...

The presidential vacation-time record holder is the late Ronald Reagan, who tallied 436 days in his two terms. At 418 days, and with 17 months to go in his presidency, Bush is going to beat that easily.

Even so, this year's August vacation for Bush is a contrast to previous years such as 2005, when he dragged out vacation in Texas to five weeks. That was also the year Bush remained on vacation immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Vice President Dick Cheney generally takes August off, often heading to Wyoming or coastal Maryland. Congress left last weekend and is gone until Sept. 4. The Iraqi parliament is taking August off, too.

Still, all this governmental time off is more than most Americans are taking. A recent survey by Yahoo Hot Jobs found nearly half of American workers did not take all of their vacation days last year.

Bush, on his 10th visit to Kennebunkport as president (according to Knoller), is scheduled for lunch Saturday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Indeed, on the issue of vacation, at least, Bush is much like a pleasure-seeking Frenchman. According to Expedia.com, French workers get about 39 days off a year and generally take all but one.

Hopefully, this time as he's relaxing, I hope he finally pays attention if somebody slips a PDB with "Al Quaeda Determined to blah, blah, blah..."

Connecting the Dots - Utah Mine Disaster

I've been following news of the Crandall Canyon mine disaster and the efforts to recover the trapped miners. I've also noted how the mine has had safety citations over the years. From yesterday's The Plain Dealer:

Government mine inspectors have issued 325 citations against the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah since January 2004, according to an analysis of federal Mine Safety and Health Administration online records. Of those, 116 were what the government considered “significant and substantial,” meaning they are likely to cause injury. Overall, the federal government has ordered the mine owner to pay nearly $152,000 in penalties for its 325 violations with many citations having no fines calculated yet. Since January, the mine owner has paid $130,678 in fines, according to MSHA records.

In 2007, inspectors have issued 32 citations against the mine, 14 of them considered significant.

Last month, inspectors cited the mine for violating a rule requiring that at least two separate passageways be designated for escape in an emergency. It was the third time in less than two years that the mine had been cited for the same problem, according to MSHA records. In 2005, MSHA ordered the mine owners to pay $963 for not having escapeways and the 2006 fine for the same problem was just $60.

How does a mine get this many violations and still get to stay open? A search at Opensecrets.org provides a good guess.

That's over $100,000 in political donations since 2000 - almost all exclusively to federal Republican candidates from GWB on down.