Just go read this

Atlas Juggs goes totally bat guano.

You can scroll and scroll and scroll. It's hilarious. EVERY single last Obama smear, all rolled up into one mega-post.

I think she's claiming that Malcolm X is really Obama's father, but the post is so turgid and verbose and ridiculous, I'm not sure. Jomo Kenyatta? How, in the name of God, did she work Jomo Kenyatta into this?

They gotta retire the Golden Wingnut award after this one.

Plumbin' Joe has left and gone away

Where have you gone, Joe Wurzelbacher,
John McCain turns his lonely eyes to you.
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson.
Plumbing Joe has left and gone away,
Hey hey hey.

per NY Times:

DEFIANCE, Ohio — Where was Joe?

Here in Defiance — a town that sums up the mood of Senator John McCain right now – the Republican nominee gave a shoutout this morning to America’s most famous plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher, who was, or so the candidate thought, in the audience.

“Joe’s with us today!’’ Mr. McCain hollered at a cold outdoor rally at Defiance Junior High School. “Joe, where are you? Where is Joe? Is Joe here with us today?’’

Nothing.

Maybe just a scheduling foul-up, but a funny one.

Fruit Fly Research

In the comments, there's been some discussion of Sarah's Palin's ignorant dissing of "fruit fly research," which she apparently does not know has been a mainstay of genetic research for decades, including work on autism. PZMyers has the background and, of course, his trademark denunciation.

I'll go a step further, further than Myers and other commentary I've read.

Palin's dissing of "fruit fly" research was a deliberate dogwhistle to the creationists. Anyone who's ever gotten into any kind of evo-creo debate has encountered the following: "So the evilutionists claim to have seen new species of fruit flies evolve? Big deal. They're still just fruit flies." It's like a reference to the Dred Scott decision, vis a vis the abortion debate. Fruit flies are one of the creationists favorite "nyuk nyuk nyuk ... you got nothing, ya egghead evilutionist" tag lines.

As for "Paris," that's just a little more Axis of Weasel icing on the creationist cake.

Palin in 2012?

Marc Ambinder seems to me to be on target with his observations.

And if she wants the job, she's easily the frontrunner to become THE voice of the angry Right in the Wilderness. She is a favorite of talk radio and Fox News conservatives, and speaks their language as only a true member of the club can. (Her recent Limbaugh interview was full of dog whistles that any Dittohead would recognize. Including her actual use of the word ditto.)

Palin will have plenty of time to become fluent on national issues. She will easily benefit from the low expectations threshhold, and will probably even garner positive reviews from the MSM types who disparage her today.

Palin will be judged to be "ready" in four years. George Will and David Brooks and Peggy Noonan will all swoon over her once more. Ok, maybe not George Will.

Yikes. President Palin? Thanks a lot, John!

$150 million in September

average donation: eighty-six dollars.

contributions coming in from the anti-American parts of America, the unreal parts of Virginia, and the just plain wrong parts of towns, counties, and states everywhere.

I am sad tonight

Since I, apparently, live in an anti-America part of America.

I feel like an eskimo who hates snow.

Obama's ceiling?

Today the RCP average of polls shows +6.8% for Obama, and has been over 7% for several days, even at 8.2% a few days ago. The polls included in their current sample range from Obama +2% to +14%. Obama is at 49.5% and McCain at 42.7%.

I wonder if Obama may have hit a ceiling, at least in polling numbers. It's a cliche that we have a polarized electorate. So, how low can a generic Republican, or a reasonably competent Republican candidate, get? 40%? Maybe. I'd argue a little higher. Recall that 40% is a McGovern or Goldwater level. Let's say 42% as a GOP minimum (or a Dem minimum for that matter). Right now undecideds are at 7.8%. How much will that number decrease, in the polling before election day? I don't think all that much. Obviously the undecided and 'other candidate number will be about 1, maybe 2, percent when the ballots are cast. But, in the polling, I bet it won't go much below 6 or 7 percent. Let's say 6.5%.

So, if we accept these numbers, McCain might be expected to keep polling at 42% and the undecideds at 6.5%, leaving Obama with a "ceiling" of 51.5%. (I'm not positing anything negative about Obama, nor any Bradley effect, or anything other than a polarized electorate and a reasonably competent GOP candidate).

If Obama stays around 50-51% for the next 18 days, with a lead of 6-8%, I predict we will see news stories asking "What is wrong with Obama? Why can't he break ahead of the (approximately) fifty percent mark? Why can't he seal the deal? We saw this in the primaries against Hillary Clinton? Blah blah blah."

One final note: In our system, an 8% popular vote lead can be expected to lead to an electoral landslide. See elections of 1988 and 1996. On theother hand a 2% popular vote lead can result in a very tight "one swing state could have made the difference" result. And since polling is an inexct science, 2% versus 8% leads can be hard to tell apart.

The Line from Talk Radio

I've been driving in my car a lot recently and have been tuning in to Limbaugh and Hannity, just for a laugh:

A week ago: "The polls are tightening."

Three days ago: "Don't believe the polls."

Today: "It is safe to say that the Obama campaign is cheating."

Also on Monday, Limabaugh went on an extended tear about Obama's tax plans and small business, and how 95% could not possibly make less than $250,000. He ran through many SBA numbers, characterizing firms in various industries as small businesses, based on their gross receipts. "Fisheries, less than $700,000 - small business." He hammered away at this for an hour or more.

I'm laughing away at this, recalling the old rule of thumb that for every $100 a business takes in, it incurs $60 of labor expenses and $30 of materials, etc., leaving $10 of taxable income. D'oh.

Finally, "El Rushbo" noted that some emails had come in, raising this point. And he tried to put it back on Obama. "Is it net or gross. I don't know. He has to tell us. Do you think any of the drive-by media will ask him? etc. etc." I wonder what the reaction would be if a reporter asked, "Sen. Obama, when you say that you will not raise income taxes on any small business with an income under $250,000, do you mean income or gross receipts?"

Limbaugh persisted in his delusion, insisting that since "we all know Obama is lying anyway, this difference is minutia that doesn't matter anyway."

"Minutia" --- the difference between gross receipts and taxable income. Hey, it's only a factor of ten, one measly order of magnitude, right?

Summing up K Lo

I Just Don't Get

[Kathryn Jean Lopez]

any of the insta polls, which seem to give it to Obama.

Who ya' gonna believe, K Lo? The facts or your own dying lies?

If John McCain threw a temper tantrum, called Obama an "uppity darkie," mooned the audience, threw his pen at Bob Schieffer, and stormed off the stage in a huff, I suppose K Lo would swoon over "McCain's authentic style, showing himself to be the man that America wants and needs right now."

Troopergate report: Palin abused power

from those Commies at the Anchorage Daily News and the Republican majority (14 - 6) on the Alaska Legislative Council:

An investigation has concluded that Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, according to a report just now unanimously released by the legislative council.

The report by investigator Steve Branchflower found that Palin violated the state's executive branch ethics act, which says that "each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."

Branchflower was investigating whether Palin abused her power by pushing for the firing of state trooper Mike Wooten, who once was married to the governor's sister.

The full report is here.

The Rage of the Winguts

What do you know? If you're behind in the polls in an election, and you start calling your opponents terrorists and hooligans, your supporters pick up on it. D'oh.

from CNN:

With recent polls showing Sen. Barack Obama's lead increasing nationwide and in several GOP-leaning states, some Republicans attending McCain-Palin campaign rallies have taken on a new emotion: Rage.

An angry supporter confronts Sen. John McCain at a rally in Wisconsin on Thursday.

"When you have an Obama, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run this country, we have got to have our head examined. It's time that you two are representing us, and we are mad. So, go get them," one man told Sen. John McCain at a town hall meeting in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

It's almost a cry for help, with the GOP party faithful amazed McCain could possibly be losing.

"And we're all wondering why that Obama is where he's at, how he got here. I mean, everybody in this room is stunned that we're in this position," another man said at a rally.

"I'm mad. I'm really mad. And what's going to surprise you, it's not the economy. It's the socialists taking over our country," another man said.

"My Fellow Prisoners?"

WTF? "My fellow prisoners?" What on earth is McCain talking about?

Silvermine - Tiorati Loop Hike, Harriman State Park

From Silvermine - Tiorati Loop Hike, Harriman State Park

I took this hike today, a 9.4 mile loop, and posted the pictures on this Picasa album.

This is mostly a political blog, and while some variety is good, that last hike post ran on forever.

I'm really enjoying the different habitats. In general, the high country of Harriman S.P. is an "Oak-Hickory forest." But, in different areas, different trees (or mix of trees dominate). The Red Oak is the most common tree overall. On the tops of the hills and ridges, Chestnut Oaks tend to dominate. The understory plants are: lowbush blueberry, Mountain Laurel (more on northern slopes), grasses, and sweetfern. Other trees, roughly in order of abundance: White Oak, Sugar Maple, Red Maple, Black Birch, Pignut Hickory (5 leaflets), Mockernut Hickory (7 leaflets), White Pine, Beech, Hop Hornbeam, Pitch Pine, Hemlock, etc. This is by no means comprehensive, but just the most abundant, readily identifiable trees that I've been able to pick out.

The most interesting aspect is observing how certain habitats favor certain mixes. In one northern slope of Goshen Mtn, the only trees I could see were Red Oaks, while Mtn. Laurel was 80% of the understory, with 20% blueberry. After not too much looking, I spotted some maples among all the Red Oaks.

In another area, I dubbed it the "North American Flag" habitat: Red Oaks, White Oaks, Blueberry bushes, and Sugar Maples (the Canadian flag).

Beech trees tend to grow in groves, at lower elevations, well-watered, but rocky (well-drained) soils; typically on northern slopes, but I've never seen Mtn. Laurel anywhere near Beech trees. They are only higher up, it seems, or perhaps it is a question of soil acidity, maybe one prefers acidic, the other alkali soils.

A bald eagle was over Lake Nawahunta and some Ravens near Silvermine Lake.

Looks Like I'm Voting for the Terrorist

The reality is that a member of McCain's audience went there today. You can hear it clearly on this video clip taken from MSNBC-- after McCain asks "Who is the real Barack Obama?" the first, loudest voice can be heard answering "Terrorist!"

From Marc Ambinder, who also has the video.

As for McCain being "in no way responsible for the utterances of anybody in his audience," ... that's a pretty weak statement.

McCain is both desperate and despicable, and getting more so with every new poll.

Ezra Klein sums up McCain's predicament pretty well.

Iron Mine Hike, Harriman State Park.

This hike is #20 in the book "50 Hikes in the Lower Hudson Valley." I followed the eight-mile route exactly, and it took me five hours of walking time, just as the book estimated.

Trailhead is at Lake Skannatati on Seven Lakes Drive, I stepped off at 9:15 this morning. No dramatic 800-foot ascents in this hike, but lots of up and downs throughout. I think Dick would find it "vigorous" enough.
Here I am at "Times Square," where the Long Path (LP), the Ramapo-Dunderberg (RD), and Arden-Surebridge (ASB) trails meet, about one hour into the hike.


On the RD, along the top of Hogencamp Mountain. It's a very open, rugged, windswept area, lots of exposed white granite-gneiss bedrock.
The same area, on the Lichen Trail. The visible grain of the white gneiss was quite impressive.


A narrow defile on the AT, called the Lemon Squeezer.

The jackpot! All the bedrock in Harriman is metamorphic granitic gneiss, all about the same age (PreCambrian, ~ 1 billion years old). Of course, as we know, glaciers deposited other kinds of rocks all over the place, "erratics" as large glacial boulders are called. About 30 miles north of Harriman is Schunemunk Mountain, which is a much later (Devonian, ~ 400 million years old) sedimentary conglomerate, "puddingstone," distinctive because of its reddish matrix with large pebbles. I've been on the lookout for Schunemunk puddingstone erratics since I've been hiking in Harriman. Bingo! There it is.

The Greenwood Mine, one of the many long-abandoned 18th & 19th Century mines in Harriman State Park. Two hundred years ago, the area was filled with working iron mines and furnaces. Smoking, stinking, stripped bare of firewood, muddy, and piles of tailings all over, it must have looked something like Mordor in Lord of the Rings.

The picture at the top of the post was taken at the end of the hike, a view of Lakes Skannatati and Kanawauke, from Pine Swamp Mtn.

To go hiking throught the trails, hills, mountains, forests, and lakes of Harriman is an experience of mind-boggling beauty.

Daisy Mae

sure does like herself some maverick. You're darn tootin' she does.

The Financial Crisis

is a concern that credit markets will tighten up, i.e that banks, their balance full of lousy mortgages, will not be able to make other loans. For example, short term lines of credit to businesses to meet their payrolls, as a scary example. Once such a trend starts, it could accelerate, spiraling downward. That's called The Great Depression, not a recession.

The crisis is not about the Dow Jones average, or the stock market in general. Sure, the stock market reflects the above concerns, along with a lot of other factors, and then wildly exaggerates them on a daily basis. So the stock market is a reflection of the crisis, not the crisis itself, and it's a distorted funhouse mirror, not an accurate, highly-correlated reflection.

So, if the market falls to collapse today or tomorrow, or next week, that doesn't really mean anything.

Full disclosure: I am way over my head on this whole situation, but I have read enough to understand this basic point, or at least to understand what apparently responsible, informed adults have told me. That is, the current crisis may or may not be as bad as Paulson's worst nightmare, but, in any event, it is not, directly, a stock market crisis.

Bull Hill Hike

This is a popular loop hike in the East Hudson Highlands. Our route yesterday took us up/north the Washburn Trail to the summit of Bull Hill (2.3 miles), then down/west on the Notch Trail (1.0 miles), south on the Brook Trail (0.4 miles), and southeast back to the trailhead along the Cornish Trail (1.0 miles). My son Nate and I covered the whole 4.7 miles of this loop in 4 and 1/4 hours, including over half an hour of stops/detours.

From the trailhead parking lot on Rte 9D, opposite Little Stony Point, just north of Cold Spring, we headed up the white (Washburn trail). It was gradual to moderate at first, through ordinary weedy, typical Northeastern woods.

Reaching the old quarry offered us our first impressive views, the flat floor looking like an African savannah, grassy with occasional small sumac trees.

The quarried cliffs, while man-made, were quite spectacular. We detoured off the white trail into the bowl of the quarry and reached a large gravel heap north of our entry point. The gravel heap was dry and flat and seemed like it could be a comfortable place to camp. (Note: there is no approved overnight camping anywhere on this hike, nor to my knowledge, in any of the East Hudson Highlands.)

Nate scrambled 40-50 feet up the quarry face and asserted that he could make it to the top, "with no problem."

After this 15-20 minute detour, we returned to the white trail that snaked up the rim of the quarry, and soon, off to the right offered dramatic views of the village of Cold Spring and the Hudson River. We felt like we could reach out and move the little houses and cars as if they were Legos. I guess the elevation at this first viewpoint was 300-400 feet.

From here the forest gradually turned into the characteristic mix of the high ground in the Hudson Highlands. Widely spaced chestnut oaks and red oaks with blueberry bushes in the understory dominate, while sugar maples and mountain laurel are also common. It's a very open feeling, quite attractive and pleasant to walk through. This habitat occurs, not because of the absolute elevation, but in areas that are locally high, somewhat windswept in winter, and with well-drained, drier, rocky soils.

As we ascended some fairly steep sections, once or twice I had to use my hands; otherwise a steep, but wholly walkable, trail.

We stopped at another viewpoint higher on the left; took a few photos of us and Storm King just across the Hudson.

It's pointless to describe the views of all the view points on the hike. But, from various places, one can see (proceeding counter-clockwise) NE to South Beacon Mtn, North beyond Breakneck Ridge to the Newburgh Bridge, NW across the Hudson, West to Storm King, West Point, and other mountains, SW across the Hudson River, South - from the village of Cold Spring to Manhattan, and SE across the green hills of Putnam and Westchester counties.

At 1100 feet elevation, the yellow (Undercliff) trail crossed our path. We did not take it, but noted it as a marker. At this junction, we have gained most of the elevation.

After some more relatively steep sections, the trail leveled out, and we could tell we were on top of the ridge (1400 feet). Periodically one could spot viewpoints, both north and south. From one of the north-looking points, we could see all the way to the fire tower on South Beacon Mountain, the one that my 78 year-old neighbor, Dick Warren, climbed up a couple weeks ago. Nate was duly impressed. A little farther on, at a south-facing viewpoint, we settled onto a comfy outcrop and ate lunch. Our 2-liter Camelbaks served us well throughout the hike.

From here on, it was an easy downhill hike, all the way. The white (Washburn) trail led north from the summit, at first following a woods road, but then splitting off to the right as the woods road made larger switchbacks. That is, the white trail cut a straighter path downhill, cutting across the winding woods road a few times.

After some steep downhill going, the Washburn trail ended. To the left was the blue-blazed Notch Trail (our route), while the white-blazed Nelsonville Trails went off to the right. This junction was clearly marked.

The blue trail continued downhill (north) through a thicker forest. It turned left and follows a stream, and entered an area that formerly had been cleared for farms or pastures. Stone walls were everywhere, in places running parallel to each other, where a road must have been. The stream ran in a sharp, straight ravine, frequently lined by stone walls. I suppose it runs in its natural bed, but wonder if the farmers roads and walls might have straightened and deepened the original stream.

The next landmark was a stone foundation of an old house next to the stream.

A few yards away was an ancient sugar maple, still alive, but hollowed out and open on one side. I guessed it was 200 years old, and we both posed inside the hollow. Also picked up a black-and-white feather, which had to be a wing feather of a Pileated Woodpecker, one of whom we heard distincitvely 'laughing' in this same area.

The ground levelled off greatly from on home, and we picked up our pace accordingly. At the junction of the red (Brook) trail, a large building, the remains of a dairy farm, stood mutely. Another hiker took our picture in front of the concrete ruins. Apparently other out-buildings lie up (north) the red trail. We headed homeward (south) and noted other evidence: a squat concrete blockhouse next to the creek (good camping in winter?) and a deep cistern farther on.

The yellow (Undercliff) trail intersected our route again, leading invitingly west, uphill to Breakneck Ridge. Nate had "things to do at home," so we kept moving.

After 0.4 miles, we forked left onto the blue (Cornish) trail, named for a wealthy lead-company magnate, whose estate lies in ruins near this trail. We did not investigate these closely, but as we walked along a concrete-paved roadbed, we marvelled at the very tall and very straight tulip trees. They looked like gigantic, natural telephone poles. Really impressive. I guess that Mr. Cornish had them planted along his private road.

The blue trail went along this concrete road almost back to Route 9D, darting into some scrubby woods for the last stretch.

We arrived at the parking lot at 12:55 - 4 hours 15 minutes after we started. Me? I was ready to go up Breakneck Ridge, but we decided to save that for another time.

How hard is it?

To name a friggin newspaper?

 

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news. 

 

"Well Over"

Okay, okay. I see that Halperin has changed his headline.

 

My previous post is inoperative.

 

BTW, I can't read comments or add my own comments to the new TPD from work. But I can email new posts.

Your leftwing MSM

Obama "edges out" McCain in battleground states,

is what Mark Halperin of TIME magazine says about some new Quinnipiac poll numbers.

Make a guess about a polling advantage, that in your mind, could be characterized as "edging out."

Then click the link.