Happy Labor Day to all working (and retired) Americans!

Have a wonderful and safe Holiday weekend with family and friends.......you deserve it.  See you later.

If only......Superman was for real..........see 'ya later Vlad!

OK, I know...he's not, but its Friday, and I'm looking for interesting things to laugh about.  Bet you don't know the real story about the creation of Superman.

On the night of June 2, 1932, the world's first superhero was born — not on the mythical planet of Krypton but from a little-known tragedy on the streets of Cleveland........

Here's the rest of the story.....

Mythbusters paint the Mona Lisa (in 80 milliseconds!)

 
August 28, 2008: Barack Obama: He Completes Us
 

First McCain - Palin Commercial!

First McCain - Palin Commercial!

Watch it here - now.....

"He should be picking stocks!"

Who knew that John McCain read Hentoff?

Back on May 21st, Nat wrote a recommendation that McCain choose Gov. Palin.  Here's a great perspective on her, and her courageous decision to go through with the birth of her son, despite knowing that he would probably have Downs Syndrome. 

.....Last December, the mother of four children, Palin, four months pregnant, found she was going to have a child with Down syndrome, a condition characterized by moderate-to-severe mental retardation. A school friend of one of my sons had Down syndrome, and I have known functioning adults with the extra chromosomes of that syndrome.



However, as a longtime reporter on disability rights, I have discovered that many fetuses so diagnosed have been aborted by parents who have been advised by their doctors to end the pregnancies because of the future "imperfect quality of life" of such children.


Palin's first reaction to the diagnosis was to research the facts about the condition, since "I've never had problems with my other pregnancies." As a result, she and her husband, Todd, never had any doubt they would have the child.

.....Because of Palin's reputation as a maverick, and her initial reduction of state spending (including pork-barrel spending), life-affirming Palin connects with voters and has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate for John McCain.



She would be a decided asset — an independent Republican governor, a woman, a defender of life against the creeping culture of death and a fresh face in national politics, described in "the Almanac of National Politics" as "an avid hunter and fisher with a killer smile who wears designer glasses and heels, and hair like modern sculpture."

 MORE

"Grand Slam"

Looks like Sen. McCain hit a Grand Slam with his choice of Gov. Palin as his VP.

A mother of five (one with Down's syndrome); maried to a native American (a Yup'ik Eskimo); a son in the Army about to be deployed to Iraq; an athelete who had a scholarship to college; she hunts and fishes, and is an NRA member; is Pro-Life; was a union member, and is married to one; has smoked marijuana (but didn't like it); worked as a commercial fisherman with her husband; has a record of championing ethics in government and prosecuting government criminals.

Oh, yeah, she was a beauty pagent winner......

The Great Conjuror

Sen. Obama and his team delivered a boffo finale in his acceptance speech to the Democratic Party Convention this evening. He is a master speaker, and the setting was a dramatic and spectacular staging that not only conveyed a sense of majesty, but demonstrated the surging tide of supporters he has energized and engaged. His cadence, timing, inflection and his emotive qualities in delivering the speech were impeccable, and will probably be viewed and studied over, and over again, by students of oratory in an attempt to perfect their own capabilities.

 

After thinking about the whole presentation of this evening's events in the stadium in Denver, I realized that something had been nagging at me during the entire time that I had been watching the show. I had a strong feeling a déjà vu. Something was eerily familiar about the event. I have seen pictures of other similar events; cheering massed crowds shouting in unison and waving banners; tears of joy and overwhelming solidarity with the ideas pronounced from the podium.

 

The pictures this evening's scene conjured up for me are from 70 years ago in Germany. Despite the fact that political rally's are in essence, well, political rally's, there is strong similarity in the massed people being emotionally carried away by a master conjurer's rhetoric alone, as opposed to his past deeds and specific plans. In this case it's the nebulous concept of "change", and the conjurer is Sen. Obama. He is a man who secured his win by assuming one posture, and then afterwards, donning another. As Hillary Clinton has phrased it, "one would have to suspend disbelief" in order to accept him as presented.

I believe that Charles Krauthammer got it right.

"Barack Obama is an immensely talented man whose talents have been largely devoted to crafting, and chronicling, his own life. Not things. Not ideas. Not institutions. But himself.

Nothing wrong or even terribly odd about that, except that he is laying claim to the job of crafting the coming history of the United States. A leap of such audacity is odd."

But not without precedence..........