THOSE CRAZY CEPHALOPODS!

Curious goings on in California - could it be the reason for our own (O)CT(O)PUS' absence?

This innocent looking female octopus managed to open a valve above her tank allowing hundreds of gallons of sea water to overflow her tank and flooding the floor, probably doing a lot of damage at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. Perhaps this explains the mysterious absence of 8pus - no doubt one of his offspring now in need of rescue!

And I wished I had learned about this curious creature before adopting my now familiar Rocky moniker. This new species was found in the waters of Indonesia. It is a type of frogfish with a beige body, peach colored stripes and blue eyes leading to its scientific name Histiophryne Pyschedelica and it bounces around on the sea floor on feet like fins.

How cool is that? Just call me Psychedelica!

An End to the Iraq War in Sight

Obama's Iraq withdrawal speech today was excellent - his best speech in awhile. In case you missed it, here are the main points: an end to combat missions in Iraq by August 31, 2009 2010, and a 35,000-50,000 troop residual force that will be fully withdrawn by the end of 2011, as per our agreement with the Iraqi government. Obama was also clear about his intent to help our soldiers and their families - the biggest applause line from the soldiers at Camp Lejeune where he spoke was for Obama saying he will raise military salaries. And he sounded truly sincere in his praise of the Iraqi people.

One thing that really stood out to me about the speech was that Obama mentioned his commitment during the campaign to a 16-month withdrawal - and then highlighted that he was settling, after much consultation with the military commanders, on an 18-month withdrawal. Many on the left are disappointed in this, but I find it thrilling that he didn't try to cover up the two-month difference, he didn't try to hide the fact that his policy shifted slightly. Listen carefully to how he actually emphasizes 18, as if to draw increased attention to the alteration. This man isn't concerned with typical cover-your-butt politics, he wants to inform the American people to the greatest extent possible. He wants to help, he wants to teach, he wants to be an effective Commander in Chief. He is honest.

The video is below. It is a must watch. Take a good look - this is the sort of leadership our military has needed for many, many years.

Bets on whether or not the Democratic Party will come to be the party of national security?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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This post originally appeared on The Political Panorama.

Typical

"Now isn't that typical"

-The Church Lady-

There are always stories in the local paper that make me rant and rave philosophical. At first glance these two stories seem to have little in common, but they do because of the different reactions people have to them -- which illustrates my point.

The first story is about an undocumented Guatemalan man who worked for a local gardening service. The truck he was riding in was hit head on by a drunk driver and Luis Jimenez suffered severe and irreversible brain trauma. Having no money, no local family and no insurance the local hospital took him in and over a period of a few years, his bills climbed into the millions. After three years, the hospital was granted a court order allowing them to charter a Medivac jet to send him home to his family, but the bill of course stayed here and will eventually be covered by increased insurance costs to all of us. End of story? No, his family has charged the hospital with kidnapping and is suing for damages.

The second story about a local homeless man caught swiping M&M's, T shirts and other items from a convenience store. He has a history of drug and public intoxication arrests, but he claims that he's entitled to all the M&Ms he can steal -- because he served in Iraq.

So what do these stories have to do with each other? Nothing really, but my reason for comparing them is that while people who write to newspapers use the first to howl and scream about illegal aliens and how this is typical of all of them, nobody uses the second to tell us that all Iraq veterans should be deported.

What makes something "typical" of a group? Usually our prejudices, our hidden fears and our dishonesty. Aren't we typical!

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM OCTOPUS

Your faithful 8pus will be away for two to three weeks. Please do not think I am abandoning, ignoring, or neglecting you. I will be working as a co-contributor on a story, a very big story, with Lindsay (from Majikthise) that will receive national attention once we finish it. We can’t tell you what it is, of course, until the project is done. But I promise you this: It will debut here.

Meanwhile, have fun, play nicely, and see you when I return.

Say it ain't so, Bobby

We can see that Bobby Jindal likes to talk as though his audience were all preschoolers and wear ties he borrowed from Bozo the Clown, but did Bobby Jindal make up a story? Seems like it.

Tuesday night's speech to congress had the man who would be president calling himself a hero, insisting that boats be allowed to rescue people of New Orleans stranded on rooftops; standing firm when some nasty ol' gummint bureaucrat was telling the sheriff that boats without proof of insurance would have to stay home. Only problem is, says Talking Points Memo -- he wasn't in the sheriff's office -- he may not even have been in New Orleans and the sheriff didn't know about the policy until weeks later.

Seems his only course of action may be to insist, like Sarah Palin, that she really did say "thanks but no thanks" and really did sell the state jet on eBay when she didn't and blame it all on the Liberal Media. Good luck to the both of them.

A NEW GENERATION OF HOPE!

Stories like this one are what we should be seeing on the nightly news instead of which celeb is gaining weight, losing weight, doing drugs, going to rehab, etc, etc.

When I read about kids like 12 year old Max Wallack I want to stand up and cheer for a new generation that gives me hope for the future.

Max is one of those “gifted” kids who will probably never make a winning touchdown but he will most certainly make a name for himself just the same. In fact, he's already well on his way. Max won a contest by creating the shelter pictured here out of trash; namely wire, plastic and packing peanuts. He won $10,000 and a Dell computer but modest Max isn’t too impressed with himself. “I don’t really care about the money. I care about helping people.”

And his ambition began at an early age. “When I was six,” Max said, “I won an invention contest that included a trip to Chicago. While there, I saw homeless people living on streets, and beneath highways and underpasses. I felt very sorry for these people, and ever since then, felt that my goal and obligation was to find a way to help them. My invention improves the living conditions for homeless people, refugees, or disaster victims by giving them easy-to-assemble shelter.”

So, here’s to Max and all those in his generation looking to make the world a better place. While their elders are talking these issues to death, our children are making us look like fools and I for one am thankful that they are!

CHEERS!

Let them eat Lobster

I just don't know any more and perhaps soon enough I just won't care. I got cornered by a woman at my club last night who went on and on about her money being wasted in earmarks for tattoo removal. This seems to be the red herring this week and the fishy smell of course is emanating from Fox, with people ( and I use the term loosely) like Michelle Malkin working overtime to make the most of it.

Apparently some money will go to a program to remove gang tattoos in California. Some will go for the Lobster fishing industry in Maine -- I don't need to repeat the litany, just turn on Fox or read any of the Ditto sites that repeat it ad nauseam, but we're hearing far less about billions to companies that use it for executive pay and bonuses; jets and yachts than we are about millions to entities that spend money on the poor and disadvantaged or on industries that employ Americans. All around her, of course are bankrupt businesses, foreclosed houses and homeless people. Perhaps one of them works for a dermatologist who removes tattoos. Perhaps there's someone who works in maintaining the 20,000 or so acres of parkland in this county -- land that attracts more in tourism than we spend making it pretty.

Certainly some of them in this coastal village are commercial fishermen whose boats are being foreclosed on, which is affecting the sales of gasoline and services which is forcing marinas to close and people in boatyards and grocery stores and tackle shops to be laid off. Saving an industry that employs Americans is at least a bridge to somewhere and criticism from people who have represented and supported the greatest orgy of non-productive pork barrel spending is almost as disgusting -- well, as Michelle Malkin.

It's easy to call any budget a series of "earmarks" and it beats me to think about how one allocates funds without allocating funds, unless you follow the Bush/Paulson "don't ask because we won't tell, you liberal bastard" model. One thing is for sure; some Maine fisherman is more likely to be salting cod with whatever comes his way from this package than salting money away in the Caymans or buying German cars or yachts made in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The whole idea of economic stimulus is to produce liquidity and improve the velocity of money so that maybe fewer people will lose their homes and jobs and businesses. The sudden parsimony of people who said nothing as tens of trillions of debt piled up, as money disappeared into the bowels of offshore corporations like Halliburton, was disbursed in pizza boxes to Iraqi war profiteers and corrupt politicians, should be embarrassing. Being a Republican however, is never to feel embarrassment, guilt or remorse, but to look for the solace of being told it's the doing of the "liberals."

As I said, I'm almost to the point of not caring any more. If we really are a nation of people hypocritically obsessed with the motes in other people's eyes, or stimulus packages, to the point where they would gladly see the end of the United States as a world power, we deserve what we get.

What we have here is a failure to cogitate

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sees 2010 recovery "only if" markets and banks stabilize, says Bloomberg.com. I see prospects for cheap, aerial fertilizer delivery if pigs learn to fly.

Listening to songs that have "degrading lyrics" may cause teenagers to have more sex. So said Dr. Brian A. Primack, a pediatrician and co- author of a study released Tuesday. Yep and a billion or so years of evolution contribute to the tendency too, but thanks Brian -- I think I understand much better now. It's a bit like insisting that to grant veteran's benefits to Filipino soldiers who fought alongside General McArthur will hasten the financial collapse of the US economy or that unplugging your cell phone charger will "save the planet."

I feel lucky if I can save my sanity.

THE GLOBAL GENDER GAP - 2008

Here are results from the latest Global Gender Gap Report complied by the World Economic Forum.  Specifically, the Report measures the gender gap according to these criteria:

Economic participation and opportunity 

Wage equality, management equality, access to high-skilled employment – as a ratio of female to male;

Educational attainment

Literacy rate, primary, secondary, and advanced enrollment - 

as a ratio of female to male;

Political empowerment 

Parliamentary and ministerial positions, heads of state in years - as a ratio of female to male;

Health care and survival 

Life expectancy and sex ratio at birth.

The Report does not penalize those countries having fewer resources (lower levels of education for example), but assesses countries on how fairly they distribute existing resources between women and men.

Covering 128 countries and 92% of the world’s population, the report shows equality gains for women in two-thirds of the nations studied. Compared with previous study years, gaps in education, political empowerment, and economic opportunity have narrowed, whereas gaps in health care have widened.  One implication of the study is a strong correlation between competitiveness and gender equality; countries that do not utilize their full human potential lose competitiveness. In virtually all countries surveyed, gender equality is weakest on indices of political empowerment.

So where does the good ole U.S. of A. stand on gender equality?  Here are the top ten countries in overall ranking:

(Click on image to enlarge)

Oops!  The good ole U.S. of A., leader of the free world and shining beacon of hope and opportunity, is not even among the top ten.  How about the next group of countries, ranked 11 through 20?

(Click on image to enlarge)

Nope.  Not there.  So where are you hiding, good ole U.S. of A (under a pile of WMDs)?

(Click on image to enlarge)

There you are!  Good ole U.S. of A is ranked number 27 ... well behind the Philippines (ranked #6), Sri Lanka (#12), Lesotho (#16), Mozambique (#18), Cuba (#25), and Barbados (#26).  What a nice role model, good ole U.S. of A., leader of the free world and shining beacon of hope and opportunity!

For a PDF copy of the full report, click here.

Bigger, more intrusive government

"The makers of the Constitution conferred the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by all civilized men—the right to be let alone."

-Justice Louis Brandeis-

Whenever there's a lot of outrage being sold, whether it's about protecting children, preventing tax shelters or defending the faith, it's fairly safe to assume they're selling something else and it's safer to assume it's something you wouldn't have bought otherwise.

There are few things easier to bundle with invasive, intrusive or even abusive government than protecting children, hence the carefully maintained impression that children are in vastly more danger then ever before and controlling the internet in the cause of controlling people and their unwanted thoughts and words attaches to our parental fears like a remora to a shark.

A free internet

"offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,"

says U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican. Well of course! So does freedom of association and freedom of speech and assembly and of course, so does freedom in general. It also offers opportunities for dissent, for exposure of secrets of invidious nature and other things authoritarian and paranoid governments fear. So in order to protect the children, Cornyn would like to make sure that with every word you write, every breath you take, every move you make, he'll be watching you. listening to your calls, reading your mail, checking your financial records, tracking your movements: all these things we bought in the name of Bush's "warrontare" and yet it's not enough.

The plan is to have everything you say on the internet and a list of every search you make and every site you visit stored for the benefit of anyone who may want to investigate you -- for two years. Two bills have been introduced so far--S.436 in the Senate and H.R.1076 in the House. Both bills bear the same title: "Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act," or Internet Safety Act. Both use the same words:

"A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user."

And what is a provider or remote service? If you're got a home network with a wired or wireless router, you are! Better buy another hard drive and keep it backed up, you potential child molester, you.

"That sweeps in not just public Wi-Fi access points, but password-protected ones too, and applies to individuals, small businesses, large corporations, libraries, schools, universities, and even government agencies. Voice over IP services may be covered too."

says CNN.com's Declan McCullagh.

Alberto Gonzales may be gone, George Bush may be a bad memory, but the Republican Dream lives on. A country where nothing you do is private and nothing they do is public; a country where "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" is seen as an unnecessary impediment to control.