Mr. McCain is bordering full blown psychotic.

I'd not be surprised if he does an 'about face'...

The poor insane guy reflects honestly...[?].

Then: To boost low polls and depression,

A former POW may needs to pop a pimple?

Maybe he will assume guilt for global killing?

Maybe he will begin to address global warming?

A ashen president probably has hid head in a waste basket,

And tomorrow he may admit he's been a totally wasteful 'mutt'...

O, what will his consultant tell him to barf-up for us to tomorrow?

O, he will order Mr. Rove to wear a spanking new toupee?

O, if it rains in Nashville, put the hair-piece in a pocket.

O, if Bush plays the cello for world peace we'd be happy.

I'm actually a technophile, not a luddite.

My mother was an antique dealer and my father a jeweler and watch/clockmaker, I grew up helping dad restore 150 year old grandfather clocks in his shop so I'm well aware of the limitations of older technology.

I build my own computers from parts that I have selected for cost/benefit ratio. A lot of the stuff I buy is used high quality items a technological generation out of date. My current computer has an aluminum case that has now been through three motherboards and is on its second power supply.

It's rather like buying a used car versus a new one.. You can buy a six year old Infiniti for considerably less money than you can a brand new Daewoo that is really not nearly as nice a car.

You mentioned energy, that is what the limitation is going to be in the near term future. It is much more energy efficient to buy a used car that gets somewhat less gas mileage than a new one that gets more because the energy expenditure to build a new car is very high.

Any car built since 1996 can be fitted with a mile per gallon gauge for under $175 that will allow you to tune your driving habits to use considerably less fuel. I've been doing this for some time now and can consistently get twenty to thirty percent better economy than someone who has not practiced driving for efficiency with an instantaneous feedback system. Mostly, driving efficiently is about conserving momentum. Accelerate going downhill and slow when going uphill, anticipate traffic slowdowns and red lights, don't tailgate and that sort of thing.

Surprisingly, very gentle acceleration is not as efficient as moderate acceleration. At high vacuum, closed throttle conditions the engine is losing a significant amount of energy in pumping losses. Modern engines when running closed loop are more efficient at moderate throttle openings than at very small ones, they waste less energy in pulling the pistons down on the intake stroke against the manifold vacuum.

http://www.scangauge.com/

Thank you for including me in the cabal. I had no idea!

Anyway, in between some other things, I ended up spending some time browsing in wikipedia, and learned some things about both Lyndon and Lady Bird that I didn't know. I might not have done that, otherwise.

For one thing, LBJ's father and grandfather both joined the Christadelphian Church later in their lives (Brothers in Christ). A very interesting sect. Almost a Libertarian feel about it, if such a thing were possible.

Most interesting to me, though, were the life experiences that caused both LBJ and Lady Bird to make Civil Rights such an important issue. As a team, in fact.

I also thought I found a clue to his "war-mongering" in his earlier experiences in Congress, but I need to think about that a bit more before discussing it.

At the White House girls locker room tomorrow,

a naked preznit walks in on a naked female plumber.

George Walker Bush has a guitar tucked under his chin.

He greets the elderly naked plumber and envies Bill Clinton.

Apparently, there is a limit to how much bipartisanship the Democratic caucus will tolerate...

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/06/lieberman-has-superdelegate-status-stripped-because-of-mccain-endorsement/

Lieberman's endorsement of McCain has cost him his superdelegate status.

* * *

And for a little extra satisfaction, Jane Hamsher reports that someone appears to be editing MoDo...

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/06/late-nite-fdl-get-the-net/

Breaking news just in.... To identify sincere goo-loyalist,

The Bush's decree is: All phone monitored citizens receive,

a rose tattoo on the left ankle to identify the non-war folk.

O, Rove? Down on his knees before a Fox audience. A leg cramps. ow.

Yes, I knew that about you. (I've read your posts on automotive subjects elsewhere on Salon with much pleasure, and learned lots of things.)

I was trying to make a point, though, which is often dissed by the luddite left -- some of my best friends included. Planned obsolescence -- the bugaboo of many right-thinking, if shallow humanists -- was originally a way to make the benefits of improving technology available to everyone at minimum cost, while at the same time guaranteeing the profitability and therefore sustainability of manufacturing enterprises.

We might like Chippendale furniture, but no one wants to drive a 1950 Chevy forever, although I must admit that the Cubans -- out of necessity -- have done a remarkable job of it. The problem, of course, was the idea that you could dump all the obsolete stuff in landfills, and avoid the costs of programming intelligent re-use of materials into the industrial cycle. The process was also dependent on abundant -- and cheap -- energy.

As I said earlier, this is a complex subject, and one that badly needs to be more widely discussed. It's OT here, though, and although I regret having to let go of it, let go of it I shall.

Laura and the twins are seen shopping to help the ailing Nasdaq economy,

and all the bystander observe the new boot style is real dessert Army boots.

Walking down 5th Ave in NYC with boots makes Wall Street so very happy.

The good news is that the boot soles are lemon flavored, and can be licked.

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090400993.html

MacBird is a larger-than-life Texas politico serving uncomfortably as vice president under the Machiavellian, aristocratic president, John Ken O'Dunc. MacBird and Lady MacBird, as per Shakespeare, engineer Ken O'Dunc's murder. Garson says she feels her spoof was "fair to everybody except Lady Bird," harshly caricatured as "Lady MacBird."

"It wasn't an anti-Johnson play," Garson says, though she did intend it as a broad critique of both Kennedy's and Johnson's approach to politics. "It was the Johnson that Bill Moyers described . . . self-dramatizing, self-pitying, but also a true liberal, and unable to understand why these Kennedys, who did so little, really, were thought of as so beautiful."

Johnson, she says, "was as bad as the other guys in this play . . . but he wasn't worse."