Fat Tuesday postpourri

Tony Soprano, King of Bacchus.

Since I'm an XM subscriber, I hope this is good news.

How dare they expect justice?

D.C. news: A Fort Worth girl makes good. Meanwhile, net neutrality continues to be high-profile. And a military amputee was purposely left off the invitation list to an event with the president because he might have been photographed by the media.

Even John McCain thinks Don Rumsfeld sucked. Of course, McCain is a confirmed flip-flopper, so who knows how long he'll believe this.

Another reason why I'm glad I never had children:

In 2005, when government scientists tested 60 soft, vinyl lunchboxes, they found that one in five contained amounts of lead that medical experts consider unsafe — and several had more than 10 times hazardous levels.

But that's not what they told the public.

Instead, the Consumer Product Safety Commission released a statement that they found "no instances of hazardous levels." And they refused to release their actual test results, citing regulations that protect manufacturers from having their information released to the public.

That data was not made public until the Associated Press received a box of about 1,500 pages of lab reports, in-house e-mails and other records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed a year ago.

Which of these things is not like the other?


Fucking moron.

Obama, Edwards, Richardson/Clark, Other (probably Gore)

Hillary waaay behind. Biden in last, behind Gravel (LMAO). Clark needs to hurry up and declare before Democrats get enamored with another choice.

Differences between the MyDD and Daily Kos straw polls include a much weaker showing for Clark, a much better showing for Obama, a slightly weaker showing for Kucinich, and a slightly better showing for Edwards. How much of that is due to random error, taking the poll one week later, or the differences in our readerships is difficult to tell.

Four candidates have more last place votes than they have first and second place votes combined: Biden (-30.3), Gravel (-27.7), Kucinich (-11.7) and Clinton (-2.7). Two other candidates, Vilsack (+0.2) and Dodd (+0.9), are just barely positive. Clark comes in at a healthy +19.5, and Richardson is slightly better at +21.1. Edwards finishes in second at +53.2, while Obama places first with +57.2.

Edwards and Obama have such large leads in both first place and second place votes, that it appears either would become the clear netroots frontrunner if the other were to drop out. This certainly makes one wonder if the so-called "anti-Hillary" vote is being split, both online and offline.