South Carolina gets cold feet over gay Tube ads

From Pink News:

A US state has distanced itself from an advert on London Underground designed to attract gay tourists.

“South Carolina is so gay,” proclaimed posters in one Tube station.

The campaign was proposed by the state tourism agency’s London advertising contractor. It promotes tour operation Amro Worldwide. Several US cities took out similar ads to coincide with last weekend’s Pride London celebrations.

Newspaper The State reports that the advertising has stirred controversy back in the state capital Columbia.

The Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism said yesterday that it would not pay for the ads and blamed an “overseas contractor” for approving it. Parks, Recreation and Tourism director Chad Prosser told The State that employees had “exercised extremely poor judgment.”

Republican state politicians have called for an investigation.

The posters touted South Carolina’s plantations, Civil War history, beaches and golf facilities.

The Tube campaign ends tomorrow.

Mr Prosser has asked that the South Carolina posters be removed, reports The State.

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New Group Wants to overthrow obama at convention

From Huffington Post:

Sticking a Wrench in the Gearbox

Maybe, just maybe, a bunch of delegates to the Democratic Convention in Denver will change their minds at the last minute. Maybe there is an outside chance that between now and the last week of August a critical mass will decide that Barack Obama is not their guy — that, to the surprise of one and all, Hillary Rodham Clinton is to be the 2008 nominee after all.

That is the thinking behind a small but determined band of Hillary backers, some of whom have formed a 527 fundraising committee that has already run one $9,700 ad in the Chicago Tribune, and plans more in the weeks to come.

The Denver Group: Keeping the Democratic Party democratic, created by Georgetown Law professor Heidi Li Feldman and freelance advertising man Marc Rubin, ran an ad in Friday’s Chicago Tribune declaring:

“Senator Clinton’s name must be put in nomination. Her supporters must be allowed to make speeches on her behalf of her candidacy. There must be an honest roll call vote, not a symbolic one, so superdelegates can cast their votes honestly, for either candidate, as their judgment, conscience and democratic principles dictate.”

Feldman told the Huffington Post that the goal of the Denver Group “is to insure substantive and legitimate selection of the nominee.” DNC chairman and other party leaders “should be taking responsibility for making sure it’s a legitimate procedure. They cannot demand that people simply unify around either one of them.”

Feldman argued that it is entirely conceivable that an open vote could produce a Clinton victory. “Then, the decision comes down to the superdelegates. I have no Idea what they are going to do six weeks from now.”

Feldman declined to say how much the group has raised, or who the donors are – “We can’t disclose that information” – although he acknowledged that the 527 organization will soon have to report that data to the IRS. She said the largest donation so far is $5,000. (full article)

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Timing is everything…

From the Carpetbagger:

Newsweek Poll has Obama’s lead dropping from 15 to 3:

I wasn’t especially excited when Newsweek said Barack Obama enjoyed a 15-point lead over John McCain three weeks ago, and I’m not especially discouraged now that Newsweek shows Obama leading by three now.

A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama’s glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44 percent to 41 percent. The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month’s NEWSWEEK Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.

Obama’s rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience — an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who’d slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama’s reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage.

The news wasn’t all bad for Obama. The same poll showed that 61% of his backers support him “strongly,” while for McCain, the numbers are reversed — 61% of his backers don’t support him “strongly.”

The number to keep an eye on, though, was the switch among independents: “In the new poll, McCain leads Obama among independents 41 percent to 34 percent, with 25 percent favoring neither candidate. In June’s NEWSWEEK Poll, Obama bested McCain among independent voters, 48 percent to 36 percent.”

This, frankly, seems hard to believe. I know the media/McCain attacks about Obama’s alleged “flip-flops” have been an aggressive part of the discourse, but it’s just not realistic to think there’s been this big a swing among independents in such a short time.

Indeed, if the Newsweek poll felt like an outlier in June because Obama’s lead appeared too big, this latest Newsweek poll also feels like an outlier because his lead is too small. (full article)

Spare the rod, spoil the child. We’re getting a whipping from mother nature

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I’m not sure if you’ve noticed it lately, but there’s been great deal of disasters and catastrophes happening. Tsunamis, tornadoes (not just in Texas and Kansas, and coming down the pike at about 10 at a time). Hurricanes, freak snow storms, disease resistant viruses, frogs, locusts, hail…you name it, I’ve watched some crazy reporter is a slicker stand in it and report about it.

The right side of my brain tells me it’s global warming, El Niño, and soft molten liquid core shifting on tectonic plates. The left side…honestly, my left side is telling us that Mother Nature is pissed, and kicking our not so ever-loving ass.

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What? you say…it’s just a matter of closing that tear in the ozone, stopping the icebergs from melting away, and stuffing some depleted Uranium 238 down the holes where we’ve sucked out all the oil. Problem solved. I’m busy solving world hunger and cancer this week…do it yourself.

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The foxhole atheist in me says I’d run like hell, and try to survive the big one, but the dirt eating pessimist says f*ck it…we deserve to perish.

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What? Treason against my own species? What about the children? Me forget about the children? When our species is living far beyond our biological niche, thanks to our super brains and super technology…we’ve got more children than ever…I’m surprised that the group still living in the Middle Ages isn’t worried that all the kids will fall off the sides of this flat Earth…which is the center of all the Universe.

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To be truthful, my Earth might be spherical, but I fall into the trap of wrapping myself up in the warm nurturing blanket of self importance, just as much as anyone. I too hit the snooze button on the wake-up call our planet is giving us. She keeps alarming and I keep nodding off. I’m lazy and self centered that way. Fat happy convenience and the life span of less than 100 years will do that to a human. It’s nice of Mother Nature and the Earth to at least give us the chance to hear the alarm, but I doubt if we will stop our steady destruction of the very ground we supposedly call hallow.

Even the hope I feel recycling my Coke Zero cans and getting my Subaru Outback all muddy to rescue some furry thing I found on a hike…even that hope isn’t enough to stop the lesson. Stupid things like remembering so many more fireflies out in the yard when I was little. Each year I see them, but the count is down as are my spirits. Tread water, pass bills, pick up trash, bike to work…What it will do is prolong Mother Nature’s whipping for another generation…and then another generation after that…maybe. You see, because there’s another big factor. We like whipping ourselves. And we do it well.

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I think we’re going at a much faster pace than Mother Nature is. Our hatred and fear of each other creates bigger horrors than any Mother Nature could dream up. For what? Person, self, soul. This end is most surely a justification as well as punishment for the means. Natural or man-made…the end will come. With the Earth being about 4.5 billion years old, humans have only spent the last 195,000 years here. Sounds like a lot…but it’s not. And we’ve been busy. Here’s some perspective…quiz to follow.

Picture a 24 hour clock. Take all the time which has passed from the start of the known universe until today and compare it to the sweep of the hands on the 24 hour clock. The current belief is that the clock started 12 billion years ago.

To represent this on a 24 hour clock, each hour’s sweep of the hand would represent 500 million years (1/2 billion years). On this clock the hand swept for about 15 hours before the earth, sun and the planets start forming thus starting geological time (4.5 billion year ago).

Life on our planet started only after the clock had been running for 23 hours or about one hour ago (representing 500 million years ago), 28 seconds ago after the clock had been sweeping around for 23 hours 59 minutes and 32 seconds humans came down from the trees (5 million years ago), 3/4 of a second ago humans began speaking. On the clock of all known time, human history is not as long as one second. Less than one second ago contains all usable human knowledge.

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zzzzzzzzz…Wake up mortals…my Biology lesson is over, but Mother’s isn’t. We’re f*cked and I’m not sure it’s a bad thing. Let the Earth go back to the way it was. Let the monsters die out and the animals live in peace, or maybe just biological harmony.