The Michael Canfield Channel

Lieberman Begins Race as Independent

An asshole and a sore loser. Link: New York Times.

In a CNN interview (quote below), Lieberman essentially called 52% of Democrats that voted against him "out of the maintstream." Hm, where have I heard that retoric before? It's a term right out of the Karl Rove and Fox New playbook. Like I said: asshole.

"I am in this race to the end. For me, it is a cause, and it is a cause not to let this Democratic Party that I joined with the inspiration of President Kennedy in 1960 to be taken over by people who are so far from the mainstream of American life that I fear we will not elect Democrats in the numbers that we should in the future," he said in an interview with CNN's Soledad O'Brien.

Financial Gurus

Crossposting: Starbucks & David Bach's trademarked "factor" - Blogging Stocks, are some of my thoughts on all those "rich" this or "that" type books. Which apparently are all that are keeping PBS on the air anymore.

Must be an SF movie.

It takes place in an alternate reality ... when have you ever seen this many empty seats on a plane?

The horror ... the horror

'Masters of Sci Fi' a series of six episodes of stories adapted from Heinlein, Kessel, Walter Mosely, Sheckley, Howard Fast, and (of course) Harlan Ellison* will be on ABC next year. It's from the same company that produced "Master of Horror" on Showtime last year, which I found wretched, tedious, and inept.  So ... yippee.

*Update 3:25 pm. Oops forgot the trademark symbol after H*rl*n *ll*s*n. Hope I don't get sued!

Holy Guacamole!

The Robertson point: i.e. the tipping point of acceptance of the science about global warming.
Tobias S. Buckell Online: Pat Robertson worried about global warming. I'm hopeful now.

Richard Branson is also convinced and developing a super fuel.

Why do I disagree with the Dems strategy here?

Answer: Because the rich always end up getting their tax cuts in the end anyway. They will get the permanent estate tax cut, making future Trump offspring, and future Tori Spelling's secure, one way or another. But it's pretty rare when you get a chance to have a wage hike for the poorest wage earners endorsed by Republicans.

Senate blocks minimum wage hike. Reuters.com.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of mostly Democratic U.S. senators blocked legislation on Thursday that would have raised the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade, because it also would have permanently cut estate taxes paid by the rich.

Hey, a lot of people believe a lot of things!

There's this poll that something like a third of American's believe 9/11 was a put-job involving the U.S. government. Ya know, because the government is so anti-business they wanted to put our economy into a tail-spin I guess. Also, somebody in the government must have decided the Pentagon needed a renovation. This is just like when Lincoln shot himself in the head to cement his legacy and when George the Third wrote the U.S. Declaration of Independence in order to rid himself of the onerous colonies.
Evidently were are, Stephen Colbert-like, meant to believe that facts are a matter of opinion. After all, if some many people believe something, there must be some truth in it. Well, a lot of people believe John Edward has special powers. This stupid poll begs the same question as that belief does, namely WHERE DO PEOPLE COME UP WITH THIS BULLSHIT !?!?!?!

Link to a news story with the focus completely wrong: Was 9/11 an 'inside job'?.

This is why Republicans win ...

They are pragmatic. No matter that they owe this woman [Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Fla.] big time for ushering the current occupant of the Oval Office into his job, if she doesn't have the numbers she's not getting her party's support and they don't care who knows it.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, the big gun (Bill Clinton) is brought out to bolster Leiberman, to bolster a candidate the increasing numbers of Democrats do not want representing them. This is in the name of preserving a Democratic seat, whatever the cost, rather than taking their chances with a new person outside the machine, one who might actually reflect what Democrats believe.

Link: Florida GOP turned back on Harris - Yahoo! News.

The state Republican Party bluntly told Rep. Katherine Harris that she couldn't win this fall's Senate election and that the party wouldn't support her campaign, a letter obtained Monday by The Associated Press shows.

Hitchens on Gibson

Is Mel Gibson an anti-Semite? By Christopher Hitchens.

[Gibson] has told interviewers that his wife, the mother of his children, is going to hell because she subscribes to the wrong Christian sect (a view that he justifies as "a pronouncement from the chair"). And it has been obvious for some time to the most meager intelligence that he is sick to his empty core with Jew-hatred.

3 Newspapers Wise Up

Link: Newspapers to Use Links to Rivals on Web Sites - New York Times.

The Washington Post, The New York Sun and The Daily Oklahoman, in Oklahoma City, have contracted with an online news aggregator, Inform.com, to scan hundreds of news and blog sites and deliver content related to articles appearing on their Web sites, regardless of who published those articles. Links to those articles will appear in a box beside the site’s original article or within the text of the story.