A Clean Bill of Health

If you have never experienced seeing your own reflection in a cat-scan machine, it is a peculiar experience. I stared up at my eyes staring back at me. Last night, I fainted. It was a frightening experience. After the Natasha Richardson story, I felt it was not worth taking a risk when it comes to my brain. So I dropped into the emergency room today.

All kinds of scenarios played out in my mind. I have no medical background, so I am sure many of these scenarios were completely unrealistic. I feared bleeding, suffocating my brain from oxygen. I feared tumors. Luckily, I am healthy. Dehydration was most likely the cause.

After almost two hours, I was finally back in my car in the visitor parking at Sibley Hospital in Washington, DC. It was at that point, before I turned the key, just after I closed the door that the relief finally set in. I broke out laughing, hysterically.

I have a clean bill of health and could not be happier right now.

VIDEO/AUDIO and eye-candy: Gov. Dean Returns to DFA

cross-posted at DailyKos

It was a big night for Democracy for America (DFA) on Wednesday, March 25th. On a conference call celebrating their fifth birthday, the DFA announced the return of Governor Howard Dean, at least temporarily. They launched a new website, StandWithDrDean, and are asking everyone to work like crazy pushing President Obama's health care plan. So, please start by visiting the StandWithDrDean website, sign the petition, and get your friends and family to as well.

It was a powerful conference call, especially for anyone that supported the DFA from the beginning. I cannot stress enough how scary it is to imagine where we might be right now, were it not for the efforts of the Dean family and the DFA.

We recorded the call, so we could share it with you. If you were not on the call, you truly should find the time to hear the whole thing.

And, without further ado, here is the audio of the call, with plenty of Dean/DFA eye-candy:










Hope you enjoy it! Don't forget to visit the StandWithDrDean website!

Daily Chatterings: Friday, March 27th

THE BIG CHATTER:
Everyone is chatting about the Republican announcement of a "budget" proposal. Just when you think they cannot dig deeper, when you think they cannot appear more out of touch, the Republican party brings us a new definition of "WTF?!?" Later on today, we will go through it page by page, which will only take one day because it is not a budget plan, which would take forever to go through. Oh yeah, they will release the budget, for realsies this time, on April fools. Thank you so, so much!

SOME OTHER CHATTERINGS:
Natasha Richardson's tragic death may have saved the life of a seven-year-old girl.

Marijuana legalization has been creeping its way into mainstream discourse. It broke out in a big way last night.

North Dakota is getting slammed right now. You have to admire the well organized, hard working efforts going on there.

Japan has green lighted its military to shoot down the missile that North Korea is preparing to test. It's going to be a good show.

YOUR DAILY VIDEO TO CHAT ABOUT:


Anything I'm missing?

Daily Chatterings: Thursday, March 26th

THE BIG CHATTER:
So, this really should be that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is testifying on the hill tomorrow, but I am going to be talking about Democracy for America's new efforts all day tomorrow. Launching a new website, Stand With Dr. Dean, the DFA is making health care reform priority number 1, and Howard Dean wants 250,000 signatures. I expect no problems getting it done. President Obama campaigned on a pledge, and the American people voted for it. Now it is time to make health care reform happen. It will be one of the most important changes in American history.

And on a personal note: One of my old volunteers from the Obama campaign, Bill Monroe spoke about DFA trainings on the call. It was pretty cool.

SOME OTHER CHATTERINGS:
On to Secretary Geithner, and his testimony tomorrow.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner returns to Capitol Hill on Thursday and is expected to reveal a much anticipated list of Obama administration priorities for preventing future financial collapses.

We will see if this appearance is as impressive as the last one.

North Korea has been slowly preparing for a missile launch. Shortly after the election, satellite photos showed similar activity to what we saw just before their last launch. Now:

North Korea has positioned a Taepodong-2 missile on the launch pad at its facility in Musudan in the east of the country, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday.

They are claiming it is solely for launching a satellite, and that the launch will most likely happen between April 4-8.

This story is sure to move you.

Redstate, not surprisingly, lays down one of the stupidest arguments ever when responding to this statement by Jim Moran:

“It sets us back in the war on terrorism to be maintaining Guantanamo,” said Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), who’s heading an investigation of the facility for the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

“It will enhance our reputation to close it down and to apply our system of justice to all of these detainees,” he added. …

This is the title of their post, "covering" this story:

Note to Jim Moran (D-VA): People who want to kill themselves to kill you don't care about you 'reputation'

Okay, the problem with this argument is that our "reputation" is the most important recruitment tool for terrorist organizations. In other words, our "reputation" is the most important factor in creating "people who want to kill themselves to kill you." Not to mention the fact that so many of these people have not been proven to be terrorist. And of the typical Republican talking point that:

many of whom took advantage of their second lease on free life to rejoin the jihad and do their utmost to take more innocent American, Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani, etc. lives.

A lie. A blatant lie. Check MediaMatters for more.

YOUR DAILY VIDEO TO CHAT ABOUT:


Anything I'm missing?

Democracy For America Birthday Conference Call

UPDATE: New website, Stand With Dr Dean, definitely go check it out.

UPDATE II: Call is over. All I can say is, it is very frightening to think where this country would be without the Dean family and Democracy for America. We at Left Chattering send them a big thanks for everything they have done.

Birthday Powerpoint Final

View more presentations from DemocracyforAmerica.

Teabagger Chris Krok Helps Define Hypocrisy

cross-posted at DailyKos

This, is a direct quote from Chris Krok, admitted teabagger, while on Luo Dobbs Tonight, aired March 24th.

Fix this country, not run it into the ground and stop worrying about basketball.

This, is obviously directed at President Obama. Of course, Krok is furious that an elected official would dare take a few minutes to connect with average voters by describing his march madness bracket. I guess he did not notice this on the home page at RNC.org:


So, our President, who has undeniably been more engaged, proposed bigger plans, and achieved more than almost any President in such a short time, needs to focus on the economy more and on basketball less. However, the GOP, whose website does not present a single budget proposal, has plenty of time to worry about basketball.

I cannot wait to hear his next show, when he lambastes the RNC for spending time on such trivial subject matter! (snark)

FedEx and Boeing: Hostages yet to be released

This is typical. If lies and smears are not enough to kill the Employee Free Choice Act, will blackmail be?

FedEx Corp will cancel an order to buy 15 Boeing Co jets, as well as an option for a further 15 planes, if Congress passes legislation that makes it easier for FedEx workers to organize under labor unions.

This is a threat. And Boeing is in on it:

The Boeing contract includes language that enables FedEx to cancel the order and the option, if the company's FedEx Express employees are no longer covered by the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which covers airlines.

So Boeing and FedEx actually designed the contract so that this threat would be possible. This is a direct statement to the only union workers at FedEx, pilots. This is a direct statement to them and their union.

This is yet another example of big business putting aside competition to coordinate attacks against the Employee Free Choice Act. Ultimately, we have to decide whether or not their threat would hurt more people than passage of the EFCA would help. My guess is that the ability for millions of workers to safely organize a union is far more important than whether or not FedEx splurges on planes from a company that has profited mightily off war.

And this is the claim FedEx makes on their website:

FedEx is committed to providing outstanding customer experience, to being a great place to work, a thoughtful steward of the environment and a caring citizen in the communities where we live and work. At FedEx, we are passionate about sustainably connecting people and places and improving the quality of life around the world.

Which really means:

FedEx is committed to making a profit for our top management. At FedEx we are passionate about making a profit for those at the top. Forget being a great place to work, a thoughtful steward of the environment and a caring citizen in the communities where we live and work, and improving the quality of life around the world, we want a profit for those at the top.

Last thought: Where were the threats from big business if President Bush's policies were enacted, thus destroying our economy and hurting their businesses? Oh right, the people at the top made tons of cash under President Bush, so they did not care that those policies are directly the cause of their diving profits.

Daily Chatterings: Wednesday, March 25th

THE BIG CHATTER:
Everyone's been talking about President Obama's news conference on his budget plan. Well, it's really the budget plan itself getting all the news. He is making it clear that health care reform, green energy, and a strong investment in education are essential towards fixing our economy. This is something progressives have been arguing for a while, and I am not sure I ever thought we would have a President making that argument for us.


SOME OTHER CHATTERINGS:
It is Democracy for America's fifth birthday today. The DFA is largely responsible for starting the 50-state strategy and utilizing small donors over the internet, both factors in President Obama's historic victory in 2008.

Not really news, but President Obama is mentioned in the first 5 stories under CNN's latest news column.

Obama: Mexico cartels 'completely out of hand'
Obama vows to 'attack this crisis on all fronts'
Ticker: Obama gives tough answer to CNN
iReport.com: Share reaction to Obama briefing
Jindal defends those who want Obama to fail

Speaking of idiots, Jindal is a complete idiot.

"Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, 'Why no sir, I don't want the president to fail,' is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism," Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. "This is political correctness run amok."

I will wait patiently for him to look at how anti-war progressives were treated during the last eight years. Apparently, when there is a Republican, war President, the slightest criticism is an affront to our troops and to our nation. However, if the President is a Democrat, it is your patriotic obligation to oppose him by all means.

No doubt you have heard about the increased violence on the Mexican border, now the President is sending more agents to the border.

Apparently Hedge Fund managers were some of the only people making money this last year, mostly betting against stocks.

As major markets and economies careened downward last year, 25 top managers reaped a total of $11.6 billion in pay by trading above the pain in the markets

I will not be surprised to find these guys closely connected to AIG, Bear Sterns, Lehmann Brothers. If I had the accounting skills, I would be checking their books to see whether or not their big winnings came from betting against companies they had connections to. And one thing I never understood, where does the money come from when you bet against a company and it fails? I understand that when you invest in a company and it does well, you get some of those earnings. But whose pocket does it come out of when you bet against a company? Whose money do you get?

Financial experts are declaring that they believe the recession is not far from rebounding. I have been saying for some weeks now, that I believe we are near the bottom. Recent upticks, and this report lead me to believe I was right.

YOUR DAILY VIDEO TO CHAT ABOUT:


Anything I'm missing?

Debunking Crowd Estimate Lies

I wrote about this previously, but now I have a video evidence.

Quick recap:
On Saturday, March 21st 2009, thousands of people gathered in DC to march on the Pentagon for peace. However, some people in the media felt the need to blatantly lie about the size of the crowd, claiming it was as low as a "few hundred."

Using footage, captured from a bridge as the march went by underneath, we estimated the size of the crowd. The footage, which was not of the entire crowd, clearly showed that these reports were severely low in their estimates. The process for estimating crowd size is an incredibly easy one. It is, literally, middle school difficulty math. As I said before:

First, you single out a small section. You want to use as large a section as possible with the constraints of time and ability to count all the people. You count how many people are in that block. You can then count how many times that block is represented by the entire crowd. There is obviously a margin of error, but it is actually quite accurate.

The fact that these news organizations neglected to take the small amount of time necessary to produce an accurate estimate is not surprising or important. What is important, is that these organizations reported a crowd estimate knowing full well that they had no idea what the real number was. They could have simply not reported a number. Since they did report one, without knowing if it was accurate, they were lying.

Here at Left Chattering, we estimated the size to be, at a minimum, 3,250 people.

And here is Left Chattering's latest video, which includes the footage we used to estimate the crowd size:

Daily Chatterings: Tuesday, March 24th 2009

THE BIG CHATTER:
Yesterday, the White House and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner rolled out new plans to deal with bad bank assets. As I said before, this was a crucial moment for Secretary Geithner.

It was a huge gambit and one that came like a tonic to Wall Street, which had panned an earlier outline of the program that lacked detail.

Stocks soared, the Dow Jones industrial average shooting up nearly 500 points, thanks to the bank-assets plan and a report showing an unexpected jump in home sales.

Well played Mr Secretary.


SOME OTHER CHATTERINGS:
So, 15 of the top 20 AIG bonuses have been returned. Interesting note, some of the people that received bonuses were not American citizens, which makes the tax-away-solution useless. Reports are, that these people have not said they "won't" give the bonuses back, but have not said they "will" either.

Meghan McCain has been making a little noise again. You may remember her bash on Ann Coulter, and Laura "I wish I was Coulter" Ingraham's immature response. Well, Meghan McCain was on Larry King Live, and here's a few choice excerpts from the transcript:

Larry King: [President Obama] is taking some criticism for smiling and laughing [during his "60 Minutes" interview.] Are you one of those critics?

McCain: You know, I actually am not. I think anyone that would possibly think that the president is not taking the economy seriously -- I just think it's ridiculous... (snip)

McCain: I consider myself a progressive Republican. I am liberal on social issues. And I think that the party is at a place where social issues shouldn't be the issues that define the party. And I have taken heat, but in fairness to me, I am a different generation than the people that are giving me heat. I'm 24 years old. I'm not in my 40s, I'm not in my 50s and older.

I've been talking about a rift in the Republican party, that could either disappear in a few short years, or become the cancer that splits the party, possibly turning "Republican" into something for the history books. If she keeps up this way, I think we will see a leader of one side in this fight.

This is sure to put a smile on your face:

A Thai fireman turned superhero when he dressed up as comic-book character Spider-Man to coax a frightened eight-year-old from a balcony, police said on Tuesday.

I strongly suggest reading that whole article.

YOUR DAILY VIDEO TO CHAT ABOUT:


Anything I'm missing?

Stephen Colbert Wins Again!

Oh lordy, he did it again. On Tuesday, March 3rd, Stephen Colbert asked his audience to partake in NASA's vote to name a new room at the international space station. Not surprisingly, fans of the Colbert Report turned out for the charismatic host in huge numbers. MSNBC is reporting 230,539 write in votes for Colbert. That beat out all four suggested names by NASA.

That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday.

One slight fork in the road, NASA reserves the right to pick whichever name it wants. It says it will give the winner serious consideration, but that is a non-answer if I've ever heard one. Should be an interesting Colbert Report tonight.

Check into dailykos right as the Daily Show is starting for the Daily Show/Colbert Report chat thread.

MSM Grossly Underestimates Number of Protesters

So, when I put one of my videos of the March on the Pentagon from this last weekend up on youtube, a comment alerted me that the MSM was underestimating the number. During the march, we came to a bridge, so I ran up to it and caught almost the entire march as it went by underneath. In middle school they taught us how people estimate crowd numbers at an event. It is a very simple method. First, you single out a small section. You want to use as large a section as possible with the constraints of time and ability to count all the people. You count how many people are in that block. You can then count how many times that block is represented by the entire crowd. There is obviously a margin of error, but it is actually quite accurate.

I went through my footage, which is not the entire group of people, but a very large swath of it. I stopped recording briefly to take a few pictures of all the camera people up on the bridge with me. I estimated the number of people in the footage I have, which means the margin of error (for guessing the entire crowd) is larger, but it also means I am more likely underestimating the number.

Based on my footage, I have come to the conclusion that there was at least 3,250 people partaking in the march. This is absurdly larger than some in the MSM are reporting.

NAFEESA SYEED reports that there were 2,500-3,000 at the Examiner. But, at the Washington Times Nafeesa Syeed reports that there were hundreds. And yet, a photo by SAUL LOEB is captioned on one of Nafeesa's articles at chron.com saying there are thousands. Why am I not surprised that the Washington Times version is the outlier? Nafeesa, were those your words or the Washington Times'?

KUTV also reported the hundreds.

Even Al-Arabiya picked up on the "hundreds" meme.


Is it really too much to ask from reporters that they actually do a little work before putting out estimates? It really did not take me that long. Seriously. This type of thing is easy. Get a good vantage point, take a picture, do the math. It was more difficult for me because I had to use video footage. And guess what, if you are too freakin' lazy to do a little bit of math, all you have to do is, not report any number. When you do report a number, you are implying you have a reasonable clue as to what the number is. That is lying. Washington Times, KUTV, Al-Arabiya, you are liars.

Daily Chatterings: Monday, March 23rd 2009

THE BIG CHATTER:
Today, everyone will be talking about the new plan to deal with bad Bank assets that the Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, will announce shortly. This is a crucial moment for him. It hearkens back to President Obama's speech on race during the campaign. There is an opportunity before Secretary Geithner to momentously win the trust of millions of Americans.

SOME OTHER CHATTERINGS:
Two plane crashes, one in Japan, and one in Montana, took the life of 16 people. Details are still very fuzzy, no one is sure yet what brought these planes down. Does it seem to anyone else that a lot of planes have been falling out of the sky recently?

Okay, so CNN has a story on the recent news column labeled:

Ticker: Young Republican stalked by TMZ

Now, if you click the link, the story is actually titled:

Republican stalked by gossip site like he's a Hollywood Starlet

The story is about Republican Rep. Aaron Schock, a freshman Congressman, who is pretty young. But Young Republicans are a group, mostly college and high school students. That's what I thought when I saw the title. I do not like the thought of TMZ stalking college students, but I do not mind cameras in the faces of Congressmen.

This is just hilarious:

1. The Conservative Conundrum – Being Optimistic In Our Opposition

How do we maintain our inherent optimism as conservatives in the face of this onslaught against everything we hold dear?

How, oh how, will they stay optimistic as the world collapses in on itself, and everything we hold dear dies? (snark) Inherent optimism? Was that what that was when they screamed about Saddam Hussein, and making sure he doesn't "attack us again."

Speaking of "attack us again"
YOURE DAILY VIDEO TO CHAT ABOUT:


Anything I'm missing?

VIDEO: Anti-War March on the Pentagon

Finally, after several incredibly annoying technical difficulties, many of which I have yet to figure out, I have finished editing footage from the anti-war march on Saturday. So here it is: