WORLD CLOCK
This is so cool I have added a permanent link on each of our sites.
(Suggested by KATHRYN MILLER)

LEAVE SARAH PALIN ALONE!
Here’s a cute picture I got from a friend. Don’t know if its real or photoshopped or what the real story is but it reminds me of some shenanigans I was involved in in 1972, the year we crazies took over the Democratic Party in Alabama.
After the debacle of 1968, the party was abandoned by the white folk. Blacks were busy creating their own political blocs and divisions. And, so, in the resultant power vacuum Don Siegelman, Al Lapiere and other novices captured the state party apparatus.
In Mobile no one wanted to even look like they were campaigning for George McGovern. The Mims brothers were in full rebellion, refusing to mount even a token campaign. Helen Morgan, her daddy, a few others, and I volunteered to swim up the proverbial waterfall, launching the McGovern campaign here.
The local Republicans were trying to upset Senator John Sparkman by riding on Nixon's coattails. It would be a major victory to unseat this party stalwart and institution. They busily linked McGovern to Sparkman on all of the issues, never missing an opportunity to call it the “McGovern/Sparkman” ticket. Sparkman was about as anxious to be linked with McGovern as McCain welcomed Bush on the campaign trail.
We? Well we did our best to dance around the minefield, trying to run a professional campaign without experience, without the support of our local machine, without money, and with an abysmally unpopular candidate who we happened to love. A real Democratic Party dream team.
At some point - I’m guessing it was after McGovern gave some heckler the finger and told him to kiss his ass – we went to a Sparkman breakfast at the Admiral Semmes. We sat there and fumed as Sparkman spoke. He didn’t just distance himself from McGovern, he did everything but endorse Nixon. We came back to the office completely pissed.
I went to our portable sign outside and put “VOTE THE MCGOVERN/SPARKMAN TICKET” on it and then called the local GOP office to tell them what I had “just seen at the McGovern office.” Ann Bedsole showed up shortly thereafter to take pictures. I kidded with her, letting her know that it was an orchestrated payback from us. I even helped her take the pictures. We got chastised by the state office and soon agreed with them that we had acted selfishly and impolitic just to make a point and took our sign down but, secretly, we were glad we made our point.
Political campaigns are still run by people who react in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons. After these last two contentious political years, the paradigm for gauging political contentions should be obvious: delve beyond what someone says something means but first, check to see if what they said was said is itself accurate. For varying reasons people are eager to pile onto Sarah Palin on the basis of “something” coming from “somebody”, third-hand through a journalist. Somehow, that’s seen as gospel. No matter that we know that McCain’s campaign was high jacked by the same party hacks who have years of shady history behind them, that there were divisions within the GOP establishment as well as within each contender’s ranks that constantly showed turmoil and that there is something out there called “the base” (“the lowest”) driving their party to all sorts of suicidal distractions.
I think Palin is a lightweight and that given enough rope she will hang herself. I hope she takes the GOP down with her. But I think that she deserves to be treated in the same way we wanted our candidate to be treated. With respect and with the accurate assessment of what she herself claims, not by some amorphous Rovian whisper campaign that is being directed by who knows who.
(Photo courtesy Tom Cooksey)

ROME REDUX
Through the magic of Google Earth you can now travel back in time to see Ancient Rome and all of its architecture in full 3D. The feature was developed by the Rome Reborn Project which aims to recreate a 3D representation of the ancient city of Rome from the year 320 AD, at the peak of the city's development.
(PC WORLD)

OBAMA AND CUBA?
This Wall Street Journal article details the crack in the door for changes in US-Cuba policy occasioned by Obama's election victory. (The Wall Street Journal? The biggest "champions" of opening trade and relations with Cuba have been agri-business giants like Archer Daniels.) Will Obama follow Clinton's lead and not "upset the (hard-line Miami-Dade Cuban American) applecart"? After all, his plate is pretty full. While Clinton's first missteps (like "don't ask, don't tell") are legion the opportunities he missed (ending the Cuban Blockade is one of those) are also worth scrutinizing.
Obama has several avenues available to him. He can work with Congress to end the travel ban, change some travel regulations to the extent of his executive authority, while engaging diplomatically with Cuba in a way that respects its sovereignty as a nation.
Here is an ARTICLE in which Obama's Latin America foreign policy advisor reiterated the president-elect's Cuba policy: " …as president the candidate will move quickly 'within [the] possible and practical bounds of his authority' to lift the family travel and remittances restrictions. Anything more than that, Sanchez told the Miami Herald, will have to wait."
Cuba could present Obama with a quick opportunity to show that he is serious about trying to right wrongheaded policies and in wanting to doctor up our ailing image abroad. Where better than in our hemisphere? That Latin America is watching and holding its breath is evident in this:

ARTICLE in the British newspaper, The Guardian, on the hope of reconciliation between the United States and Latin America, starting with Cuba. ARTICLE reporting Brazilian President Lula's call to President-elect Obama to end the blockade on Cuba. His voice is part of a growing chorus from Latin America. (WALL STREET JOURNAL, suggested by Latin American Working Group)

AYERS IN HIS OWN WORDS
On March 13 of this year, John McCain sat down for an interview with Sean Hannity. McCain was not yet aware of the narrative Hannity had been spinning for months, and so Hannity filled him in: William Ayers is an unrepentant "terrorist," he explained, "On 9/11, of all days, he had an article where he bragged about bombing our Pentagon, bombing the Capitol and bombing New York City police headquarters. ... He said, 'I regret not doing more.'" McCain couldn't believe it. Neither could Ayers.
(IN THESE TIMES)

MCCAIN'S HOBSON'S CHOICE
McCain has squirreled away enough funds to pay for a raft of television ads in battleground states over the final days. But, the decision to finance a final advertising push is forcing him to curtail spending on Election Day ground forces. The vaunted, 72-hour plan that Too used to mobilize voters in 2000 and 2004 has been scaled back for McCain who is spending half as much as Obama on staffing and has opened far fewer field offices.
(WASHINGTON POST, suggested by fivethirtyeight.com)

DUMB AND PROUD OF IT
Perhaps the most potent reason why intellectuals struggle in elections is that intellectualism has been equated with subversion. The brief flirtation of some thinkers with communism a long time ago has been used to create an impression in the public mind that all intellectuals are communists. Almost every day, men like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly rage against the "liberal elites" destroying America.
(ALTERNET)

CQ Politics | Sorting Out the Truth on McCain’s “Socialism” Allegations

TRICK OR TREAT?
Just in time for Halloween, the campaign's biggest scare tactic is the Socialist Boogeyman. Progressive taxes do indeed spread the wealth a bit. But they do so much more modestly than government owning the means of production. Few serious policy makers — including McCain — consider progressive taxation socialist. In fact, on the October 26, 2008 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, McCain stood by a comment he made in 2000 that “there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat more” in taxes when you “reach a certain level of comfort.”
(CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY)

IS THIS ON!
When the GOP nominated John McCain as their candidate many hoped that it meant that the middle and "left" of the party, recognizing not only the mood of the country but that their message was way off base, was wresting control from the on board crazies. When this thing is over there will no doubt be all sorts of things written about how the McCain campaign got kidnapped by the Bush people and turned him into some sort of political Frankenstein, a monster of many parts. The conflicts probably also explain the manifestation of this now-not-so-latent tension between these party tendencies as evidenced by the internal bickering in the McCain campaign and the public breaking of ranks by its politicians and pundits. It might also account for the flareups between Palin and the McCain staffs about her being "off message". But, lest we make the mistake of giving these guys too much due, look at this enlarged sample of self-identified Republicans and independents who identify with Republicans. When asked the question, “who is to blame for John McCain’s possible defeat?” Republicans believe McCain will have lost because of a hostile mainstream media, economic events beyond their control and Democrats having more money and resources. Few have begun to examine the bigger issues. Their views of the current campaign, the mood of the country, the state of the economy and the future of their party and country suggest a party very much out of touch.
(DEMOCRACY CORPS)

E. J. Dionne Jr. - Civil War on the Right - washingtonpost.com

ET TU, BRUTUS?
For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war. Suddenly, they are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism they courted has begun to consume their movement. The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity -- and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.
(WASHINGTON POST)

Final Presidential Debate Fact Check - Fact Checker

CHECKING THE FACTS
This is a pretty good site for checking facts. This one lays out where each of the candidates stretched the truth.
(Suggested by Donna Soto)

Why I'd Be a Better VP than Sarah Palin

ME JOHN, ME!
Johnny Cash's daughter would like to submit her name as a replacement for Sarah Palin saying that she feels confident that McCain will see in her the very attributes he desires in his VP choice. For your consideration, her big, fat résumé.
(Suggested by MOLLY THOMAS)

SAY IT AIN'T SO, JOE
The news keeps getting "worser and worser" for McCain. Yesterday even the GOP stalwarts started piling on. None other than neocon looney William Kristol and David Brooks, amongst many other commentators and politicians, started railing against McCain and bemoaning the state of their glorious GOP. (See today's Press Register for the Kristol piece.) Given the fractuous animosity and internecine stuggles between their competing party wings, maybe that's not really such big news.
Except they're going public. And, maybe, this is just some sort of tough love lesson for the party: "if you choose to break party discipline (be a 'maverick'), you will pay the price." Hey, I understand. I was so pissed at the Democratic Party, that I voted for Ralph Nader. But, seeing Joe Scarborough on Stephen Colbert - above and beyond being thrilled by what he said about McCain's campaign - was transformational. It went far beyond anything that I've seen on television lately.
I lived in Pensacola when he was coming up and saw how he went from a local dumbass know-nothing to a powerful and somewhat thugish GOP wunderkinder and then to a loud-mouth wannabee O'Reilly television commentator. And that's about all I've really known about him for lo these many years except that during Katrina a lot of folks rallied locally to take up the slack occasioned by the Bush Administration's indifference. Kathryn, Carlos' mom, was one of those that bought things out of her own pocket, generated fund drives, and broke the curfew to ferry the supplies to Mississippi. Scarborough was one of the local luminaries who rose to the challenge by being tremendously instrumental in that process.
Here he was on Colbert last night, not quite the mugwump pushing Obama, but giving his assessment that the election was over.
What really was so surprising and refreshing was the manner in which Scarborough has matured. He stayed on message while still comporting himself admirably against Colbert's antics, jovially giving every bit as good as what he got against Colbert's right wing strawperson. Unfortunately, it ended too soon. I wanted Scarborough to finish his thought process about how he'd gotten to where he was and especially the GOP's Katrina response.
Now, no one thinks that Scarborough is Saul on the road to Damascus. I just wanted to hear what he had to say about expecting someone to remedy a problem - be it a natural disaster or an economic one - if the solution is antithetical to their political philosophy and I wanted to hear it from someone who was out there dealing with the realities of trying to help someone who truly needed help.

Former federal prosecutor decries William Ayers link - Los Angeles Times

AYERS CASE PROSECUTOR SPEAKS OUT
A former United States Attorney has publicly taken issue with the characterization that the case against William Ayers was dismissed for "prosecutorial misconduct." The government dropped the case after the Nixon administration's "illegal activities, including wiretaps, break-ins and mail interceptions," were exposed, he said.
(LATIMES)

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time

VIRTUAL CITY
IBM and China’s Palace Museum have created an exact replica of the 178-acre Forbidden City. After working meticulously for three years to recreate every building and thousands of major artifacts, the virtual Forbidden City is now available for download free. Once inside, you can choose an avatar, dress him or her up in Qing Dynasty-era robes, take virtual tours, play Go with computer-controlled characters, call up maps, explore buildings and objects that allow you to click for deeper information.
(IBM, suggested by Tech Crunch)