Money

Depending on who you ask, the Iraq war costs anything from a low $200 million, to a moderate $411 million to a whopping $720 million a day.

The American Friends Service Committee calls for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and they have put together this video describing in numbers the financial toll the war is having on the country's ability to deal with its domestic issues. When you spend $720 million in a failed war, you can't spend it in health care, schools, jobs or the current housing crisis.

Watch the video.

Hillary Clinton's campaign is going bankrupt.

The presidential hopeful had to loan to the campaign $5 million of her own money in order to keep the campaign afloat. It's been reported also that all senior staffers have foregone their salaries. That supposedly includes Mark Penn's $4.2 million in consulting fees.

Well, when word got out, donors to the Obama campaign have gone bat-shit insane and have moneybombed the campaign's coffers with almost 7 million dollars. This just since February 5th, so that's little under 72 hours.

If each campaign contribution were considered representative of voting patterns, Barack Obama is beating Hillary Clinton and all the Republican nominee candidates COMBINED by a landslide.

Of course, the Clintonistas are in denial. So much so that bloggers like Taylor Marsh are now repeating the stupidity of Mark Penn and calling Hillary Clinton the underdog of the campaign.

Hillary Clinton. Underdog.

Weren't Billary "inevitable" just a month ago, especially after New Hampshire? The cognitive dissonance over that one would make a weaker person's head explode.

This is the worst kind of news for the Clintons campaign.

I've met Hugh Hewitt professionally only once. We were on a panel together what seems to be like eons ago talking about online communities. He strikes me as a pomo-conservative : the kind that may if not laugh out loud, at least chuckle about South Park while sipping on a Beaujolais from his wine cellar.

Which is why when I read this, I did indeed LOL :

Saturday, February 02, 2008
"Paid For By Obama For America"
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 2:49 PM
I heard a powerful Obama ad on K-Earth 101 while driving this morning. That's the '60s/'70s rock station. The pitch combined some fine Obama audio on change and the future with clips from the scores of newspaper endorsements the Illinois senator has racked up.

When you pull in $32 million in January, you can play in a variety of micro-markets.

If the GOP sends a 72-year into this race whose prime was from a different time at least two generations back to campaign solely on the need to win the current war, even his hero status won't help him against the tsunami that is building. Dole '96 will seem like an energized, cutting edge effort by comparison.

Perhaps there is some recognition of this in U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski's endorsement of Romney this morning. She can't be looking forward to a Senate GOP caucus reduced to a rump by an Obama-led blowout fueled by tens of millions that McCain cannot hope to match.

Today is January 22nd, 2008 and women across the United States will observe it as the 35 anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. Many of them will even be blogging about how the right to choose is so important to them. Others will spend the day condemning it.

Which just brings me to the topic of birthing.

It seems like there is a baby boom in Hollywood. Everybody and their mother is pregnant. There is so much baby booming that it led Ricki Lake to make a documentary about the whole thing.

In The Business of Being Born, Lake goes on to document the way women in the United States go about birthing babies and reveal it for what it is, a business. As an advocate for midwifery and non-invasive birthing, Lake hopes "this film educates people and empowers them to really know their choices in childbirth."

If you are a blogger who is looking into making money out of your online publishing, there are a number of blogs you ought to read on a daily basis, one of them being TechCrunch. There's much to learn from Michael Arrington's blog, especially if you were brought up to believe that an Arts & Science education was better without having a couple of business courses under your belt. Boy ... do I have regrets.

Anyhow, yesterday Michael posted a bit about a new commercial project going beta, Political Base. Here's a bit of what Arrington had to say :

The site, which focuses on local, state and national elections and other political matters, is timed perfectly to take advantage of the 2008 presidential elections and the estimated $4.5 billion that will be spent on advertising to promote candidates and issues.

PoliticalBase is a structured Wiki that encourages research and debate. Users can edit most of the text but can’t change the underlying database structure. That allows the site to slice and dice data for comparison purposes (something that can’t be done with the free-for-all Wikipedia) but still gives the site’s community the ability to create and edit content.

I, Liza Michelle Sabater-Tirado, am the father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter, Dannielynn.

It was a freak accident of telepathic autogenesis that made me the father of Anna's daugher. Seriously. Since the father of my children doesn't want more kids, I was using all my mental abilities to immaculately conceive the baby girl I want so much. Unfortunately my powers got transferred to Anna Nicole.

What is up with these avant-guard artist-wanna be's and the socially aware who constantly complain about our government's lack of charity yet can't spare a dime for a homeless person?

I live pay check to pay check but I seldom turn down a request from someone who asks for money, unless I really just don't have it. But I see this happen all the time. On the subway especially. Commuters discussing the need for change suddenly turn into in-transit Helen Kellers if approached by the homeless. The argument that you don't want to give money because they'll spend it on alcohol or drugs fails miserably. You don't want to give money because you are just as tight-assed as our current administration. Even when you give money to a "proper"---and probably mismanaged---charity, there's no telling how that money will be allocated. I choose not to worry about how a homeless person uses the money. Whether you donate to a charity or give someone cash hand to hand, the money will probably not be used as it was intended, except in the rarest of cases. But the proper charity does give you a tax writer off. Oh, I get it!

Think about living on the streets. I imagine it consists of one goddamn nightmare of violence and pain after the next. Many of us claim to be close to it. So how can you refuse to give assistance, even if it is going to be used for a bit of hallucinogenic or Night Train fueled escape? Hell, take the time to buy someone some food, if it won't make you late for some Lower East Side Happy Hour.