Who is Joe the Plumber? Not exactly the small-business buying, $250,000 a year making, plumber he was made out to be. He says he has a lot to learn about the plumbing business. I’ll say … like that being a plumber requires a license.

Bottled water is widely considered to be a purer choice than tap water, but a new investigation finds that this isn’t always the case.

In its test of 10 best-selling brands of bottled water, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found mixtures of 38 different pollutants including bacteria, fertilizer, and industrial chemicals in some of the tested brands at levels that were similar to tap water.

Seeing as a lot of it is simply tap water in nasty plastic bottles, I’m not at all surprised by the findings of this study. Bottled water is a scam. No, it’s worse than a scam, when you consider that the plastic bottles are most likely leeching even more stuff into that “pure” water.

“In general, the report is based on the faulty premise that if any substance is present in a bottled water product, even if it does not exceed the established regulatory limit or no standard has been set, then it’s a health concern,” International Bottled Water Association President and CEO Joe Doss says in a statement.

Oh, because the things are below the limits or is something that has no limits at all, we shouldn’t care that we are consuming it? I’m sure no legal level of cat piss in bottled water has been set, but would this guy like to drink water that had any cat piss in it at all? I’m guessing not. His statement annoys me as much as the FDA saying there is a permissible amount of melamine that can be in food products. Yuck.

My advice to anyone who wants to drink good water is to drink the water that flows from your taps. If you happen to live in a place where the water has a mineral flavor you don’t like, or you just want it to be as pure as possible, install an under-sink filtration system like we did, and then … drink up! Just as good for you as bottled water, if not better, and far, far cheaper.

I can’t see my desktop wallpaper, so it must be time to review the collection of crap and do a link dump again.
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The Republicans of the 21st century scare the living daylights out of me. Really. What happened to my political party? I didn’t change that much over the years. Of all the political rallies I have been to in my life, which is quite a few for many different parties, I never saw anything like this. Now I see videos of it all the time, and it’s disgusting. The ignorance and the hate is just simply disgusting.

The facts about ACORN are worth getting out. ACORN is an organization that, among other things, registers low-income people to vote. One of the ways they do this is to hire door-to-door canvassers from the neighborhoods they are working in. This sort of work is tightly regulated. So, when one of the thousands of people they give jobs to doesn’t do their work right and brings back bogus or phony voter registration cards, the law REQUIRES that ACORN turn the forms in to the voter registration office. The law, rightly, doesn’t want anybody throwing out voter registration forms for any reason.

But ACORN goes a step farther. They have people assigned to do quality control on all the cards–calling people on the forms after they fill them out. When they find bad information on the cards they attach a cover sheet to the card but, as mentioned above, they turn in the cards as required by law. The effect is that a few bad canvassers or a poorly run office will mean that bad cards are submitted as part of the normal process. But ACORN has done everything possible to make sure voting officials know to check the forms.

The sad fact is that in at least one state–Nevada–the voting officials disregarded ACORN’s cover sheets flagging the voter registration forms. That should have never happened. The resulting blowup was a scandal in search of a scandal.

The stunning con of this whole thing is the assumption that bad voter registration cards being submitted will lead to vote fraud. If somebody submits a card for Mickey Mouse it isn’t like Mr. Mouse is going to show up to vote. There is no voter fraud if nobody votes.

Getting sick of hearing crap about ACORN and how they plan to steal the election for the person who is currently already in the lead.

I would also pray Lord that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their God — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his [McCain’s] opponent wins for a variety of reasons.

And Lord I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you would step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day.

–Rev. Arnold Conrad, Grave Evangelical Free Church

I’ll give you one guess — and one guess only — which presidential candidate’s rally this was the opening invocation for today in Iowa.

I’m so disgusted, I can’t even rant about it. In fact, I think I need an aspirin and a nap.

“Senator McCain agrees with Senator Obama that spouses should not be an issue in this campaign, and he has stated that position frequently.”
–McCain Campaign, June 2008

Not so much anymore. Now they are going after Michelle, owing to the fact that she and Ayer’s wife both worked for the largest law firm on the planet at the same time, therefore, they must have known each other and been best of friends! Go read the tale at Talking Points Memo, and if you have a few minutes, listening to the audio of the press conference call, set up by the McCain Campaign, is worth listening to … though it may raise your hackles.

And would people please stop calling the Annenberg Challenge a so-called charity or a so-called educational program or a radical organization? It was funded by the Annenbergs, and the Annenbergs were and are completely and totally Republican. So stop it, please.

But since spouses are now on the table for attacking, I want to see and read some news stories about Cindy McCain’s drug addiction leading to her convincing a doctor or two to write her illegal prescriptions in other people’s names and essentially stealing drugs from her own charity — a crime for which she didn’t even get a slap on the wrist for. I’d also really like to learn a whole lot more about Todd Palin and his involvement with Troopergate (a report coming soon, maybe) and the Alaskan Independence Party, who would very much like to secede from the US — a country they seemingly loath.

Are they really sure they want to go there? I think it’s crappy they want to go there, but hey … I’m all for throwing mud at people who throw mud, especially when the mud I’m throwing is factual and true and not mere speculation, which is all the Republicans seem to have at the moment.

A friend just sent me a link to a clip from Fox News about the Newsweek cover featuring Sarah Palin, and it’s hilarious.

“This cover is a clear slap in the face of Sarah Palin. Why? Because it’s unretouched.”

“It’s mortifying. It’s mortifying!”
–Andrea Tantaros, Republican Media Consultant

Watch the whole thing. Comedy gold like this can’t be written. It just has to happen naturally.

On Wednesday morning, John McCain’s campaign released a list of 100 former ambassadors endorsing the GOP presidential nominee.

Second on the list, though her name is misspelled, is Leonore Annenberg, currently the president and chairman of the Annenberg Foundation and widow of ambassador and philanthropist Walter Annenberg. Ms. Annenberg was herself the “chief of protocol” at the State Department under President Reagan.

If the last name sounds familiar, it’s because it also graces the name of the Chicago education board where Barack Obama and William Ayers sat in the room six times together.

The Annenbergs are big-time Republicans, and yet, according to McCain and Palin’s standards, they are terrorist sympathizers. After all, they did give the grant to Ayer’s education group which then formed the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

And if the Annenbergs are guilty of hanging out with terrorists, then what am I to make of this photo of the two of them with Ronald Reagan? Or of Leonore’s support of McCain?

Another little fact no one has really noticed: Ayers and Obama never were on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge board together. Ayers was never on the board. He wrote the grant that got it started, and then the board of directors was selected by Adele Smith Simmons, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. I know, I know. Stop bringing up facts.

But to listen to the McCain ad on this subject, one would think the whole lot of them and every school and educational group in Chicago were a bunch of bomb throwing terrorists trying to foist radical ideas upon the youth of America. Here’s some text from the ad:

Ayers and Obama lead a radical education foundation together.

Reports say they distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in education.

They couldn’t have done any of it without the Annenberg money, so then in McCain’s eyes, the Annenberg Foundation itself, as well as Leonore Annenberg should be viewed as guilty of being terrorist sympathizers. He’ll be making a statement soon saying he doesn’t want her endorsement, right? I’m betting not.

How people can make giving money to educational reform organizations and schools sound so damn evil is just amazing to me.

I’ve been hearing a lot about Bill Ayers in the news. Well, I have been hearing a lot about the 24 year old Bill Ayers and not so much about anything else having to do with the man. Was he a domestic terrorist in the 60’s? Yes, he was. Has he done anything at all redeeming since then? Yes, he has.

Everyone’s homework for today is to familiarize themselves with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Annenberg Foundation. Since guilt by mere association seems to be the theme of the day, do make note of the names of the people involved with both organizations, and always keep in mind that they were pallin’ around with a terrorist and therefore are evil themselves.