HeadShakingly Stupid

if this is true then Charlie Rangel is a fucking moron.

Margaret Cho on Christianists

I heart her

Bill Donohue is an asshole

Bill Donohue has issued a fatwa against PZ Meyers.

I would humbly suggest that my faithful readers wander over to PZ's place and read about it .. then send an email, or even better a snail mail, to the president of his university. The contact info is available at PZ's place, I thought it was bad form to copy it.

Thanks.

Barack and Bilingualism

Via Crooks and Liars

Personally, I think it is self-evident that knowing more than one language is a good idea.
What the fuck is the controversy here anyway?

McCain's poster child

Via Talking Points Memo comes the news that Crocs is the poster child that McCain discusses here for the success of US manufacturing

According to this filing at the SEC though ...

Our strategy is to maintain a flexible, globally diversified, low-cost manufacturing base. We operate our own production facilities in North America, and we also contract with third party manufacturers located around the world. We believe our in-house manufacturing capabilities enable us to rapidly make changes to production, providing us with the flexibility to quickly respond to orders for high-demand models and colors throughout the year, while outsourcing allows us to capitalize on the efficiencies and cost benefits of using contract manufacturing. We believe that this production strategy will enable us to continue to minimize our production costs and increase overall operating efficiencies as well as shorten production and development times to better serve our retail customers.

The process for manufacturing our footwear was developed over an eight year period of continual refinement to improve consistency, softness, durability and yield. Prior to October 2004, all of our footwear was manufactured at Foam Creations's facility in Quebec City, Canada. In the six months ended June 30, 2006, we manufactured approximately 24.6% of our footwear products at our company-operated manufacturing facilities in Quebec City and Mexico. We obtain the remainder of our footwear products from third party manufacturers in China, Florida, Romania and Italy. In the six months ended June 30, 2006, a supplier in China produced approximately 51.8% of our footwear unit volume. We have long-term contracts with third party manufacturers in Italy and Florida, but do not have a written supply agreement with our primary third party manufacturer in China. During 2006, we intend to further expand our manufacturing capacity at the facilities we operate in Mexico and Canada

Yes, you read that correctly .... 75% of manufacturing for Crocs is done outside of North America and 0% is done in the US by company owned facilities (they do not break out how much work that 3rd party Florida facility does but I am guessing not a lot). Now, I am a Canadian working and living in the US on a TN (NAFTA) visa so I am more than thrilled to see jobs going to Canada but is this really the poster child that he wants for his economic programme?

Carly Fiorina is a dishonest hack and Jay Newton-Small Knows it

Via Jay Newton-Small at Swampland comes this bit.

“My point is this: when Barack Obama says that the Bush tax cuts only helped the wealthy it is factually untrue. It is factually true that 23 million small businesses file as individuals. It is factually true that small businesses create 70% of the jobs in this country. So I honestly won’t even attempt to explain Barack Obama’s economic plan. You ought to ask them that, though.”

This statement, while factually true, is terribly misleading since only a small percentage of the 23 million small businesses would actually see tax increases and the Obama campaign argues that under his administration small businesses would benefit from his universal healthcare plan, offsetting any tax increases the top tier earners might see. So, when running HP did 23 million = a few hundred thousand? No wonder she got fired.

I seem to recall making a point about Ms Fiorina before.

Civility

The Family Research Council would have you think that it is all about civility and propriety (not really) but in its blog it had a story about Canada that included the accompanying image with the maple leaf replaced with a marijuana leaf. This would be fine if it was a story about legalization of marijuana, but it wasnt.

One has to wonder how they would react to a blog post about the current US administration's penchant for lawbreaking accompanied by the following image...



I guess that we will see .. wont we...


Photo credit for the swastika flag to MoonBattery via a google search. Please note that I do not endorse that site, I just got the flag there...