Today, IIRC, “Grama Obama” (actually, Senator Barack Obama’s grandmother’s name is Madelyn Dunham) turns 86 (and get well soon, Ms. Dunham!), Senator Hillary Clinton turns 61, and your talking dog turns 46. Discuss.

Notwithstanding overwhelming public opposition, my fair city of New York’s City Council voted 29-22 in favor of amending a voter-referendum imposed law mandating term limits of two terms at the behest of the $20 billion man, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who, at around 65 years old, decided that he couldn’t do anything better with his time than, well… have a third term as mayor. And so there you have it. The same voting public that overwhelmingly opposes the change in the term limits law will almost certainly vote Mayor Bloomberg into a third term, particularly as much of the likely competition...

Shorter Alan Greenspan: I’m shocked, just shocked to find out that in the course of unleashing the unbridled avarice of unregulated free-market capitalism, those involved would take their greed and self-interest to the point where everything else goes to hell.

Clearly not Dick Cheney’s “Woman in HavanaGuantanamo,” convening authority Susan Crawford, who, as the official responsible for bringing show trials military commission hearings for made-up political reasons violations of the laws of war, has now decided to drop charges against five detainees (Binyam Mohammad, Noor Uthman Muhammed, Sufyiam Barhoumi, Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi, and Jabran Said Bin al Qahtani) on the apparent basis of prosecutorial misconduct and political intervention as recently raised by former GTMO prosecutor (until he resigned) Lt. Col. Darrell Vandeveld. Well, well, well. It was seemingly these commission hearings that were supposed to justify the whole GTMO...

Not the kind we’ve come to expect, insofar as it will not help the Republicans. … Former Secretary of State Colin Powell (who went to college with TD Mom… and from Powell’s wiki bio, he appears to be from the same neighborhood and is about the same age as TD Dad) just endorsed (TD’s college classmate) Barack Obama. This comes the same day that the Obama campaign announced that September fundraising blew away all previous records and came in at over $150 million. A huge part of this involved the early Sarah Palin post-GOP Convention momentum which excited the base...

After its insistence on having Hitler’s chauffeur OBL’s motor pool mechanic and occasional driver Salim Hamdan be the defendant in the first of the show trials military commission trials for embarrassing the Bush Administration by prevailing in the Supreme Court “war crimes” (specifically, being involved in a war against the United States when George W. Bush is President), it now seems that, having failed to control even its rigged and flawed proceedings (those damned military judges and juries refuse to sully their oaths any more than they already have by participating in these travesties of justice as it is)… and...

In a [not particularly] stunning move, the Washington Post, whose managing editor is [my college classmate] Marcus Brauchli… wait for it… endorsed [my college classmate] Barack Obama for President. WaPo’s main criticism of McCain– who the editorial acknowledged liking and admiring– is the inability to reconcile McCain’s purported strength on national security with his choice of a running-mate who is simply unprepared to be commander in chief. WaPo also acknowledged McCain’s lack of coherent economic policies, especially his newfound support of the Bush tax cuts. WaPo’s rap on Obama, of course, concerns WaPo’s principal weakness and Obama’s principal electoral strength,...

Amdist a disastrous economic climate where the stock market dropped 733 points, second worst (in points) ever… in the middle we have… the the debate, stupid. The last one, at Hempstead, NY’s Hofstra University. Look, boys and girls: Bob Schieffer is a Republican tool, from Texas no less, whose brother Tom is George W. Bush’s ambassador to Japan (and Bob goes to ballgames with the Bush family). I would refuse to debate if Schieffer were “moderating”… period. But that’s just me. Obama is doing fine anyway. Hence, we have the debate about bulls*** issues like… negative campaigning and attempts to...

It seems that the CIA had written White House approval for waterboarding and some of its other torture enhanced interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists. Slowly I turn…

Well, the first kind appears to be dramatic improvements in the stock market of over 900 points gain in the DJIA and proportionate gains elsewhere in light of concerted efforts of major nations to pour money to shore up their beleaguered financial sectors, after a number of high level meetings over the weekend, including in Washington. Maybe this will be what the doctor ordered and we’ve seen the “market bottom”… and maybe we haven’t. It does strike one that the current financial crisis is far more serious than the simple short-term liquidity problems that have caused the collapse or forced...