Now It's Time To Leave The Capsule If You Dare

Ground Control to Felix Baumgartner:  You've really made the grade!

The Austrian daredevil, in fact, rose to the edge of space Sunday -- 128,100 feet, or 24 miles, above the Earth -- before plunging faster than the speed of sound.

Minutes later, he landed in southeastern New Mexico and, dropping to his knees, pumped his fists to the sky.

"He made it -- tears of joy from Mission Control," his support team said.

Dubbed "Fearless Felix," the helicopter pilot and former soldier had parachuted from such landmarks as the Petronas Towers in Malaysia and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. And he'd been preparing for his latest feat for five years -- physically, mentally and logistically.

By most accounts, all the hard work paid off. According to preliminary findings cited by Brian Utley, an official observer monitoring the mission, the 43-year-old Baumgartner flew higher than anyone ever in a helium hot air balloon and broke the record for the highest jump.

Still, even Baumgartner seemed taken aback when Utley detailed how fast he had fallen at one point -- 833.9 mph, or Mach 1.24, smashing his goal to break the sound barrier.

And yes.  The guy floated up in a manned balloon capsule.  He depressurized it, opened up the door, and stepped out into space.  I watched this live, along with millions of others worldwide, and it was utterly incredible.

Give it a watch.

StupidiNews!

• Malala Yousufzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot in the head by Taliban forces, has been flown to Britain for treatment.
• A new independent report commissioned by Britain's Parliament is urging MPs to legalize "soft drugs" like marijuana because the country's drug policy has failed.
• In Egypt, dozens of protesters were injured over the weekend during clashes with police in Cairo's Tahrir Square.
• Japan's Softbank is looking for approval to purchase a $20 billion 70% stake in Sprint Nextel, in what would be the largest foreign acquisition of a US company so far.
• Amazon will be issuing refund credit to Kindle customers as part of the class-action suit settlement with book publishers in 2013.

Last Call

Former GOP and finally Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania passed away Sunday afternoon at the age of 82.

For most of his 30 years as Pennsylvania's longest-serving U.S. senator and prominent moderate in Congress, Arlen Specter was a Republican, though often at odds with the GOP leadership.

He helped end the Supreme Court hopes of former federal appeals Judge Robert H. Bork, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan. Decades later, he was one of only three Republicans in Congress to vote for President Barack Obama's economic stimulus.

His breaks with his party were hardly a surprise: He had begun his political career as a Democrat and ended it as one, too.

In between, he was at the heart of several major American political events. He rose to prominence in the 1960s as an assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, developing the single-bullet theory in President John F. Kennedy's assassination. He came to the Senate in the Reagan landslide of 1980 and was a key voice in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of both Bork and Clarence Thomas.

Specter died Sunday died at his home in Philadelphia from complications of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, said his son Shanin. He was 82. Over the years, Specter had fought two previous bouts with Hodgkin lymphoma, overcome a brain tumor and survived cardiac arrest following bypass surgery.

In the end, Specter voted for the Affordable Care Act as a Democrat before losing to Joe Sestak in the primary two years ago, but he was 80 even then.  It was a long career of service, and while his votes weren't always something I agreed with, he was the last of his breed:  the moderate Republican.

Compared to the Republicans in the Senate now?  I'd rather have 42 Arlen Specters.

Chuck You, Mark Sanford

This is pretty much race baiting/trolling on purpose by the Republicans.  Shocking, I know.

Former South Carolina Governor and Fox News contributor Mark Sanford wandered off the Appalachian Trail again Sunday morning when, in yet another completely isolated example of a Republican being totally-not-racist even though he sounds racist, said that President Obama is going to “come out and throw a lot of spears” at Tuesday’s upcoming debate.

America’s News HQ anchor Shannon Bream wasn’t in the shot, but she didn’t react audibly, and never skipped a beat in continuing to discuss expectations for Tuesday’s debate.

Gov. Sanford first praised former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney‘s performance at the first debate, then predicted that “You know, obviously Obama will come out in this case much more forcefully and he will throw a lot of spears.”

Yeah, sure, coming this close to using "spearchucker" from a guy from South Carolina is totally an accident.  Just like the shot-up campaign HQ window in Denver on Friday.

I'm just being overly sensitive, too.  Sure, that's it.

Sucker Punch Leaves Bus Driver Suspended

The Smoking Gun has a video and recap of a Cleveland bus driver who punches a rude passenger.  He has been suspended and his actions labeled unacceptable.

They're mostly right.

The punch wasn't necessary, but she was aggressive and her behavior was alarming enough that this would have escalated into self-defense shortly.  I'm not saying this excuses his actions, but it does expose a need to hold people in his position accountable while giving them support and resources to handle passengers like this.  Otherwise you end up with what we have here, a story where there are no innocents and no good came from their actions.

A Cleveland municipal bus driver has been suspended after video surfaced this week showing him decking a mouthy female rider with a bolo punch.

The confrontation between the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) worker and the unidentified woman was apparently filmed by another rider. It is unclear from the above clip, however, what triggered the dispute.

[WARNING: The video is peppered with curse words and racial slurs.]

The driver of bus 2802 leaves his seat after the woman appears to strike him. "You going to jail now," the driver says twice before throwing an uppercut that knocks the woman to the ground.

Soda Industry Fizzes Over And Sues

Soft-drink makers, restaurateurs and other businesses are suing to block New York City's move to end the sale of super-sized, sugary drinks in many eateries.

The American Beverage Association and others sued the city Friday. City officials had no immediate response.

The lawsuit says the unelected health board shouldn't be telling people how much soda to drink. The suit also says the rule "burdens consumers and unfairly harms small businesses."

Soda is unhealthy in large amounts.  However, no one drink or series of drinks is responsible for the decline of our health.  It is a long-term issue in which we strain our kidneys and heart and ultimately pay the price.

Restricting soft drinks makes sense, when done from a personal perspective.  It is not government's duty to regulate legal products that are harmless when the consumer is using their brain.  Restricting the size not only doesn't accomplish the goal of people drinking less, it also fails to address the core issue of making healthy choices.

I find the timing of this interesting.  I hate water, but have not allowed myself to have a soda or coffee until I drink an eight ounce serving of water.  Not only has this reduced my caffeine and soda intake, it has drastically increased my water intake.  I have never felt so great.  I understand what New York City is trying to do.  They're just doing it the wrong way, abusing their authority and overstepping their boundaries.

The Race Was Tightening Up Before The Debates

Yesterday on the podcast I gave my theory on why the polls have closed up so tightly, and not all of the race tightening action is because of the debates.  Smartypants points this out over at her place too.

For months now I've been saying that I don't pay attention to national polls. But I want to talk about them right now to make a point.

Everyone is assuming that the swing in the polls towards Romney is because of the first debate. But no matter how many times people say that - its just not true.

She points out that the polls started getting closer at the end of September, several days before the debate.  She also points out that Kevin Drum too has noticed this.

What's going on with the polls? I wrote something about this a few days ago, but I think it might have gotten buried, so I want to repeat it. According to both Pollster and Real Clear Politics, Mitt Romney began his big surge well before last week's debate. In the ten days before the debate, Pollster shows Romney gaining 2.4 points and RCP shows Romney gaining 1.8 points.

Romney has continued gaining since then, and Obama has continued falling, but this isn't solely a reaction to Obama's lousy debate performance. It started in late September. But why? Nothing special happened during that week to benefit Romney. Their ad buys remained about the same as always. The only thing I can think of is that it was just the inevitable rebound from the hit Romney took over the 47% video.

That might be it, but my theory I think is more plausible:  This was right about time that A) Mitt Romney was about to be written off for good, and B) right about when polling outfits changed from registered voters to likely voters.

Registered voters are hard statistics, you ask if the person is a registered voter or not.  If not, they don't get into the poll.  If you go just by registered voters, the Democrats have an advantage.

But each polling outfit has their own criteria for what a likely voter is.  And inevitably, likely voter models favor Republicans.

Usually polling outfits don't make the switch from registered voters to likely voters until about the first of October.  That's what I think happened here: combined with the debate, it turned into a serious boost for Romney in the polls.

Yes, some polling outfits have been using likely voter models now for months, but the criteria isn't always clear.  There's always a subjective component.  I think that subjective component has magnified Romney's momentum.

Notice that the Senate polls still favor the Democrats, in a big way.  That makes me all the more wary.

I think it's overblown.

Last Call

Mitt Romney's Bain Capital outfit is back in the political news in a big way this week, with stories of Bain closing down factories and moving jobs to China, while Romney would directly profit from the tax breaks that offshoring those jobs would create.

The tale of Asimco Technologies, an auto parts manufacturer whose plants dot eastern China, would seem to underscore Mitt Romney’s campaign-trail complaint that China’s manufacturing juggernaut is costing America jobs. 

Nine years ago, the company bought two camshaft factories that employed about 500 people in Michigan. By 2007 both were shut down. Now Asimco manufactures the same components in China on government-donated land in a coastal region that China has designated an export base, where companies are eligible for the sort of subsidies Mr. Romney says create an unfair trade imbalance. 

But there is a twist to the Asimco story that would not fit neatly into a Romney stump speech: Since 2010, it has been owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mr. Romney, who has as much as $2.25 million invested in three Bain funds with large stakes in Asimco and at least seven other Chinese businesses, according to his 2012 candidate financial disclosure and other documents. 

Oh, and it gets worse. Asimco is not the only company slated to be sacrificed on the altar of global profits.

Sensata Technologies is a healthy manufacturing company that employs nearly 200 workers at a factory in northern Illinois. The company has become the focus of national attention because it has been taken over by Bain Capital, which plans to shut the factory down, lay off the workers, and outsource the production to China before the end of the year. 

The workers have pleaded with GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the founder of Bain Capital, to exert his considerable influence to save their jobs. Romney still makes millions each year in income from Bain. So far, he has declined to weigh in, and the factory is scheduled to close by the end of the year.

The best part?  Romney stands to personally make a couple hundred thousand off the deal in tax savings.  The Sensata Technologies story is especially awful.



This is Mitt Romney running his businesses like a business.  Now he wants to run the country like a business.

This story is going to be huge, folks.

Race And The Obama Presidency

Jelani Cobb's piece in the New Yorker is a long overdue and frank look at the myth that President Obama's election in 2008 was going to result in post-racial anything.  Where we're at in 2012 should have put that to rest, but it's good to have the topic finally being discussed.

The post-racial myth is the logical outgrowth of an older mythology that the black struggle for freedom was anchored in a moral crusade to redeem America at large. The truth of the matter is that Martin Luther King, Jr., was more of a backroom operator than that. The idea of redemption stemmed from a moral sales pitch proffered by King, a transaction in which whites would confront the awful contours of American history and be granted exemption from its implications. Black people had a more tangible yield in mind: removing the dusty boot of Jim Crow from our necks. If fashioning spiritual redemption as a form of higher patriotism was enough to end abominations like the waterlogged obscenity that was Emmett Till’s body, then so be it. But the deeper truth is that black people were more concerned with saving our own necks than saving America’s soul.

For this reason, white claims to have “marched with Dr. King” eventually became an unintentional punch-line, a disclaimer for whatever racially obtuse commentary followed that preface. The joke, however, was on us. Few could conceive that forty years after King’s death, the nation would elect a black President—an event deeply rooted in the civil-rights ethos, a bolder redemption, a stronger immunization against the claims of history. And, as with the claims to have marched with Dr. King, the very fact of Obama’s election has been a disclaimer against the racism that came after it.

Do read the entire article, it's fascinating and informative.  I touched on it briefly in today's podcast too.

Podcast Versus The Stupid!

Episode 17 this weekend, Unleash The Biden now up for your listening pleasure.  Ian Boudreau hangs out with us again for the hour as we talk the VP debate, the tightening race for President, Todd Akin's awful views on evolution, and the scary part of the campaign season as the nutjobs come out of the woodwork.

Listen to internet radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on Blog Talk Radio

As always, you can right click and download the episode here or subscribe to the podcast at iTunes.

Legend Gary Collins Dies At 74

It's been a tough month for older celebrities.  Today Gary Collins joins the list of people I grew up with and will miss terribly.

Breaking from TMZ:

Gary Collins, a legendary TV actor and host, died early this morning in Biloxi, MS at the age of 74.

Harrison County Deputy Coroner Brian Switzer tells TMZ he passed of natural causes just before 1:00 AM at Biloxi Regional Medical Center.

Collins' resumé is a mile long ... having appeared on episodes of such hit shows as "Fantasy Island," "Charlie's Angels," "Alice," "The Love Boat," "Police Story" ... the list goes on. 

Collins was also known for hosting the talk show "Hour Magazine" and from 1980-1988 and hosted the Miss America Pageant from 1985-1989.

Every show we watched eventually had Collins as a guest, it seemed.  He was always known as a happy go lucky man who liked to laugh.

All About The Missing Benjamins

Somehow I'm thinking that the list of possible suspects in this little heist was known to the cops well ahead of time.

Unknown thieves stole a "large amount" of newly-designed $100 bills bound for a Federal Reserve facility in New Jersey on Thursday, the FBI said.

Frank Burton, Jr., spokesman for the FBI's Philadelphia division, said the theft occurred at some point between when the shipment of bills landed at the Philadelphia airport on a commercial flight from Dallas at 10:20 Thursday morning, and when the shipment reached its New Jersey destination around 2:00 p.m., when the courier service transporting the bills reported some missing.

Burton declined to comment on the amount taken, but said it was substantial. 

I'm betting our crooks aren't going to be spending the money here in the states anytime soon, either, for one important reason:

The missing bills carry a design that is not slated to reach circulation until 2013. They feature a large gold "100" graphic on the back, and an orange box on the front with a faint image of the Liberty Bell.

The second any US bank sees $100 bills like these, the game is over.   Our crooks get to sit on these bills for six months, or head overseas to launder them.  Either way, I'm betting there's a bust soon.  Couldn't be a huge list of people with access to those bills.

We'll see.

It's Nobody's Business But The Turks

It seems our Turkish friends aren't really buying the whole "we have an election season going on right now" excuse as to why the US and the UN aren't doing anything about Syria shelling Turkish border positions, and PM Erdogan is being somewhat vocal about his level of annoyance.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan rebuked the U.N. Security Council for inaction over Syria on Saturday as war intensified across the country, saying the world body of superpowers was repeating mistakes that led to massacres in Bosnia in the 1990s.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces used air strikes and artillery to bombard insurgents on several fronts in the 19-month-old conflict, which risks dragging in regional powers with no sign of a diplomatic breakthrough.

Turkey - increasingly entangled after having intercepted a Syrian airliner carrying what it said were Russian-made munitions for the Syrian army, infuriating Moscow and Damascus - has led calls for intervention, including no-fly zones enforced by foreign aircraft to stop deadly air raids by Assad's forces.

But there is little chance of U.N. support for robust action. China insists any solution to Syria's crisis must come from within while Russia has said many Syrians still support Assad. Western nations meanwhile are loath to commit to any military action that could touch off a regional sectarian war.

"The U.N. Security Council has not intervened in the human tragedy that has been going on in Syria for 20 months, despite all our efforts," Erdogan told a conference in Istanbul attended by dignitaries including Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby. "There's an attitude that encourages, gives the green light to Assad to kill tens or hundreds of people every day."

And yes, Erdogan's comparison to Bosnia is rather apt.  China and Russia aren't going to allow anything to happen on a UN front until things are already too late, because al-Assad is A) a pretty good customer of theirs and B) the last thing either one of them wants is the UN poking around in his books.

Eventually something's going to have to give.  Sadly, it's not looking like diplomacy.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Colorado police have identified the body of ten-year-old Jessica Ridgeway, reported missing last week, as they now investigate her murder.
• Northern Ireland's first abortion clinic will open next week, and the city of Belfast is preparing for demonstrations, protests, and possibly arrests.
• Civil rights groups will not appeal South Carolina's struck down voter ID law to the Supreme Court, citing a major win in protecting the rights of voters in the state.
• PayPal will cut at least 300 jobs as the online payment company looks to save money against the credit card companies.
• Google may be soon facing a major anti-trust lawsuit as the Federal Trade Commission looks into how the company's search engine practices harmed competitors.

Last Call

And this right here is a Syfy movie of the week.

A softball-sized eyeball from an unknown creature has washed up on a beach in Florida. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Gino Covacci was taking a morning walk along Pompano Beach when he spotted the blue orb bobbing in the tide.

Placing it in a plastic bag, he walked home and put it into the refrigerator, figuring that it was something unusual.

“It was very, very fresh,” he told the Sentinel. “It was still bleeding when I put it in the plastic bag.”

Covacci contacted police, who directed him to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, who were also stymied as to what animal the eye could have come from.

Wildlife Commission spokesperson Carli Segelson said that wildlife officials packed the eye in ice and forwarded it to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg.

And then whatever it came from shows up and it has 13 more of them.  Only Dean Cain and Kari Wuhrer have any chance against it, because if they fail, humanity is next on the menu!

Yeah, we're boned.