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I heard on Tuesday morning that the Governor of South Carolina, whom had apparently been missing since last Thursday, was found hiking in the mountains. What? Missing? I thought it strange for such an important member of our society to just take themselves off the grid without telling anyone (not even his wife and sons on Father's Day weekend). Then i thought, what a strange thing for ANY person to do that. You never hear about some business clerk shooting off to the woods for a week without telling anyone. He would be fired from him job and/or the police would be out looking for him.

Then I heard this morning that he was not hiking in the mountains, but took some alone time down in Argentina. What? I mean, really? You flew down to Argentina by yourself to look around? Really.

I just went to CNN and watched this. WHAT? Holy God.

Let's just consider the level of stupid this is. Having an affair when you are the governor of a state is dumb. But it certainly isn't unprecedented. Hell, if you told me that Elliot Spitzer was buying time with some madams in Jersey, I would have said you were crazy. But THIS dumbass gets on a plane on a THURSDAY and heads down to SOUTH F'ING AMERICA and stays for 5 or 6 days, doesn't tell ANYONE ANYTHING, and does so over Father's Day weekend. Didn't think maybe his wife or kids would think, 'HMM, its F'ing FATHER's Day, where the hell is Dad?' Or didn't think someone on his staff might think 'Wow, i haven't seen the highest ranking member of the F'ing government of South Carolina for the better part of a week, should we call the police?'

Good job soon to be ex-Governor. You truly are the dumbest person in South Carolina. And given the number of confederate flags i saw the last time i was down there, that is saying something.

Oh William Kristol. Will you ever be right? In a blog entry that echoed his comments on Fox News Sunday (which echoed every conservative's view almost exactly on the subject) my favorite neocon, Billy Kristol, compared the American President to Neville Chamberlain. He feels that Obama has not declared his solidarity with the Iranian people.

I wonder if it has occurred to Bill that if the President did that, he would forcibly interject the United States into the discussion and muddy the waters? Can you imagine a bigger Christmas present for Amadinejad? He would paint the protesters today as pro American/anti-Iranian and the very strong momentum and large scale outrage within Iran would all be for naught. The issue would be spun as "U.S. Imperialism" or even worse "U.S. election meddling".

I love Bill's fake outrage. When you watch him on TV, you get the feeling that he doesn't believe he's saying the things he is sometimes.

Ever since President Obama has taken office, I feel a certain sense of calm. He is making reasoned, pragmatic decisions based on facts and not ideology. Why the left is hammering him for doing so i find to be disappointing. Remember liberals, we are the smart ones. Let's not pull a Bush and let our gut tell us what to do. We have to remember that we can be right on an issue and wrong on a policy. Obama gets it and it is truly calming to my existential angst.

Not all the time, but sometimes he needs to hammer the living hell out of his critics. Such is the case with the craziness about Guantanamo. He's closing the base. He said he would from the beginning (and so did McCain by the way). There are two groups of people that Obama has to open up a can of whoop-ass on to expose as ignorant morons.

First are those people who want to keep the base open. Really? I haven't heard one coherent argument in support of this. Even if you are pro torture, torturing them there is no different than here. Anything else? I'm really serious.

Ok, those people are a minority and maybe not representative of America. However the majority of Americans don't want detainees in the U.S. What? Why? Again, I have not heard one sane argument. Are people THIS AFRAID of these scary individuals? Since when have the American people been so spineless?

And what exactly are they thinking these detainees are going to do? It's not like these people are being released. They are going to super max prisons!!! So the majority of Americans are so afraid, they don't even want these people going to prisons in the United States? Again, I'm really serious. What's the argument they're making?

Are our prisons not able to hold people? Maybe that's the problem.

If you listen to the media or God love him Joe Biden, there's not going to be much left 28 days later.

But what have we really learned so far? Swine flu seems to be spreading, but not a lot of people seem to be dying. In fact, the World Health Organization has downgraded the number of deaths in Mexico from 168 to 16. That's a big difference seeing how we were all so afraid of swine flu (aka the H1N1 virus) primarily BECAUSE OF the mortality rate in Mexico.

There has been one confirmed death of swine virus in America - a Mexican toddler that was visiting the U.S. Any death is a tragedy, but as far as the flu goes, this one has not yet reached the deadliness of the seasonal flu. On average, 200,000 Americans are hospitalized with the seasonal flu every year and 36,000 die (Source). So if last week was an average week, close to 700 people died of the seasonal flu, 1 of the swine flu.

We don't have a large enough sample size to know if swine flu is more likely to kill you once you contract it than the seasonal flu. Given the low incidents and initial mortality rates though, one thing is becoming clear at this point. Statistically you are MUCH more likely to die today from seasonal flu than from swine flu. And probably more likely to die in a car wreck than either of those.