And what a great thing that is.

A few minutes ago I saw a CNBC promo for an interview by Maria Bartiromo with Obama after giving his big economic speech, and she previewed it by showing a few clips of the interview.

It must be considered a faux pas these days to actually write a diary that doesn't throw shit through the fan at Clinton and Obama.

While people fight about nonsense such as "negative ad makes Obama look spookier!" or yet another "I won't vote for Hillary/Obama if s/he is the nominee" the world keeps spinning and important things are being ignored.

For those of you who have been following the latest international news and the elections taking place in Poland and Switzerland today some results are already in.

More info below the fold.

[I haven't seen this posted today, and even with the well deserved Gore Mania occurring today, I think this story is still very important]

Well, well, looks like we have another one of those "phony soldiers" opening up their big mouths again. Former Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, who once held Saint Petraeus' current job as top commander in Iraq has came out with a scathing attack on the Bush administration and their handling of the war in Iraq.

More below on his words....

So in the aftermath of the 0.5% rate cut by the Federal Reserve, the dollar has plunged to it's lowest levels in decades against a host of world currencies. The Canadian dollar, which hasn't been at parity with the U.S. dollar since 1976 is now worth US$1.0004--many are predicting it will go even higher in the coming weeks. The Euro also closed above US$1.40 for the first time ever, with predictions of US$1.45 by the end of the year.

Boys and girls, when the New York times even utters a word or two that have been used exclusively in the blogospheric domain, that's big news. When they advocate such a route, it's pretty big fucking news.

In a much welcome piece of good news in a sea of bad, it appears that scientists may have finally found the blueprint to one day making a viable cure for HIV.

We all know that today's treatments only suppress the replication process of the virus, delaying the onset of full blown AIDS, but the current treatments do nothing to rid the body of the virus itself.

If you're a news junkie like me, you will usually check out Media Bistro's TVNewser at least once a day. I usually get an internal giggle from seeing Olbermann's ratings skyrocket, or schadenfreude from seeing Tucker and Beck's abysmal numbers. If you checked recently you will have come across the ratings numbers for the the flurry of debates that have taken place. It turns out that the two Democratic debates have delivered smackdowns on the three republican debates so far.

Follow me below for the juicy numbers....

Tomorrow the House will vote  for a new Iraq finding bill that employs the "short leash" approach. Regardless of how we may feel about this plan, it is absolutely the next best approach considering the current circumstances. It's unclear whether the Senate will go along with the plan (as has been reported in plenty of diaries), but if the House were to pass such a measure tomorrow it would put immense pressure on the Senate to act.

Are you in the mood for hot sweaty action with real live girls?

I was not able to watch for more than five minutes Al Gore's appearance in the House committee this morning, but I was able to watch the entirety of Al Gore's testimony in the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee chaired by the very distinguished and eloquent Barbara Boxer. At the end of the whole two and a half hour hearing, I was left speechless with how much of a class act Vice President Gore was as he handled the barrage of nasty  and delusional attacks from Sen. Inhofe (Craziest Fucker-Oklahoma) and how much he has now transcended party politics.    

MSNBC is reporting right now as I type that GOP Sen. John Sununu (NH) is now calling for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.

I haven't found any stories in print, as soon as they show up I will update. All I can do for now is to tell people to turn on Hardball right now to see the news.

I usually check Raw Story for some news, I always take them with a grain of salt but I always end up going there...so today while checking this article about Joe Lieberman trying to get a "Kumbaya moment" between Democrats and Republicans on his committee, I found an advertisement for Ann Coulter.

See below...

Unbelievable...the Hillary Machine is at it again.

First, she won't admit any errors in judgment regarding her War Vote. Okay fine.

Then she goes out of her way to attack the grassroots by saying she doesn't need them. Okay fine.

And now?

I think we can officially proclaim that every February 5th from here on will be Meta Day!

Every couple of months something flammable ignites and we have a flame war. Currently we are having a flame war about One Pissed Off Liberal, ad hominems, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and the "diary police"--all mixing together for an especially toxic stew.

In a purely self-aggrandizing advertisement op-ed piece in Sunday's Washington Post, the infamous Ann Coulter-wannabe Dinesh D'Souza attempts to defend himself from the "onslaught" of attacks directed his way over his new "book" entitled The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11.

After reading his pathetic and utterly vacuous defense of his "work", I am left with complete mush in my head--my brain has literally exploded out of sheer amazement that this man could possibly be so fucking dumb. I could not sit back and let this pathetic excuse of a man go unanswered.

The former National Security Advisor under Bush the 1st, Brent Scowcroft--who was actually opposed to the Iraq invasion in the beginning, ensuing a rift between the Papa and Junior camps, has written an Op-ed in the New York Times partly hailing the Iraq Study Group findings but also ends up covering for the inevitable Bush-McCain-Lieberman Escalation Doctrice.

In an article in the Times of London today, we find out that experiments have been conducted on gay rams to try to make them be interested in humping ewes instead of other rams. We are told that about one in tem rams seems to prefer other rams.