Banned?

In an addendum to one of my comments at Al-Arianna about the McCain campaign, I sarcastically noted that I had reached a milestone, 400 censored posts out of approximately 2200.

I snarked a few other times over the last couple of days about the heavy handed and arbitrary nature of their moderation and now I have noticed that my archived approved comments started disappearing as well as the ones that were blocked. I believe that is leading up to a ban for not meekly taking my soma and putting up with something that is anathema to progressives, snuffing free speech in the name of a moderator's personal predilections even when those posts don't violate their stated guidelines.

In fact, often what gets wiped are long and thoughtful posts about an issue. Then when I answer a conservative troll with a pretty vicious pithy and ad hominem shot, that is permitted to survive scrutiny. What the fuck is up with that?

HuffPo's moderators have their heads up their asses and it is eventually going to drive people away because nobody can figure out where the line is. The only reason I am there so much right now is because I am obsessed with the presidential campaign. Once that is resolved, I am mulling just staying away. I can only put up with so much frustration.

McCain Using Same Robocall Firm That Helped Smear Him In 2000

Story is here.

Note: This was a reply to the following ridiculous assertion:

"Tim Russert would have gone insane this election season with so many lies going around. I imagine him with anybody of the McCain campaign with the videos and the quotes to prove their contradictions in his very elegant and respectful way to cross examine. I believe that this election would have been a landslide by today if we would have somebody like him pressuring for interviews and confronting the politicians. I still miss him on sunday mornings!!!"

My reply:

Are you serious?

Russert would have kept every freaking GOP talking point roiling right up to election day. As Arianna said, he was a captive of conventional wisdom, a lazy thinker and largely AWOL in the runup to the Iraq War.

Please, he was weaker than a Shirley Temple.

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Note: Though shalt not criticize St. Timmeh.

BusinessWeek: Disney Is The Media Industry's Best Bet For Stability During Financial Crisis

Story is here.

Yet another laudatory Disney related article in Huffington Post.

Again, what is Disney's relationship with Huffington Post to keep getting so much favorable coverage here when that company is anti-labor, uses sweatshops to manufacture its clothing and toys and interferes with the electoral process in Anaheim? Not to mention that its ABC division broadcast that libelous movie blaming 9/11 on Bill Clinton.

You owe us an explanation.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/18/news/international/disney_china/index.htm
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/15/local/me-disney15
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/08/abc.movie/index.html

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Note: Disney is the holy of holies at Al-Arianna (my new nickname for HuffPo), so my protest against their whoring for the mouse was crushed yet again.

Federal Immigration Policy is Destabilizing Main Street USA

Story is here.

On the ground, where real America lives, illegal immigration is damaging K-12 education by filling schools with children who can't read even in their own language, more and more scarce resources have to be diverted to get them up to speed on english, they have high dropout rates and they bring increased gang activity to local schools.

Just so that you know, I voted AGAINST Proposition 187 in California because it was bad policy. It would have made the fallout from illegal immigration WORSE.

Communities I have lived in as well as those nearby have been turned into crime infested havens thanks to hispanic gangs. Illegal immigrants are swelling our prisons, driving up law enforcement costs and the houses and apartments where you have 10-20 illegals living in a single unit do little for local living conditions and home values.

This is exacerbated by illegals driving down wages in the construction industry and the meat packing industry you mentioned, among others.

The financial health of hospitals is also threatened by streams of illegals using emergency rooms as their health care when they can't pay.

Dealing with any of this (mass deportations are a needed good start) has become an electoral third rail and thus neither side of the immigration debate is likely to get anywhere, which only increases frustration among community members

There are practical matters of statecraft here. You can't slove anything on mere good wishes and idealism.

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Note: Can't inject any reality into HuffPo about this question, now can we. Especially if you are Anglo, as I am. What a crock of shit that it.

Vicki Iseman Denies McCain Affair

Story is here.

So she waits until three weeks before the election to say, "I did not have sex with that man"?

Plus the National Journals has a well established rightwing bias, though not quite as outright cuckoo as National Review.

If the NY Times was so off base here---and that story they ran does seem to have damaged her career as a Capitol Hill lobbyist, why isn't she suing? She wasn't a public figure, so there would be no Sullivan Test for any possible libel action she might want to file, making it easier for her to win a favorable judgment.

This is just part of a Republican campaign to look like they were victimized by the media they claim is in the tank for Obama. But my suspicion is that McCain had his fundamental was in a tank of a different sort and now they are trying to sing and dance their way around it. And that phone call to Lanny Davis? That was an act.

Look, if her and McCain's relationship was so on the up and up, his aides wouldn't have been concerned about keeping them apart. So there was indeed some kind of smoke there, but we just haven't seen a definitive fire out of it yet.

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Joe The Plumber: Obama Tap Dances Like "Sammy Davis Jr."

Story is here.

Joe the Plumber appears to be Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.

According to Lucas County, Ohio court records, there is a Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher who has a state income tax lien of $1,182.98. According to the court record he lives on a street that is part of the Lincoln Green subdivision.

And Joe the Plumber's Father appears to be Robert Wurzelbacher right wing fanatic and contributor who is the son in law of..... you're not going to believe this. Charles Keating.

This just gets better and better.

Oh there's also a Joe the Twice Divorced Wife Beater.

And The Joe I Haven't Had a Plumbing License Since 2002.

I wonder which of these will turn out to be the guy doing all the talk shows?

I'm sure we'll know by the end of the day.

****Update: Joe the "undecided voter" appears to be a registered Republican. He voted for McCain in the primary.

*** Update 2: There's another Wurzelbacher. Doug Wurzelbacher. Doug is active in competitive dog sled racing. Guess where he lives? Wasilla, Alaska. What are the odds? I wonder if he's related to "Plumber Joe"?

These questions need answers.

# posted by The Punisher @ Thursday, October 16, 2008
Comments:
An FYI--

A search on ancestry dot com turns up a Samuel J. Wurzelbacher at some point in the last twenty years living at - get this - 1960 W. KEATING Dr., Mesa, AZ!!!!

http://theobfuscationreport.blogspot.com/2008/10/joe-plumber-nope-joe-tax-dodger.html

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Note: I don't know why this was censored, though HuffPo has been censoring a lot of longer posts lately. Later on, I did put in a post with a short blurb about this and a link to the story, so this time around was a mixed bag. However, that only further exoses the arbitrary nature of the HuffPo censors.

An Old Boxer Who Has Been in One Too Many Fights

Story is here.

McCain's performance was not worse than that of Stockdale nor was it as horrendous as Cruz Bustamante's debate performance trying to replace Gray Davis as California Governor, but the fact remains that his fly by the seat of his pants style makes McCain perpetually ill prepared to take on sharper operators such as Obama.

He can blame his dad and wife for that since McCain has never had to pay a consequence, until now, for his laziness, impulsiveness, gutlessness and sense of entitlement because dad or his millionaire wife was there to bail his butt out or buy him what he wanted.

The McCain campaign was just a pathetic spectacle of privileged mediocrity that had never had to work for anything in his life. So he never developed the toughness and cunning that one learns from the experience of having to fight and claw for what one has.

McCain thought of himself as a downmarket aristocrat (just like Bush) and he reached the end of that rope Wednesday just as the Navy wouldn't make him an Admiral. His life is now a complete failure. I hope he is man enough to admit it and maybe he, like Jimmy Carter, can now do something constructive to save his reputation before he passes from this life. Don't count on it, though. He has always been an inertia kind of guy.

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Note: ??? Maybe they didn't like the shot I took at Bustamante?

The Conservative Purge Has Begun

Story is here.

While we're on the subject of conservative purges, Virgil Goode has some 'splainin' to do to conservatives about earmarking $150,000 in federal funds for a film involving his closeted gay press secretary called Eden's Curve. That piece of cinema features drug use and bisexuality. Yes you conservatives out there, your tax dollars are funding a non-family fare film thanks to ol' Virgil:
http://airamerica.com/blog/2008/oct/15/virgil-be-goode-bad

Of course, you're going to punish him for it, right? I mean, you wouldn't be moral relativists, now would you?

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Note: I took an earlier shot at a conservative using this fact, but then they censor it in a different article? Now can you understand why people are frustrated by Arianna's little fiefdom?

Colin Powell Is Ready To Endorse

Story is here.

Bradley was the black Gerald Ford, a slow witted tool of the L.A. westside political machine (which whored itself out to local developers). A nice enough guy to be sure, but just not exactly what I would call a leader. L.A. had already started deteriorating under Mayor Yorty, so I don't totally blame Bradley for the frightening level of homicides in L.A. at the time, but he sure didn't do much to ameliorate it.

That therefore made that gubernatorial election a Hobson's choice because George Deukmejian hated anyone who didn't make into seven figures. Not exactly swift upstairs himself, but his staid conservatism apparently made him more palatable to the electorate. I held my nose and voted for Bradley.

Willie Brown is a no good hustler. There is an analogy I have always made of Brown, but it would probably be censored even though it is extremely appropriate. He was a big water carrier for the insurance industry and should have been locked up for it.

Again, I am a Democrat, but I calls 'em as I sees 'em.

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Note: There was another post I wrote parodying the "Obama is too exotic" cant of McCain by applying it to Colin Powell, whose parents are Jamaican. I even put an emoticon with it to let everyone know I was joking. That one got censored. Again, the HuffPo moderators are humor challenged.

Christopher Buckley Resigns From National Review After Obama Endorsement

Story is here.

Republicans complain about political correctness, but there is such a thing as "conservative correctness" and it is enforced by righties similar to how Mao and his henchmen ensured that the Communist Party line was adhered to. What Kathleen Parker and Chris Buckley endured was akin to the struggle meetings of the Cultural Revolution.

And you know the old saying that he who is most loathed his he who is most like oneself. That is why Newt Gingrich hated Bill Clinton so much and why Rich Lowry hates the Tom Hayden types: they are both ideologically driven control freaks who hate being told that their utopian fairy lands aren't possible given the peculiarities of human nature.

Whatever side of the spectrum this happens on, it is thought control and should be abhorred by all thinking people.

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Global Economic Crisis Likely To Have Profound Consequences For US Politics, World Relations

Story is here.

The Bush Administration had failed to heed history and mired us in a three front war of terror (that in Afghanistan, Iraq and against the American people with increased surveillance, eroded civil rights and at times overweening increases in public security), piled up debt that made us vulnerable to the machinations of Japan, China, the Saudis and even Mexico, as well as a crippling of defense mechanisms geared to protecting the public from corporate swindlers.

The Katrina disaster was a result of that, exposing the conservative penchant for an "I'm alright jack, too bad for you" mindset. Too the rest of the world, that is when the wheels really seemed to begin falling off of the American cadillac.

Our infrastructure was already deteriorating and we needed substantial reinvestment in it anyway. That will happen under Obama even with the onerous bailouts the financial mismanagement has engendered.

What is further required is raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour, making bonuses given to executives available to regular employees on the shop floor, and caps on the ratio of executive pay vis a vis what the lower rung workers receive.

So it just isn't a structural problem, it is a cultural one and the mentality of wilfull rapine has to be curbed in favor of encouraging more of an esprit d' corps between workers and bosses rather than the state of war we have now.

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Note: Did I use too many big words and the moderator didn't understand them? So to be safe he/she deleted my post? Or they think "machination" is an obscenity?

Should Obama Have Picked Hillary As His Running Mate?

Story is here.

George .H.W Bush won with Quayle as his VP nominee. What killed his chances for a second term was a combination of Bill Clinton's smarts and charisma and a sense by the American public that Bush was out of touch when that recession hit, something that was exemplified by the supermarket scanner incident.

You don't mention Geraldine Ferraro, whose pick by Walter Mondale was seen as a desperation move by the press and the public. It later turned out that her husband had some unsavory baggage that didn't do their campaign any favors.

But Mondale was going to lose anyway. Palin is the first VP nominee in my lifetime that I can remember where people were passionately citing a running mate as a compulsion to vote for the opponent. This move will be remembered as an indication of McCain's colosally craven submission to the GOP business as usual crowd when he really wanted to pick Joe Lieberman.

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Women Should Beware the Male Spinster

Story is here.

First, minding one's own business is a virtue.

Secondly, different people have different definitions of happiness and snearing, petty and overweening articles such as this one are no doubt born out of envy of the free man by those who are stuck in marriages whose expiration date has long passed and where the only exit is through a courtroom. It is like the old joke you hear from comedians: he should be miserable like the rest of us [by getting married]. No thanks.

After breaking up a three year relationship, I have dropped out of the dating market because I want to be selfish with my time. I have a lot of different interests, a web site to tend to and I don't have to worry about pleasing anyone other then myself. And I cannot be happier.

Now maybe somewhere down the road I might want to start dating again, but then again, maybe not. My life is mine and I don't owe it to anyone else to live it a certain way in order to submit to their absurdly outsized control freak tendencies.

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One Reason Race May Not Derail Obama: The 'Do the Right Thing' Effect

Story is here.

"It's different," John Turturro's Pino Frangione insists. "Magic, Eddie, Prince are not niggers...They're not really black. They're black but they're not really black. They're more than black. To me, it's different."

Spike kinda blew that, actually. It's not that Magic, et al are "more than black," for some people, it is that they are ENTERTAINMENT, which gives a certain kind of white person permission to either laugh at blacks or to vicariously have blacks work for them while being free to slam them without social reprobation if they don't deliver on the court, etc.

The problem for some white people about Obama is that he has stepped outside the socially and culturally approved envelope they cubbyhole blacks into (there's a badly formed metaphor for you). Since many whites don't know black folks socially, it is scary for them to see one in a position of authority when they have never had a black boss or perhaps even coworkers.

And the GOP has been playing up the fear angle non-stop since 9/11, supplying the American public with more ready made terror than Osama Bin Laden. So anyone who doesn't see the McCain campaign as a racist carnival is in denial. No matter how much of a victory Obama wins, the GOP will see him as a glorified burglar breaking into "their" White House.

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Note: what did I write that was wrong? Or aren't white people allowed to address these questions?

McCain Co-chair Calls Obama "A Guy Of The Street," Raises Drug Use

Story is here.

This just in from the home office in Phoenix Arizona:

The Top Ten Reasons to Vote for McCain:

10. McCain has a kung-fu arm flap!
9. A Republican voter will be chosen at random for an all expenses paid party with the board of AIG!
8. Will make "Those Were the Days (The All in the Family Theme)" the national anthem!
7. Depressions mean big dividends for owners of Big Pharma and cardboard manufacturer stocks!
6. Free tickets to the Ron Silver Film Festival for all Republican voters!
5. But we still hate Hollywood!
4. Get back at those ungrateful grandchildren by shouldering them with the debt you created!
3. McCain gaurenteed not to shout "BooYa!" when he signs a bill!
2. Freepers and N R A members don't s h o o t old white Republicans!
1. Secretary of Defense Dick Armey!

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Bill Maher's Fundamentalism

Story is here.

Sorry, you would be wrong.

Your statement about Maher's "black and white" religious beliefs inherently justifies the existence of all purported religions, be it Christianity, Zoroastrianism, the Rev. Moon as a new improved version of Jesus and even a religion that I want to start using Harold Robbins novels as our holy text. Hey, if a bad science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard, can do it, I can too.

How about you give me some seed money? The more religions the better, right?

Look, religion provides comfort to people who are afraid of death because we all want to believe that after we use up our corporeal shells (is that redundant?) we will somehow carry on anyway. And it has also mostly been used as an instrument of governmental control (go to Wikipedia and look up "the Verdict of Verdun," to see one such atrocity early in Christianity that illustrates my point). Our Constitution is partly a reaction to what occurred in the English Civil War brought about by Cromwell and his buddies.

To not look at religion in this way is pure delusion. And Maher is thus much more on the right side of reality than you are.

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Ouch! McCain's Housing Solution Is a Gift from Taxpayers to Banks

Story is here.

That's all well and good, except if you read the Village Voice article on the mortgage crisis and Freddie and Fannie, HUD was one of the catalysts that ultimately necessitated the bailout of those two public-private entities.

I would also like to see a time limit put on this new layer of government bureaucracy so that it doesn't become a permanent burden on the taxpayer. I was also against the creation of the Department of Homeland Security not just on taxpayer grounds, but for fear that it would become an American oppression palace. I have been proven right on both counts.

We need a top to bottom reorganization of the DC bureaucracy anyway to put it on a 21st century footing and not the WWII one it is currently on.

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Biden: Palin Must Condemn Supporters' Hateful Obama Attacks

Story is here.

I saw that McCain had his wife out today attacking the Democratic ticket. However, there was something wrong with her and, at least to me, it was pretty obvious.

You see, because of the neighborhood I grew up in, I learned to tell when somebody had an undercover buzz on (that is, they were high and trying to not look like it).

And Cindy, I can say with some certainty, was definitely furtively freakin'. She is back on the meds and in dosages not recommended by any competent and ethical physician.

This McCain just gets sadder and sadder.

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My Name Is Bill Swadley, And I Work For Fox

Story is here.

Hey, Tom Brokaw is fine with Fox News (apparently anyway; he never criticizes it, saving his barbs for his own network instead) so you should be, too. After all, if news colossus Brokaw sees them as being on the up and up then they must be, right?

I call Rupert Murdoch's outfit News Corpse for what it has done to electronic journalism.

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Nuclear Power's Opponents Accused Of Being Stuck In The 80's

Story is here.

Sorry HuffPo, but Tierney is just another version of John Stossel:
http://www.motherjones.com/blue_marble_blog/archives/2008/08/9200_fact_checking_j.html

Also, up in my neck of the woods, the Trojan Nuclear Plant might provide a good object lesson in why nuclear is too expensive (not to mention the security risks of producing radioactive waste, among which is plutonium, an A-bomb fuel) for ratepayers to tolerate: http://www.trojandown.com/history.htm

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Where Was Tim?

Story is here.

What is up with this continuing lionization of Tim Russert, someone Arianna herself called "a conventional wisdom monkey"? Why does there seem to be this need by HuffPo writers to rehabilitate a man that was Dick Cheney's favorite echo conduit?

Come on you guys, this is absurd.

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Why Blogs Trample on Leftist Traditions

Story is here.

Don't you see an inherent contradiction here?

"Leftist traditions"? As progressives, we seek to break tradition to keep the human race moving forward, not get bogged down in the quicksand of easy sentiment and misguided atavistic echoes. So that term I just put in quotes strikes me as an oxymoron.

"They make it more difficult for new narratives to take hold."

And that is a bad thing because, well, why exactly? Communism has a nice little narrative. The cant of the neocons leading up to the Iraq War was an interesting tale. The Columbus story about sailing west to prove the world wasn't flat that was taught to those of us of a certain age as gospel truth, all three of those things are demonstrably delusional. What seeking to poke holes in seemingly neat narratives does is keep people from riding a misguided wave to their possible destruction or at least obtaining a clearer vision of the truth.

That you miss the tv show aspects of history is just inane. This was the same complaint I heard from certain segments of sports fans when Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" came out: TMI, they whined. So now we are going to sink to the level of sports fandom, in which we need heroes to the point of ignoring details of social and other history? There's a word for that and it's myopic.

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Rolling Stone: McCain The "Make-Believe Maverick"

Story is here.

Everyone is rightfully focused on McCain's behavior, but what is getting lost amid the backwash of nepotism and narcissism is how easy it is to co-opt the media. While some may not want to see politics covered in the hagiographic way that sports commonly is, you still have too many reporters who are overwhelmed by the power and import of what occurs in Washington to the point that they become emotionally invested in the fates of those they cover/use as sources and the tendency, just as human beings, is to not scrutinize them as intently as a good reporter should.

There is also a kind of reflective narcissism going on, as reporters write for a living and thus are always looking for an angle for a possible book. They hope the people they cover will be significant just so they can say they regularly covered that pol (Chris Matthews, for example, who is a notorious name dropper) during some significant juncture in history. In other words, the prominence of a pol also reflects, for a reporter, on their own importance in the media pecking order. That makes reporters, as in sports, part of the star maker machinery behind the wannabe popular pol, to twist a Joni Mitchell lyric.

Any pol who realizes this psychological dynamic can easily own those who cover them, especially if the pol is from a political dynasty (Kennedys, Bushes, etc).


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McCain Angry With Himself?

Story is here.

You're giving McCain waaayyyy too much credit.

Through his life, McCain has been able to get what he wanted because he had some kind of enabler to make things happen, whether it was his granddaddy, his father, Senator Warner or his wife Cindy. He has never been one to brook any criticism, a narcissistic characteristic that is the hallmark of all spoiled little boys. That was encouraged by the deference and enabling the media displayed for him.

However, this time, Cindy can't buy him a presidency. It is for that he is angry. Just like Hitler at the end of WWII, who blamed the German people for failing him, McCain's sense of entitlement is now being buffeted by an uncooperative electorate and a VP running mate who has not only become a national joke, but who has emasculated him by being more popular with his party's regulars.

The media, now having their legitimacy seriously questioned by the leftwing blogosphere, has turned on him and his pathology of lies has only made reporters more determined to not be suckered AGAIN by his stories and general line of bs.

McCain has never been very competent at even being a human being. The intense scrutiny of a presidential campaign is now reminding him of something he has suppressed in his image of himself all of his life. The wave he rode for decades has crashed and left him high and dry on the rocks. And he has to live with that.

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Note: What the fuck? What did I say here that was worth of being censored? Or was the author offended by my assertion that he was "giving McCain way too much credit"? Or maybe it was because I called McCain a failed human being? I'm truly gobsmacked here.

Obama Forced To Return Suspicious Donations

Story is here.

If Obama is going to be forced to return those donations, then something needs to be said about this, too:

"From 2000 through mid-2005 [GOP Rep Dana] Rohrabacher racked up an awe-inspiring $145,463 in trips, paid for by such organizations as the Islamic Free Market Institute Foundation, the Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association, the Taiwan Association for Industry and Commerce and even the Government of Qatar. On all but one of his 13 trips (that one being to Boston), Rhonda Rohrabacher and "additional family members" came along for at least part of the ride." http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/main/it-pays-to-be-a-rohrabacher/

So not only does Rohrabacher love Muslims, but also the commie Chinese. And this is after you get to the fact that he was a pal of the Taliban before 9/11 because he saw them as a stabilizing force in the area.

Where's the outrage? And why won't the DNCC run ads against him detailing all this stuff? Please donate to his Democrat opponent, Debbie Cook: http://www.debbiecookforcongress.com/

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Note: Apparently, the moderator was a friend of Rohrabacher's. Or something. Why is the left blogosphere, especially Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Americablog not helping Cook to try to get rid of this cancer on our national political scene? This guy is ripe for the picking and we are missing an opportunity to get rid of him. We could devastate him with ads about his fondness for the Taliban, this Muslim thing and his taking money from people connected to the Chinese government. Yet, the DNCC and the blogs aren't paying attention to Rohrabacher at all. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Bloggers Lead Media to Report McCain/Palin's Campaign "Lies"

Story is here.

"The MSM knows their failure to call this spade a spade enabled GW Bush to bootstrap two lying campaigns into a profoundly dishonest administration that has disgraced and weakened our great nation. They don't want to be patsies all over again."

Missed it by THAT much.

The fact is that the media, in its complacent elitist and royalist way, was more than willing to be McCain's stenographer much as it did for Boy George because McCain was kissing its behind. If you play ball with MSM reporters and feed them a few morsels of inside baseball now and again they are putty in your hands.

However, bloggers started slicing and dicing the conventional wisdom and tendency to sleepwalk through recent campaigns by media figures and, with young people increasingly turning off the tv and ignoring newspapers, the big four networks and the three big 24 hour news networks were on the hot rails to cultural oblivion unless the media gave consumers a reason to believe in it again.

They are still falling down badly on the job, but at least they are improving. However, as long as a Brokaw, a Hume, a Couric and a Charlie Gibson is around, their value is going to be questionable. These aren't media crusaders, they are softball hurling enablers.

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Why Heidi Klum Should Moderate the Debate

Story is here.

It's a reflection of our dumbed down bourgeois American culture when someone is analogizing a lowbrow reality show with the gravity of choosing someone who will have his/her hand on the nuclear button with a straight face.

People make fun of people who vote for politicians based on whether you could have a beer with them, but stuff like this article is just as inane, if not more so.

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VP Debate: McCain's Big Gamble Comes Up Snake Eyes

Story is here.

This was a reply to another poster's comment, which read in part:

"It is the elected representatives who come here from all over, and the preening appointees who arrive fresh from the campaign, plus their buddies in K Street lobby shops and other special interest groups, who breed "corruption" and even a little "greed (and it is only a little greed, compared with Wall Street)."

My response:

You forgot a media corps that becomes part of the DC socio-political scene, becoming so chummy with the folks they cover that a Dick Cheney can play them like Itzhak Perlman plays the violin. The get so caught up in the backwash of power like groupies following Def Leppard that they can't but help to protect their friends (and sources) in Congress and in the White House to the detriment of providing a clear view of what is happening in the centers of power to the public. They don't speak truth to power, they become stenographers for the "truths" that pols want dispensed to the electorate.

So the political coverage by the media, especially the electronic end of that, is a big dog and pony show. So a Tom Brokaw can be totally sucked in by the untrue McCain hype (see the Rolling Stone article on McCain, which is horrifying) and yet his brethren still hold him in high regard. He is little more than a Potemkin journalist and so are too many of his colleagues.

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Bill Maher Takes On Religion, And It Doesn't Have A Chance

Story is here.

The issue isn't so much religion vs. atheism (I am in the latter camp, btw). It is that religion gets shoved down everyone's throat. I don't care if people think the earth or the universe was created by God or electron particles or whatever it is you want to believe. It is the enforcement of these views to the suppression of others (under the rubric of "punishing blasphemy,"---a corporate us vs. them tactic) that disturbs me.

Why can't we just be reasonable people who have our private beliefs and we can agree to disagree? But no, the evangelicals can't mind their own business and so every segment of American life has to be Christianized in their eyes, even to the point of wanting to control the private intimate lives of folks.

And Maher's film is symptomatic of the backlash that overweening behavior by religious nuts creates. Just relax you guys.

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The Race is Still Close -- but It's Beginning to Feel Like It Could Be a Rout for Obama

Story is here.

I have said this before, but Karl Rove knew that McCain would lose. McCain's candidacy scares the heck out of the GOP regulars for both policy and personality reasons. The base was demoralized and their staying home portended incalculable down ticket damage to the party's fortunes in Congress.

So Rove brought Palin in to energize the base and thus contain the downticket slaughter the McCain candidacy otherwise would have engendered. At this point, losing the presidency is almost an afterthought. This is about keeping people such as Mitch McConnell and Mean Jean Schmidt in office by getting the religious nuts to turn out for one of their own.

So Palin should be taken seriously for that reason and perhaps Democrats should tailor some of their ads in the weeks immediately before the election to the Palin voters by showing the disconnect between her state religious values and her and her family's actions.

But the Republicans, in their heart of hearts, will be glad to be rid of McCain and save Huckabee and Romney for 2012.

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Palin Contradicts McCain On Pakistan, Seems To Support Obama's Position

Story is here.

Two guys playing mavericks compared::

James Garner:

Son of a carpet layer, mother died when he was four.
Stormy family life, attended several high schools.
Joined the merchant marine at 16, but seasickness cashiered that.
Joined the National Guard after finishing high school and saw combat in Korea. Injured from mortar fire and then in a friendly fire incident. Called himself a "scrounger" in the army.
Had two successful tv series, Maverick and The Rockford Files plus a spate of movie roles. Did his own stunts.
Earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from SAG.
Hometown of Norman, Oklahoma erected a statue to him.
Liberal Democrat, turned down a 1990 offer to run for governor.

John McCain:

Coddled Panama-born son and grandson of admirals, entering the naval academy on his name alone despite not having the grades necessary regular people need.
Partied his way through the Naval Academy, finishing at the bottom.
Commissioned thanks to dad.
Lack of attention to the details of flying got him shot down over Vietnam.
Became a POW and milked it. Fellow POWs won't vote for him.
His wealthy second wife got him elected to Congress.
Flipped flop so often he might as well be Sybil.
A deregulator who engendered a $700 billion bailout
Confessed to running for president for narcissistic reasons
A onetime POW
Has had four cancerous moles removed.
He's a former POW
Voted with Bush 95% of the time
Erstwhile POW
VP nominee selected because she was a woman
POW background.

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National Enquirer Alleges Sarah Palin Affair With Brad Hanson

Story is here.

Palin needs to get right with her Bible:

Exodus 20:14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Leviticus 20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

Deuteronomy 5:18 Neither shalt thou commit adultery.

Proverbs 6:32 But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.

Jeremiah 3:8 And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.

Jeremiah 3:9 And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks.

Jeremiah 5:7 How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no elohim: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots' houses.

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Chris Kattan's 59-Day Marriage Costs Him 6-Figure Settlement

Story is here.

Settlements such as the one Kattan was forced into is why no man should ever get married. Chris got shafted by a no good gold digger. And not a peep of objection from feminists, who should be outraged by this opportunist whose main selling point was that she had a vagina.

Put an end to Vag-fare now!

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McCain's Gambling Problem: Campaign Has Massive Ties To Gambling Industry

Story is here.

Another poster came up with the following Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mccain+gus+boulis&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=

Interesting tidbit gleaned from that search:

"The lavishly-furnished custom Boeing 727 airliner (727PX) which ferried Senator John McCain on four occasions during his Presidential run in 2000 also flew Saudi Royals out of the U.S. right after 9/11, carrying an entourage of Saudi Royals from Las Vegas to London six days after the 9/11 attack in a controversial operation later scrutinized by the 9/11 Commission.

The 727 figures in the current tempest over his relationship with female lobbyist Vicki Iseman, who provided and flew with McCain on the plane. "

Okay,. one of you media monkeys needs to ask McCain about this. Was he and his paramour too friendly with the Saudis?

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McCain's Angry Debate Disappoints Morning Joe Panel

Story is here.

Mike Barnicle still being affiliated with the media is a big loser for us all. It is ironic that a liar like him gets to pass judgment on the distortions of McCain.

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Note: this is a habit with Huffington Post moderators: protecting prominent media figures such as Tim Russert, Luke, Russert, Charlie Rose and now Mike Barnicle, not to mention their secretive product placement relationship with Disney.

Obviously, the mods have been told to tamp down negative comments toward the above named and many others. That's pretty chickenshit Arianna.

The Whistleblower Who Tried to Prevent the Iraq War

Story is here.

And the U.S. MSM was AWOL while this was going on. Yet another in a Giza pyramid's worth of profiles in cowardice by NBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, et al.

And I said it in the run up to the war and I will repeat it again, NBC is that most infamous of conglomerations, the military industrial media complex.

GE boss Jack Welch should probably be put on trial for war crimes since it was his ultimate call what happened at NBC, which GE owns. During the occupation of Japan following WWII, Matsutaro Shoriki, the head of the Yomiuri Shimbun, was purged from being able to run his company for several years for his responsibility in helping to stoke war fever in Japan. So were many other Japanese media figures of the time.

At the very least, GE should be forced to sell NBC then for their war responsibility. Won't happen, of course, but morally, that should be the least they should suffer.

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Jon Stewart: Bush Bailout Speech Just Like Iraq Speech (VIDEO)

Story is here.

"Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love. " (H.L. Mencken)

And think about this line from Mencken while watching the debate tonight and McCain is speaking:

"Thus he fought his last fight, eager only for blood. It quickly became frenzied and preposterous, and after that pathetic. All sense departed from him. He bit right and left, like a dog with rabies. He descended to demagogy so dreadful that his very associates blushed. His one yearning was to keep his yokels heated up -- to lead his forlorn mob against the foe. That foe, alas, refused to be alarmed. It insisted upon seeing the battle as a comedy. Even Darrow, who knew better, occasionally yielded to the prevailing spirit. Finally, he lured poor Bryan into a folly almost incredible.....

"....here stood the man who had been thrice a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic -- and once, I believe, elected -- there he stood in the glare of the world, uttering stuff that a boy of eight would laugh at! The artful Darrow led him on: he repeated it, ranted for it, bellowed it in his cracked voice. A tragedy, indeed! He came into life a hero, a Galahad, in bright and shining armor. Now he was passing out a pathetic fool."
http://www.peeniewallie.com/2005/06/h_l_menckens_ob.html

Censored and then later approved after I complained about it.

Note: Yes, that's right, Huffington Post censored H.L. Mencken. Now I assume that HuffPo's moderators have had college educations. So they should know who Mencken is. I did make another post in the same article with just a link to Mencken's column I quoted above AND IT GOT THROUGH! What is up with these assholes? These effete little punks who seem to have been hired because they don't know what satire is or who recoil when a pointed comment is too strong for their delicate limousine liberal sensibilities do little to help HuffPo's credibility.

I am now at 306 censored posts out of 1366, which is a ridiculously high percentage when I don't use curse words in my posts and I don't troll. The HuffPo moderation system is clearly broken. I hope they fix it, because users are really getting pissed at the inconsistent nature of the censorship.

The Bailout: Why Are Bush and the Democrats Combining Against Congressional Republicans?

Story is here.

Wow, James Pinkerton playing class warfare! Who woulda thunk it! What would your man Newt think Jim? And why do you hate Newt?

Of course, this is just bs Republican spin. This plan is a much more measured response than what the Bush Administration wanted. I'm not crazy about it, but doing something is nonetheless reassuring psychologically to the markets both here and abroad.

Moreover, Pinkerton completely glosses over the fact that he collaborated with the GOP to ensure that the current crisis happened by endorsing its wreckless policies.

One can also say (admittedly somewhat unfairly) that the GOP is willing to have a depression in the name of ideology.

However, if the Democrats tell the markets to get stuffed and we have a depression as a result, the Republican leadership, consistent only in its lust for power and not in holding fast to its stated ideals, will accuse the Democrats of being asleep at the switch and thus a treasonous dereliction of duty.

It is also true that if the Democrats ignored the pleas of economists for bailouts there would be ZERO Republicans that would praise them for doing so.

You can't have it both ways, Jim. Please, we aren't that dumb.

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McCain Asks To Postpone Friday Debate Due To Economic Crisis

Story is here.

Yeah. Anytime she shows up it is not good for us Democrats. Please DNC, cajole racist (anti-white and anti-Asian) Maxine into retiring!

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Note: Why is Huffington Post protecting Maxine Waters? I have made many comments about her racist beheavior and, iirc, only one of them has gotten through. Everything I have said is true. Sorry HuffPo, but if you want to be a progressive site that means that sometimes you have to tell on folks on your own side who are not exemplofying the ideals progressives have. And Waters is one of the bigger offenders in that regard.

Ron Paul's Bailout Criticism: Illiquid Assets Are Illiquid For A Reason (VIDEO)

Story is here.

The problem with Libertarians such as Paul, just as with Marxists, is that their ideology has some good ideas in them that just about anyone can agree with. They both want, at the end of the day, government to disappear and have it replaced by an informed self-sacrificing community whose members act wisely to ensure that everyone has both the necessities to get through life nicely and with the greatest personal freedom.

Unfortunately, as with all utopian schemes, they require perfect people to make it work and thus is the root of the failures of both Libertarianism and Marxism, not taking into account the peculiarities and foibles of human nature that undercut those schemes, much less demagogues who hijack it in the name of their own megalomania.

So while I applaud Paul for his fiscal conservatism in many instances and his unwillingness to fight the Iraq War, it is also a good thing that he doesn't have a shot at being president. We need reality based pragmatists, not ideologues.

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Freddie Mac Paid McCain Campaign Manager's Firm Through last Month

Story is here.

Well, we now have THE MCCAIN PRINCIPLE.

The Peter Principle dictates that a person will keep rising through the ranks as long as he demonstrates competence at his job until he finally gets to a point where he finally becomes in over his head. But integral to that is a background of success.

McCain? He has never been successful at anything (except womanizing). He was about dead last at the Naval Academy, was an abysmal pilot (and it probably got him shot down in Vietnam), his wife bought him his seats in the House and Senate, he mishandled an earlier run for the GOP nomination for president and his campaign now is so bad that you just read news accounts of it for laughs rather than have to depend on comedy writers to shape his image to get guffaws out of an audience. He failed even at maintaining his previous image as a maverick, a reputation that was complete fiction anyway.

McCain is the exemplar of emasculated utter loserdom. Yes John, we are laughing at you, not with you.

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Bailout Plan "Not Acceptable" To Congress

Story is here.

The Financial Times torched the plan on the basis that the assets may not be worth bupkis by the time the U.S. wants to withdraw its involvement, resulting in a monster size write down that will ultimately have to be compensated for by taxpayers. So you have asset deflation, few loans being made to consumers and businesses, resulting in a stagnant economy and an increased tax burden coupled with our economic future now being decided by a combination of China, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Mexico.

And I hope nobody is planning on any foreign leisure travel for the next five years, because the dollar is probably going to be worth about as much as the peso during that time---if we are lucky.

Bush, Cheney and their congressional enablers (Mitch McConnell, Tom Delay and Bill Frist, I'm looking your way!) are guilty of a particularly insidious form of treason. They should all die in jail for this.

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Contessa Brewer Wins Latest Round Of "Stump Tucker Bounds"

Story is here.

This is a reply to another poster, who offered, "Don't blame Tucker, he is just doing his job. Unfortunately his job is defending the inane, unworkable positions of his boss."

But you know what? At some point you have to have some dignity as a MAN and not set yourself up to look like an idiot by defending McCain's lies, distortions and ignorance. Bounds needs to grow a pair and walk away from the train wreck. He is already the butt of jokes. If he is so craven as to enthusiastically keep fronting for this dog and pony show, he needs to turn his credentials as a man in at the front desk and head over to Nordstrom's to buy himself a pantsuit.


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Steven Spielberg Donates $100,000 To Gay Marriage Fight

Story is here.

Guess who is contributing to the anti-gay marriage initiative: Arianna's buddies at Disney.
http://www.americablog.com/2008/09/what-is-disneys-involvement-with-gay.html

Arianna, you owe it to us to tell us what your relationship with Disney is and why there is so much Disney product placement on Huffington Post when they support stuff like the initiative.

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Note: I questioned The Queen and her support of a company that is anti-worker and now anti-gay. How impertinent of me.

McCain Ad: Obama Has Been MIA

Story is here.

This is a replay to a poster who asked people to give to the Democratic Party Senate Campaign:

And please, also toss some green love to Huntington Beach Democrat Debbie Cook, who is running against Taliban loving (Google is your friend on that and I urge you to check it out), Chinese campaign funds taking reactionary Dana Rohrabacher.

I don't know why the DNCC isn't ramming some of Rohrabacher's friendly comments toward the Taliban down his throat with some ads that would kill his legislative career, but read the article below about Debbie and then give at the link after that:

http://www.ocweekly.com/2008-09-18/news/surf-city-mayor-debbie-cook-dana-rohrabacher-republican-congressman

http://www.debbiecookforcongress.com/

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Fifty Chimpanzees or One Toothless Gorilla

Story is here.

Deborah, I didn't vote for you when you ran for Washington State Attorney General. You were the only Democrat I didn't vote for in that election (I didn't vote for her opponent, either, btw) because the system you helped set up in my state discriminates against men. Your total callousness and disregard for the male half of the population in our state makes you someone who is not to be listened to or trusted. You are to men what David Duke is to minorities.

Until you help change that, just get lost, will ya?

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Note: Senn is a feminazi and has helped make Washington state the most virulently anti-male state in the union. Yes, even more than California and Colorado. She sees women as a privileged class and probably subscribes to the Dworkinite line that all men are bad because, well, they have penises. This is one thing that drives me nuts about the Democratic Party, that it tolerates assholes such as Senn.

McCain Ad: Obama Has Been MIA On The Economy

Story is here.

No wonder you are a Palin voter. You want simpleminded cheerleading rather than reasoned debate on the important issues facing our nation. That is just vapid and doesn't say much for you.

And the surge isn't working. You are deluded. The Shiites and Sunni basically engaged in a big gang fight and the Shiites have now won and are killing any Sunnis who try to return to their homes in Baghdad. So there is no more fighting there because, just like how 18th Street owns the Pico-Union area in L.A. and the Crips own the area around Compton, no competing gang can go in those sectors without being cut to ribbons.

The U.S. forces there were little more than bystanders in all this and many of the got killed during what was a religious civil war in Baghdad.

Stop listening to Rush, a junior college dropout. He doesn't know jack.

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Dirty Secret Of The Bailout: Thirty-Two Words That None Dare Utter

Story is here.

This is a reply to a Republican poster:

Look, the GOP had both houses of Congress from 1994 through 2006 and they are the ones who wrote the legislation (Phil Gramm, in fact, was the main guy behind it) that Clinton signed that did away with the Glass Steagall Act. Now they could have reimposed Glass-Steagall anytime at all in the ensuing decade, but they did not. McCain, in fact, who confessed that he didn't understand the testimony he witnessed from the two entities while chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, today STILL says that he believed that the Republican deregulation was good for the economy and wanted to extend it to the health care issue.

Blaming this on the Democrats is nonsensical, especially when the McCain campaign has 26 employees who were lobbyists or employees of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, including his campaign manager, Rick Davis.

So stop with the smoke and mirrors on who was responsible for this. The GOP had control and began rolling this ball down the hill before it crashed into something. THOSE are the facts.

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Dirty Secret Of The Bailout: Thirty-Two Words That None Dare Utter

Story is here.

"The whole thing seems almost like a carefully timed ex plosive set to go off for maximum damage to the American economy. I mean can these people be so stupid that they didn't see this coming?"

You hit on a good point. The Republicans have done more damage to this country than the Germans, the Soviets, the North Koreans and the Japanese and are thus the the most insidious collection of traitors in U.S. history.

Unfortunately, too many people are too stupid or too blindered to want to see that the underpinnings of our country have been gnawed away by a bunch of economic termites and now the house is yawing as it begins to collapse.

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General Motors Responds, Defends Global Warming Denier Bob Lutz

Story is here.

The question I have about GM's hybrid is can we trust them to make a good one?

Their response in defending Lutz is rather condescending (in fact, almost juvenile) and indicates to me that they may be looking at the Volt as more of a pro forma token gesture than any real commitment to environmentalism. The statement also reminds me of tobacco company executives insisting cigarettes don't cause cancer.

Consequently, given the nature of their response and GM's past history, I have little confidence that the Volt will match the quality, both in terms of fit and finish and engineering, of the Japanese. I just don't see their hearts being in it.

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GOP Rep Dana Rohrabacher and the Taliban

Hey everyone:

I haven't posted here in a while, but I will resume posting here on Monday, September 22nd.

Anyway, I have a favor to ask you all:

One of the guys who will be involved in voting on any legislation that might come out of these meetings over the financial crisis is California GOP Rep Dana Rohrabacher. Get a load of what Rohrabacher said before 9/11:

“The potential rise of power of the Taliban does not alarm Rohrabacher,” the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs noted that year, because the congressman believes the “Taliban could provide stability in an area where chaos was creating a real threat to the U.S.” Rohrabacher also claimed that the Taliban are “not terrorists or revolutionaries,” that liberal-media accounts of the Taliban’s human-rights abuses were “nonsense,” and that the Taliban would bring about a “disciplined, moral society” that did not harbor terrorists and would pose no threat to the United States.
http://www.ocweekly.com/2008-09-18/news/surf-city-mayor-debbie-cook-dana-rohrabacher-republican-congressman

Anyway, the terrific Democrat that is running against him needs your donations BADLY. Read the above article on her and pass the above quotation around and please give. http://www.debbiecookforcongress.com/

Press: Back Off Bristol Palin!

Story is here.

This is why so many people hate the media. Talk about a myopic echo of conventional wisdom!

Palin has used her Down's Syndrome baby as part of her public bonafides to play to the sympathies of evangelical Christians. She is against sex education and for abstinence only, which obviously didn't even take in her own household after it had long been refuted as an effective method of staving off teenage pregnancy.

The you have Palin's near Homeric description of how she gave birth to her infant son, which was met with cries of incredulity by medical professionals everywhere, including my pediatric nurse mom. Even her doctor has now changed her tune on this when she began seeing words such as "malpractice" and "negligence" being applied to her handling of her patient.

I think many in the media are just uncomfortable with getting into people's personal lives (except when it could mean big ratings) and that's fine. Personally, I don't really care if Bristol is pregnant or not. If Palin had been straight with the country, it would have been a three minute chuckle and then move on. But no, Palin concocted that cockamamie story of Trig's birth.

Let's be real. Being in the media isn;t just mere stenography. Sometimes you have to deal with unseemly issues. If you can't bring yourself to that, then maybe you need another line of work.

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Palin's Daughter Pregnant,Campaign Announces

Story is here.

This is still fishy and even if the wingnuts are going to say that this announcement by Palin debunks the false pregnancy story, bloggers have at the very least forced the holy rolling conservative VP nominee to admit that her daughter got knocked up.

The hypocrisy is so thick you need a chainsaw to cut through it. Palin used Trig as a prop to demonstrate her Christian Right bonafides while telling a story about how he came into the world that just about any medical professional, including my pediatric nurse mom, finds unbelievable. Palin's doctor is now backing off her earlier statements about approving that plane trip from Dallas to Alaska when words such as "malpractice" and "negligence" began to be aimed her way.

And had it been,say, Chelsea Clinton that got pregnant while still a teen, Limbaugh and that whole gaggle of reactionary zealots would have used it as emblematic of what they would call leftwimg depravity, and Dobson would be hurling epithets such as "fornicator" at Chelsea rather than the compassionate cant he burbled for Bristol.

Bristol has been put into a no win position by her mother's political ambitions. I hope the best for her, since she is a completely innnocent party here, but I don't think this story ends here. This is a stall tactic and if McCain is elected, there is going to be a fact changing announcement by the White House Press Secretary while Palin goes on holiday. You heard it here first.

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DailyKos Embraces The Palin 'Fake Pregnancy' Rumor But Rejects The Edwards Story

Story is here.

Sorry Lee, but my mom is a veteran pediatric nurse and says that the pregnancy story that Palin has relayed to the media is "fishier than tuna" and believes that at the very least, even if it was Sarah herself who was with child, she acted negligently in taking that plane flight after her water broke.

There is good circumstantial evidence to believe that it was her daughter, not Sarah, who actually had the Down's Syndrome baby at a hospital without an NICU despite the fact that condition carries with possible severe complications. Since she had it at a smaller hospital and not in a large facility in the state capital, this made the nature of the birth easier to hush up.

Moreover, the more kids you have, the quicker the birth tends to happen after the water breaks. Yet, she gets on an eight hour plane flight, has a stopover in Seattle, then gets back on the plane, lands in Alaska and then drives 45 minutes to the hospital in Wasilla? Are you kidding me? And on that flight, the attendants notice no evidence of pregnancy or that Palin was in any medical distress. And we know how sanitary airline seats are, right? She could have ended up with a septic infection.

Now I know you have it in for Daily Kos, but you end up sounding like one of the sputtering bloviators from Powerlie. C'mon, let's have a sense of proportion here.

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Republican Convention Plan: All POW

Story is here.

There is a question to be addressed about the POW issue. This is perhaps callous, but McCain, during his pre-captivity days in the Navy, was a showboating slacker. It is the reason he was not promoted to Admiral. Indeed, McCain was perhaps not a hero at all, but just a victim.

And the provocative question out of that is, where is the demarcation between merely doing a job and heroism?

Max Cleland lost three limbs during Vietnam and everyday he he struggles mightily to get around. McCain stood idly by while his party accused Cleland of being a crypto-communist. McCain, for what he went through, at least recovered to the point where he could have a normal life.Cleland never will. So is Cleland more of a hero? What word should we use for that? Is the term being degraded by today's tendency to overpraise people in the name of promoting self esteem?

My late grandfather, who my mom barely remembers, was killed fighting for the U.S. at the Battle of the Bulge. Was he a hero or a victim? He didn't have a choice to fight or not. He was drafted.

Then you have guys who REALLY were heroes, Congressional Medal of Honor winners. The dichotomy of warfare isn't between victim and hero, but survivor and decedent. And these people chose to put everything on the line so that many more could live. McCain? Not so much. So just when should we use the word, "hero"?

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TNR: GOP Convention Will Get Racist

Story is here.

What the Republicans will do is begin running ads and sending blast faxes about whether or not Obama thinks OJ was guilty, the influence figures such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will have during his administration and they will try to peel Asians, who vote heavily Democratic, off by using statements Maxine Waters has made against Korean-Americans and Obama's sitting there and not criticizing her for it.

They will couple that with increased belligerence on immigration since they have nothing to lose since they are not going to get the Hispanic or black votes. So they will target Asian-Americans instead by playing up the bad feelings between the black and Asian communities in the U.S. and attempt to increase their working class white male voter base.

Approved and then pulled the following morning

Note: This post was intended as a warning. But I guess the moderators don't want the DNC or Obama to see what he might have to expect and prepare for. Dumb you guys. You just helped McCain in the name of a politically correct agenda by the moderator.

2 Top Alaska Newspapers Question Palin's Fitness

Story is here.

If they're questioning her fitness now, wait until they take another look at that phony story about the birth of her last child.

I was talking to my mom, a retired nurse who had worked in a pediatric hospital for about 30 years. I told her the story about Palin's baby that the new VP nominee had given to the media. My mom scoffed at it, angrily noting that at the very least Palin ran the risk of a sepsis infection by not immediately going to hospital when her water broke before she gave that energy speech in Texas. Palin supposedly gave the speech, got back on the plane to Alaska and then had it the next morning. To add to this, the kid not only had Down's Syndrome, but was a month premature. Yet, Palin did not do the medically prudent thing.

And here's why: because her 16 year old daughter had that kid back in Alaska and Palin is trying to cover it up. Plain had pulled the 16 year old out of school five months prior for "mono." How convenient. At the very least, she risked the life of a premature baby with her behavior if you want to believe her story, making her too irresponsible to be believed about anything.

And even though the special needs child should have been put in an ICU and may have been), Palin only takes two days off. This definitely bears re-examination.

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Palin Adds Right-Wing Cruelty To GOP Ticket

Story is here.

This was a reply to a poster who is one of those anti-abortion nuts:

Actually, it appears that it wasn't Palin's water that broke to have that Down's Syndrome baby. It was her 16 year old daughter's!

http://askingwhy08.blogspot.com/2008/08/questions-about-vp-and-some-of-her.html

GOP family and moral values at work!

McCain has always been an impulsive fly by the seat of your pants guy who was protected by his daddy and his wives. So when a non-vetted Palin becomes the GOP's answer to Tom Eagleton and has to step down for lying about this and being a hypocrite it will put the coup d' grace to McCain's presidential bid. She will be gone by the end of September.

Enjoy the McCain Campaign to Nowhere!

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Sarah Palin: Former Beauty Queen, Future VP? (PHOTOS)

She is so amazing. She managed to have her most recent baby even though she never appeared to be pregnant. I wonder what is up with THAT?

http://askingwhy08.blogspot.com/2008/08/questions-about-vp-and-some-of-her.html

Uh oh!

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Palin: You're no Hillary Clinton

Story is here.

Look, Palin's talking about being part of cracking the ceiling that have kept women out of the highest office in the land is crap. Rather, it actually confirms traditional sex roles of the woman being a helper with no real power to make decisions to her male (running) mate.

Furthermore, because she has zero acquaintance with anything foreign, let along matters of policy (at least Obama had lived in Indonesia for a time as a child), when McCain inevitably appoints a male Secretary of State, she will be shut out of those discussions because she just does not have a clue. That is a huge contrast with Biden. She will be relegated to being McCain's spokesmodel at ribbon cuttings and international funerals.

Really, he may have thought, since he has a reputation for womanizing, that she would just sex up the place. Can women accept that? I don't think so.

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Sarah Palin People Interview: Ready To Be President? "Absolutely. Yup, Yup"

The story is here.

The question for me is was Crash McCain looking for a real candidate that could take over if he croaks or the political equivalent of a sideline reporter? Or does he just think she will sex up the White House (you know within these religious Republican women lurk sexual tigers)? We will go from the imperial vice presidency under Cheney to the seeing that office turned into the Republican equivalent of one of Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion grottos.

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The Worst Vice-Presidential Nominee in U.S. History

Story is here.

I have to disagree.

Spiro Agnew, a governor from Maryland who had been in office only about two years, was probably the worst vp nominee ever. He was still taking thousand dollar bribes after Nixon got elected, such was the chintzy nature of his corruption and he became the first VP ever to resign due to criminality.

After that, you have Dan Quayle, who was tapped because he didn't threaten G.H.W. Bush intellectually. There was no reason to nominate him since Indiana was a conservative state and a KKK bastion that was going to go Republican in November anyway. Until Boy George Bush was nominated for the presidency, Quayle was the stupidest man ever to become a United States executive. Marilyn Quayle would later say of Bush, "he is what they accuse my husband of being."

Outside of trying to get a state trooper removed form his job, there have been no hints of the kind of corruption by Palin that Agnew engaged in and her gubernatorial experience is about the same. She is almost certainly smarter than Quayle, who was little more than a male bimbo (known as a "himbo").

Moreover, compared to Dick Cheney, she and just about anyone else scores low on the evil meter, even if she is a religious nut. Like Quayle, though, there was no reason to nominate her since Alaska is a safe Republican district. So she scores only third in my estimation, among all time worst vp nominees.

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Sarah Palin First Impressions

Story is here.

I think she sounds shrill when she speaks louder than her normal speaking voice.

She is also no reformer, a label you will hear often from the lazy MSM:

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/08/29/did-palin-really-fight-the-bridge-to-nowhere.asp

She was for that Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it. She will try to use that veto as proof that she is a different kind of reactionary, but she was more or less forced to end the project:. Plus she used state power to try to settle a personal score.

There is no reason to be confident in her ability to lead. Reagan was popular too and his presidency was a disaster for America.

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Sarah Palin: McCain's Vice President (INFO, PHOTOS)

Actually, the driving forces for the Bridge to Nowhere were Alaska rep Don Young and senator Ted Stevens and Democratic senator Patty Murray (who remains proud of it because she got a quid pro quo for some pork for Washington state out of it).
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2003450786_murray28.html

In addition, the Republican leadership opposed Oklahoma senator Tom Coburn's plan to take money out of the Bridge to Nowhere project:

"In opposing Senator Coburn"s amendment to defund the bridge, one prominent Senator told a closed-door meeting of conservatives that the plan was simply impractical. Many of the earmarks, he claimed, are counted towards a state"s equity bonus and thus are part of the state-by-state allocation formula. Defunding the bridge, he said, would direct at most $75 million to Louisiana, with the remaining $148 million returning to Alaska as money the state could use at its discretion for road projects." http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm889.cfm

Palin initially was for the Bridge to Nowhere:
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/08/29/did-palin-really-fight-the-bridge-to-nowhere.aspx

But when it became a hot potato, she capitulated and vetoed it.

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Romney, Pawlenty: McCain Used Us!

Story is here.

Gee, McCain using people? Like he used his dad to get him all kinds of special treatment at the Naval Academy and in the Navy itself, how he used his first wife to shepherd him through his convalescence from his experience in Vietnam, and like he used his second wife to be his personal piggy bank to run for Congress? Like he used the media to carve out an image as a maverick before then going and kissing the hem of Jerry Falwell's and George Bush's garments when he ran for president?

John McCain a user and manipulator?

Naaahhhhh!

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Sarah Palin: McCain's Vice President

Story is here.

Great, another national executive that has misused the power of her office. The McCain campaign really is the continuation of the Bush years, with Palin being the Cheney starter kit.

The stupidity of this choice cannot be underestimated, with Pat Buchanan calling it "risky," a word that the GOP has tried to hang on Obama. In addition, if that scandal she is embroiled in back in Alaska hots up, it will take the McCain campaign off message and make it look like McCain has chosen the female equivalent of Spiro Agnew.

That makes this a blunder, especially when he could have chosen Kay Bailey Hutchison, who not only has years of experience in the Senate, but far higher name recognition and she is an attorney with some gravitas. She also knows her way around the media, having been a tv news contributor before she ran for office.

Pawlenty would have at least been inoffensive and doesn't have the baggage Palin does plus he might have been able to take Minnesota out of the Obama column.

Palin's connections to evangelicals and her misuse of her state powers will turn off independents. It also provokes them to ask questions about what kind of choices McCain will make for his cabinet , especially as Phill Gramm is still around, too.

Finally, McCain lied to the media about who his choice was going to be and that may spur some to really go after Palin's abuses in Alaska. Just really, really dumb.

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Why Opera Rocks

Story is here.

I listen to everything from classical music to thrash metal (well, except rap and techno), but I have just never been able to grok opera. I realize what is going on technically and the dedication that is necessary to achieve a high performance level in that genre (my mom is an opera buff), but it is fingernails on a chalkboard for me.

As for Page and Perry selling themselves out, yeah, that is really sad. I personally hate American Idol and my heart just sank when Joe, who I idolized as a teenager, sat in with those frauds.

I kind of feel sorry for today's kids. They are being so ripped off. I was able to experience rock's greatest generations in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, but outside of Marilyn Manson, nobody now even comes close to that grandeur or that kind of cultural relevance. Now thanks to Generation PTYS (Play To Your Shoes), the bands sound really mopey and dirgy (Don McLean was very prescient in a screwed up way!) and the record labels have been able to put a stranglehold again on creativity like they did in the late 1950's and the result is the sonic equivalent of Gerber's baby food. The music business now is just a bummer.

I see some really great kids playing guitar on You Tube, but they won't go anywhere because the industry won't let them. If it doesn't sound liek Avril Lavigne or Britney Spears they aren't interested.

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Iraq Signs Deal To Develop Oil Field - With China

Story is here.

Yep, the Iraq War will pay for itself---in yuan.

Since Bush has crashed the dollar, helping us to a big old helping of inflation as a result, the Iraqis decide to go for a relationship with a rising nation in China.

Make no mistake about it: Bush and the neocons have been the greatest boon to the Chinese commies since ping pong diplomacy.

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Katie Couric In Her Comfort Zone At Democratic Convention

Story is here.

Why all the slobbering over Katie Couric, HuffPo? Who cares what she's doing? She's just another vapid media talking head.

Or is this a cronyism thing because she has a friendship with Arianna?

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Note: another one of the posters called Couric a "bimbo" and that got through. But questioning of why HuffPo has appointed itself as the hagiography corps for Couric is beyond me. There has to be some kind of relationship between her and Arianna for this to occur. Arianna decries the media repeating GOP talking points and conventional wisdom, but yet, lionizes one of the worst offensders for that. Oh wait, Katie is a woman. Okay, now I understand. Put your gender ahead of your country.

Brokaw and Koppel On DNC: "Kabuki Dance... Colossal Waste Of Time And Money" (VIDEO)

Story is here.

"Waste of time and money"?

That's what I would call the airtime given to Brokaw. He has had the Seinfeld career: it was all about nothing. He has contributed about as much to journalism as my dogs.

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FOXNEWS RESPONSE TO OBAMA ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

Story is here.

Fox is kind of the mother bird of reactionaries. FrankenHume, et al, chew over the day's Republican talking points and then pukes them into the gaping jaws of their dopey audience.

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Note: This must be one of the moderators who has it in for me. Fucking prick.

McCain Gets Prickly During Time Interview (Mou Ichido)

Story is here.

This is a reply to the following post:

"McCain is the physical & mental embodiment of the failing & dying Republican Party."

Yeah, a kind of Cherry Orchard (I'm referring to the Chekov story) for latter day America. Let's hope you're right.

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McCain Gets Prickly During Time Interview (La Otra Ves)

Story is here.

Actually, McCain will put in a call to the GOP's best friend, the Reverend Moon, who will rustle up a posse of his brainwashed followers to take up all those empty seats. Don't laugh. This actually could happen given Moon's relationship with the GOP.

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McCain Adviser: There Are No Uninsured Americans

Story is here.

So what McCain is arguing is that we should use the same healthcare as illegal aliens---hospital emergency rooms---and wait until things are so bad for us healthwise that we may die before seeking care?

Again, conservatism proves itself as a leave 'em dead by the side of the road ideology.

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McCain Gets Prickly During Time Interview stumble

Story is here.

These are the same kind of empty eyed responses that Boy George was giving reporters during the 2000 election campaign. McCain is as much of an empty suit as Bush is and arguably even more dangerous. McCain wants us to legacy admit him to the presidency since he can't make his own case or stand on his own two feet.

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Keith Olbermann Caught Saying About Mike Murphy: "Let's Wrap Him Up" (VIDEO)

Story is here.

Murphy is an idiot. He only gave Bush a C for how he ran the country during the last eight years, which means that Murphy was grading on the legacy admit dumbass curve. Had a Democrat done as badly as Bush did, Murphy would be giving him an F and arguing for his prosecution for treason.

Again, there is nothing to be gained by using former campaign managers as commentators because they will always censor themselves for the next job down the road or they don't want to throw their former clients under the bus lest he be accused of being disloyal to his customers. I felt the same about James Carville, too.

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Note: Apparently, the moderator is a friend or sympathizer with Murphy. Or something. Either that or they don't like the shot I took at Deliverance Boy Carville.

MSNBC Implosion (Part Deux)

Story is here.

This is a reply to something another poster said.

Gregory is a lightweight and his show has really exposed that. He is another amplifier for conventional wisdom, kind of a Tim Russert without the big bulbous nose.

Matthews grew up admiring Barry Goldwater (his brother is a Republican) before he went to work for O'Neil (and I always wondered if Matthews might have been a Republican mole during that time) and he has always had it in for Hillary Clinton. One of his good buddies is Scooter Libby and Matthews argued for Libby's pardon.

He started out as favoring McCain, but Crash is running such a bad campaign that I think Matthews might be throwing in the towel on that one.

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Note: Once again the slobbering admiration of the Buffalo Bloviator, Tim Russert, probably torpedoed this from seeing the light of day. Either that, or the moderator hates me personally because I tend to cut right to the bone or they have a thing for dog faced boy David Gregory. Media cronyism and censorship: an evil dyad.

MSNBC Implosion

Story is here.

I think this is hilarious. From a station that stopped just short of putting Ashley Banfield in a cheerleader uniform in the opening days of the Iraq War to now the rightwingers and leftwingers warring with each other on MSNBC as it makes a transition from a minor league echo chamber for the Bush line to one that is finally willing to tell the public the truth.

And asking MSNBC's management to openly declare its sympathies? That's also really funny since Faux Nooz won't do that itself in its role as a loudspeaker for corporate fascism and its enablers on the right.

And can anybody hear the name "Wolf Blitzer" and not start laughing? You half expect him to do his shows dressed up in a German Field Marshall's uniform. In fact, that will be my new nickname for Blitzer, Field Marshall Wolf.

But getting back to MSNBC, the parent company is run by Republicans. To see them now deeply conflicted over not just the dissension going on between intellectually dishonest "I have a hard on for Hillary," Chris Matthews, Buttfaced rightwing hack Joe Scarborough and and MSNBC savior Keith Olbermann is just too delicious for words. Matthews and Scarborough wants to draw Rachel Maddow into this maelstrom of mutual loathing, but she just isn't interested and I can't blame her..

At least MSNBC is no longer boring, which it was when it had hosts such as Chuck Grodin, Tucker Carlson and Phil Donahue.

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Note: Huh? Was it the Field Marshall Wolf line? Me calling Arianna icon Phil Donahue boring (which he was)? Or Arianna showbiz friend Chuck Grodin equally tedious? I'm totally at a loss here. Any suggestions?

Microsoft's newest browser may block ads

Story is here.

I use a script blocking widget for Firefox that keeps all the annoying DoubleClick ads that HuffPo is filled with so that I never see them. Result: pages load much faster and I don't see annoying crap dancing, spinning and beeping its way across articles I want to read. It also helps to prevent malicious adware from finding its way on to my computer.

So use Firefox and get the widget, folks. You'll be glad you did.

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Note: if you don't have Firefox you are really missing out. Download it right now and join all the cool kids.

Excuse Me, Pat Robertson, But Why Is God Sending Another Hurricane Towards New Orleans For The Start Of The GOP Convention?

Story is here.

Why is God sending a hurricane to New Orleans?

Oh, this is easy: because G.W. Bush is God. That is, just as he sent troops to Iraq while the actual terror war was in Afghanistan, he is now sending a hurricane toward New Orleans to smite all the sinning closeted homosexuals in the Republican Party that will be meeting in St. Paul.

Hey, you got a better explanation?


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Bill Clinton Democratic Convention Speech: Text

Story is here.

This is a reply to an idiotic post by some Republican troll:

Bush ignored the threat from Al Qaeda and the result was 9/11. Then he sent us to war in Iraq, taking his eye off the ball in Afghanistan and, in fact, made that country's war a predicate for disgruntled Arabs to become terrorists.

Bush kowtowed to the Chinese communists by attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing games because his daddy's Carlyle Group has interests there.

Then Clinton was saddled with an antidiluvian Republican Congress that wouldn't let him move on the global warming and AIDS questions. Moreover, not only was global warming not nearly on the radar like it is now as an issue, but Republican figures such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson regarded Aids as God's punishment for homosexuals, putting them GOP in a position of rooting for a horrible disease. That is the GOP in a nutshell.

And just for a bonus, Bush regards the fascist Russian leader Vladimir Putin as a "good man." Which just goes to show you the level of judgement he had. Heckuva job there, Boy George.

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Bill Clinton Democratic Convention Speech

Story is here.

The old boy still has it! I almost wish I had another opportunity to vote for him. He did a great job outlining what a virulent cabal of saboteurs the GOP have been without sounding bitter about it.

Rebuild America! Elect Barack Obama!

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Why John McCain May Have More Green Staying Power

Story is here.

Yeah, right. While McCain will be busy appointing Supreme Court judges that will further erode our civil rights and sever the final threads of government regulation on our runaway corporatiions, we will get greener. Yeah, an environmentally friendly version of Orwell's 1984. That would be just great.

Or not.

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America Hungry For More Pickens Boldness

Story is here.

Pickens is looking for Americans to subsidize his little energy scam to further pad his billionaire fortune. He got part of his holdings that he is now flogging as part of the answer for our energy needs through eminent domain. Pickens is a corporate welfare queen. Get a clue!

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Wind Power Needs A Push: Greening The Grid Means Changing The Grid

Story is here.

Germany has been investing heavily in solar energy with great results:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/20/MNGRAAEL4B1.DTL

I hope the U.S. follows suit. With increasing use will come (at least theoretically) lower energy prices. I personally would be willing to pay slightly higher electricity prices in order to help us extract ourselves from some of our geopolitical entanglements.

We also need a Manhattan Project for energy, but that is a topic for another day.


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The Oasis Playlist: What We're Listening To

Story is here.

Okay, stop it with the self-congratulatory celebrity/politico butt kissing. I couldn't care less about your so-called "oasis." Really, this stuff just sounds vapid.

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MacKenzie Phillips Arrested In Airport Drug Bust

Story is here.

Lock her up and throw away the key. God, I hate drug users.

"I'm McKenzie Phillips, so I can get balloons of controlled substances on to airplanes." You gotta love that celebrity arrogance.

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FreeCreditReport.com Unveils New Ad: A Rap Song (VIDEO)

Story is here.

Geez, now we have product placement for this scam (Free Credit Report.com is owned by Equifax)?

What next? Product placement for penis enlargement devices on HuffPo?

Have some class you guys. And knock off all the product placement crap anyway.

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Ted Stevens Wins Primary Despite Indictment

Story is here.

Yet more proof that the GOP is America's biggest organized crime racket. They are like the Nazis in their affinity for criminals and perverts while propounding that they are the party of morality (Hitler used to inveigh against the freewheeling culture of Munich just as how the Republicans do the same about San Francisco).

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Biden Throws Wrench In McCain's VP Choice

Story is here.

We already have military people managing the Republican wars, It's called the Joint Chiefs. We also have a Defense Department.

We don't need a general. We need somebody who can wisely manage a deteriorating country. And legacy admit boy Crash McCain ain't it.

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Ex-GOP Rep. Leaves Jail, Slams Bush "Bloodsport"

Story is here.

Oh Puhleeeease!

Ney said nothjng about his claims concerning Iran before he found himself wrapped up in a bribery investigation. So he is being disingenuous like David Duke views minorities a mite unfavorably. This is nowhere near an injustice and his equating his case and that of Don Siegelmen is ludicrously delusional.

And any media outlet that uses him as a commentator has no credibility.

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