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

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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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