A total of $6.1 million will go to 2,500 African American borrowers of subprime loans who were charged higher broker fees
Stupak (stu-pæk) n. 1. a bowel blockage caused by having ###
"I think Sarah Palin is smarter than Barack Obama." Sean Hannity, lying again. Link
"There are two good signs for the Democrats: One is all this blowup happened 10 months before the election, not 10 weeks before the election. Two, the average American believes that better times are ahead. Those are two important indicators. Now, there are plenty of indicators that aren't so good, but I think a month is a huge lifetime in politics, so I think we're actually going to do a bit better than people are predicting." Howard Dean, saying there's still time for Obama to realize that he's the president Link
Do you think he means it, or is he just trying to give us hope?
How many of you can name Howard's replacement as DNC Chairman? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Has anyone ever seen him?
You're doing a great job keeping your piehole shut, Tim. Thanks for the support!
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Lawmakers From Coal States Seek to Delay Emission Limits.
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More reason to hate Leno: they added a laugh track to Palin's abysmal performance on the show Tuesday night.
Gotta keep making the grifter from Wasilla look popular. Can you imagine being the poor bastard who had to edit that thing? ###
If it feels good, believe it
Something disturbing is happening. Somehow, a significant percentage of Americans have decided to celebrate ignorance. It's been going on for some time, but it's really seemed to come to a head recently. In the 2008 presidential campaign, for example, Sarah Palin was presented as "aw shucks" know-nothing. And we were supposed to believe that this was preferable to Barack Obama, who as a Harvard graduate and one-time law lecturer, was an ivory tower intellectual and a fancy-pants elitist. A big chunk of the McCain/Palin campaign strategy can be summed up as "Shut up, Poindexter!"
Keep reading: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/03/if-it-feels-good-believe-it.html
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"Marie Osmond's poor gay son killed himself because he had been told how wrong and how sick he was every day of his life by his church and the people in it. Calling that 'depression' is a lie! Yet the Osmonds still talk lovingly about their church, saying nothing about its extremely anti-gay Crusade. Marie also has a gay daughter!"Hey, I want her and all the gay kids in the world to know that they are just fine being gay and that they deserve love and respect instead of insults and rebuke! I have gay people in my family and my circle of friends and I am kicking bigot ass and taking names! That is how its done in my religion---(I have my own religion that I made up for myself and it is a great religion that actually works and respects facts and not fantasy!) [snip]
"Yet even though the people they say they love the most in all of their public displays and speeches (THEIR KIDS AND FAMILY!!) are gay,-- their own children, for crying out loud- these people cannot find the Christian decency and compassion within themselves to stop their hypocritical gay bashing!! How sickening. I know so many Mormon kids who were gay and committed suicide, and I just cannot and will not stay quiet in order to not offend bigots anymore. It is all so terribly depressing.
"Marie please don't talk about how your faith in your church has helped you get through this one! Please get some integrity and tell that church of yours that you will leave it and stop giving it ten percent of your money if they don't stop trying to destroy your kids' and all gay people's civil rights and dreams and hopes!!" - Roseanne Barr, writing on her personal blog.
A young child at a Boulder pre-school has been kicked out for an awful crime. The child was enrolled in a Catholic preschool, and also has two mommies. I'll leave you to guess which of those two is the awful crime.
According to teachers at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School, a meeting was held Tuesday to discuss the issue. The staff was told a student would not be allowed to re-enroll because of his or her parents' sexual orientation. The staff members were also told not to talk to the media.
Another interesting twist is that the staff at the school are described as "disgusted" with the decision; it came from on high, straight from the priests at the archdiocese. It's a case of the more secular staff knowing what the decent thing they ought to be doing is, and the religious buffoons using their holy dogma to do evil.
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Billboards of hate against President Obama.
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GOP plan: stall, stall, stall.
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All I know is that if this had been a Muslim man who had walked into the Pentagon and opened fire, all the talk this morning would be about an "act of terrorism". Instead, it's just another "isolated incident." Funny how that works, isn't it?
INTIWGDI Got that?
It's Not Terrorism If White Guys Do It.
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Soldiers killed in Iraq:
| Year | US | UK | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | 486 | 53 | 41 | 580 |
| 2004 | 849 | 22 | 35 | 906 |
| 2005 | 846 | 23 | 28 | 897 |
| 2006 | 822 | 29 | 21 | 872 |
| 2007 | 904 | 47 | 10 | 961 |
| 2008 | 314 | 4 | 4 | 322 |
| 2009 | 149 | 1 | 0 | 150 |
| 2010 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Total | 4380 | 179 | 139 | 4698 |
In Afghanistan:
| Year | US | UK | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 12 |
| 2002 | 49 | 3 | 17 | 69 |
| 2003 | 48 | 0 | 9 | 57 |
| 2004 | 52 | 1 | 7 | 60 |
| 2005 | 99 | 1 | 31 | 131 |
| 2006 | 98 | 39 | 54 | 191 |
| 2007 | 117 | 42 | 73 | 232 |
| 2008 | 155 | 51 | 89 | 295 |
| 2009 | 316 | 108 | 95 | 519 |
| 2010 | 68 | 23 | 20 | 111 |
| Total | 1014 | 268 | 395 | 1677 |
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Early voting has begun in Iceland's referendum on whether it will honour the terms of an agreement its government made with the British and Dutch authorities to repay £3.5bn those governments paid out to investors in Icleand's broken, bankrupt banks.
The Icelanders feel as though they've been bullied (especially by the British) and it's hard not to agree with them. Quite why the Icelandic government should be held responsible for the British government's entirely voluntary decision to bail out savers and investors is a mystery.
Worse still was the manner in which her Majesty's Government treated Iceland - seizing all Icelandic assets in the UK and using anti-terrorism legislation to do so. This was a) disgraceful and b) a reminder of how dangerous such laws are and how subject and open to abuse they really are.
This being the case, I'm with the plucky Icelanders. Vote No!
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Check out this Nate Silver post:
When F.D.R. took over the Presidency in 1933, the Democrats controlled 64 percent of the Senate seats and 73 percent (!) of the House seats, counting independents who were sympathetic to the party. And those numbers only increased over the next couple of midterms -- during their peak during 1937-38, the Demorats actually controlled about 80 percent (!) of the seats in both chambers. Obama, by contrast, came into his term with 59 percent majorities in both chambers. That's not much to complain about by the standards of recent Presidencies, but is nevertheless a long way from where F.D.R. stood during his first two terms, or for that matter where L.B.J.'s numbers were during the 1965-66 period, when the bulk of the Great Society programs were implemented.
Rachel Maddow's blog: When the GOP uses reconciliation to the tune of $2 trillion, that's okay
Consider three bills -- two of them passed under budget reconciliation, the third heading for budget reconciliation. Each had an effect on the fiscal health of the nation, calculated by the Congressional Budget Office. The first two, the tax cuts pushed by President George W. Bush, blew a hole in the budget. The third, the Senate's health reform bill? As you can see from the CBO projection, that's a different story.
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Ah, the "strategy of fear"
The world's most famous snowmobile racer in the history of the world, former almost-one-term Alaskan First Dude Todd Palin has lots of sponsors. What company wouldn't want to have their logo slapped on the side of the most famous piece of snow machinery on the planet? Mystik Lubricants sure does.
[From the Mystik Lubricant website]
Mystik is an exclusive engine oil sponsor for the 2010 Iron Dog Snowmobile Race and a sponsor of Team #22 Scott Davis and Todd Palin – past Iron Dog Champions. Davis Racing team which includes Scott Davis, Todd Palin, Regina Daniels, Cory Davis and Carly Davis accepted Mystik Lubricants' sponsorship offer. The members of the team will be racing in ESPN X Games, the 2010 Iron Dog, Amsoil Duluth National, Potawatomi National, Western Nationals, Air Force National, Eastern Nationals, New England Nationals, Canadian Nationals, Hayward 300, Nielsen Enterprises Grand Finale, Arctic Man at Summit Lake, Valdez Mayors Cup and Alyeska Snocross/Freestyle Show.
But, it looks like the Palins may be padding their pockets from a surprising source.
It turns out that Mystik Lubricants is owned by… wait for it … Citgo. Yes, that same Citgo that's owned by Venezuela. Socialist Venezuela. Socialist, Hugo Chavez lovin', Venezuela.
Oops.
Guess they should have heeded the advice Sarah Palin gave to President Obama:
"Now is not the time to experiment with socialism!"
###Caving to whiny-assed titty babies is becoming a bad habit with this administration. "The Obama administration has said it will seek to block a controversial bill describing as genocide the World War I killing of Armenians by Turks. A congressional panel on Thursday approved the resolution, paving the way for a possible vote by the House. But US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the administration would "work very hard" to prevent this. Turkey voiced strong protests after the vote and recalled its ambassador from Washington for consultations."
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Me too.
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Freakazoids attack Kentucky
Southern Baptists in Kentucky will embark Saturday on what they are billing as the most ambitious evangelistic outreach in their history, hoping to reverse lagging rates of conversions in the state.They will be going from home to home, placing plastic bags with brochures containing evangelistic messages on door handles. The brochures will contain contact information for local Southern Baptist churches and national Web sites and phone numbers.
The convention will also be spending $182,000 in television, radio and billboard ads in media markets in and around Kentucky - from Louisville to Cincinnati to Huntington/Charleston, W.Va., to Evansville, Ind.
"It will be the largest and I believe it will be the most effective evangelism initiative that Kentucky Baptists have ever been involved in," said Eric Allen, director of mission service and ministries for the Kentucky Baptist Convention, in a promotional video on its Web site.
The convention hopes to mobilize as many as 50,000 volunteers for the effort, scheduled to run Saturday through March 21. One church in Warren County is even canceling Sunday services so that members can fan out into the neighborhood during the worship hour.
The goal is to reach as many of the state's estimated 1.5 million households as possible.
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Still electrocuting non-conformists
Unfortunately, $150,000 is unlikely to put the Fear of Tasering into police departments nationwide.
The city of Louisville paid $150,000 this week to settle claims that two police officers used excessive force when they shocked a naked man with a Taser in September 2006.The Metro government payment to the estate of Larry Noles on Wednesday settles a lawsuit accusing the officers of depriving Noles of his civil rights when they tried to take him into custody after he was found acting erratically at Seventh Street and Algonquin Parkway.
The suit claimed that Noles, 52, a Marine veteran who suffered from bipolar disorder, posed no threat to the officers or the public.
Noles died after he was Tasered, but the Kentucky medical examiner's office ruled that the cause of death was excited delirium, which affects people with a history of mental illness, alcoholism or drug addiction.
Garry Adams, one of the estate's lawyers, said he hopes the case "will play some part in the education of the Louisville Metro Police Department as to when it is appropriate to use a Taser, the number of times it should be used and where it should be used on the body, to make fatalities less likely."
As Digby has proven numerous times, it is almost never appropriate for law enforcement to use tasers, because tasers are lethal forms of torture, period. The issue here is not "appropriate use" but the inexcusable failure of police departments everywhere to properly train officers how to deal with unarmed civilians.
Following an internal department investigation into Noles' death, Police Chief Robert White ruled in 2007 that the officers - Michael Campbell and Matthew Metzler - followed proper department procedure when they confronted him.
Which is precisely the problem.
Attention residents of and visitors to Louisville, Kentucky: any and all behavior, no matter how benign, that does not conform precisely to the behavioral norms swirling in the stinking gunk that passes for brains among local law enforcement will be punished immediately with torture-by-electrocution.
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