It Didn't Have To Be This Way
...but with Democrats, failure is all we can expect
by Chris Weigant
"We're the worst and we're so damn proud of it!!!"
Link Excerpt:
The epic struggle for healthcare reform is entering its final days in Washington. And the Democrats (being Democrats) have managed to snatch political suicide from the jaws of legislative victory. But, I keep thinking, it didn't have to be this way. If we had had some real leadership from two key Democrats named Obama and Reid, we wouldn't be where we are now.
A shot of Chinaco for Chris Weigant for telling the plain, simple truth. Obama has refused to come to work and Reid is a total failure at everything. Obama could've used his influence to shape this legislation and he could've used his presidential powers to force it thru - but he went on f-ing vacation, instead - Kerry style.
Democrats have now positioned themselves so that they will lose politically, no matter what happens in Congress in the next few weeks. Well, I should qualify that by saying there's a slim chance for a better outcome than the one that appears inevitable at this point, but that chance is rapidly disappearing as the calendar dwindles between now and the real deadline for a signing ceremony -- President Obama's State Of The Union address next month.
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"People of Connecticut: What have u done 2 this country? We hold u responsible. Start recall of Lieberman 2day or we'll boycott your state." - Michael Moore twittering Link
The storm of stupidity - Climate change deniers fight against science
by Gene Lyons Link
Excerpt:
So what's next? A series of essays by Sarah Palin about the Large Hadron Collider and the mysteries of dark matter? An MIT lecture series by Rush Limbaugh regarding the thermodynamics of black holes? A Festschrift of Sean Hannity's scholarly articles on plate tectonics and volcano formation? Glenn Beck performing live heart-lung transplants on Fox News?
Everybody understands that these things couldn't happen. That when it comes to serious scientific endeavor, years of study and professional apprenticeship are required. In a word, expertise.
Ex-beauty contestants, drive-time DJs, TV sports announcers, hairstylists, newspaper columnists -- basically anybody whose math skills topped out in the 10th grade -- rarely have anything substantive to add to the sum of technical and scientific knowledge. That's what they most resent about it.
It's not impossible that such persons could educate themselves sufficiently to have an informed opinion, but it's rare.
But once again, the Democrats - with the facts on their side - can't figure out how to debate.
When the Rethugs say, "the poles are not melting," the Democrats say, "I respect your opinion."
If the Dems had half a brain cell between them (should I bother to finish this sentence?) they could
at least carry this picture around and flash it when they say, "Global warming is a hoax."
A hundred years ago, Robert Peary discovered the North Pole.
Rethugs would tell you he sailed there in a fucking boat - but he didn't.
This is how Peary got there but today you can take a Carnival cruise there.
So why can't the idiot Democrats win this argument?
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What is "The Iraq war", Alex?
The WaPo has a piece in its Outlook section about "The Worst Ideas of the Decade." This horrible idea cost hundreds of thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars (and counting), but didn't make the top (bottom?) ten, even though trivialities like "The TV Dance Craze," "Endless Sports Seasons," "'We're All Connected' Movies" and "Your Blackberry" did.
Oh, and David Broder thinks Obama's been "abandoned by his party," per the header on today's column. If getting 60 Senate votes (all from members of the Democratic caucus) for his signature domestic initiative constitutes being abandoned, they should abandon him more often.
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And the award for Misinformer of the Year goes to Glenn Beck.
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Pending Senate Health Care Vote Fosters More Wingnut Calls For Civil War
Above is today's World Net Daily poll asking readers what they'd like to give the president for Christmas. Charming. And over on the ever-reliable Free Republic, the calls for revolution are racheting up in the face of the Senate's coming vote on health care reform. I live in Minnesota; Tim Pawlenty is our governor, and he's got his bland and uninteresting gaze fastened on the White House. Don't be fooled. He's just another Republican hack who has been drifting ever right-ward towards increasing lunacy. He was interviewed in Newsweek, and this will give you an idea of what kind of waffly worthless panderer he is.
Well, you know I'm an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn't say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman. But there are a lot of theologians who say that the ideas of evolution and creationism aren't necessarily inconsistent; that he could have "created" human beings over time.
The Bible doesn't mention Tim Pawlenty's parents, Eugene and Ginny, anywhere, either, and neither does it mention Tim Pawlenty, so apparently the question of Pawlenty's origins are still open. This all fits with my theory that he is merely a recent conglomeration of mindless amoeboid slime.
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Even after we figured out why the sun seemed to almost disappear in winter, only to reappear, and realized that it did so regardless of our festivals to entice it to return, mid-winter celebrations remained essential cultural touchstones.
Call it what you wish; create whatever myth comforts you; consecrate it with music that represents the best and worst of human composition, it remains what it has always been: A Celebration of Light.
If none of the religious myths appeal to you, try Human Light Day on December 23.
HumanLight illuminates Humanism's positive secular vision. In Western societies, late December is a season of good cheer and a time for gatherings of friends and families. During the winter holiday season, where the word "holiday" has taken on a more secular meaning, many events are observed. This tradition of celebrations, however, is grounded in supernatural religious beliefs that many people in modern society cannot accept. HumanLight presents an alternative reason to celebrate: a Humanist's vision of a good future. It is a future in which all people can identify with each other, behave with the highest moral standards, and work together toward a happy, just and peaceful world.
Tomorrow, may you have Light.
Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration's pay czar, approved an AIG request to grant the executive a long-term compensation package that includes stock options with a current value of $3.26 million and an additional incentive award of up to $1 million. The package comes on top of the executive's 2009 base salary of $450,000.
After months of wrangling and delays, President Barack Obama has chosen a national cyber security coordinator to take on the formidable task of organizing and managing the nation's increasingly vulnerable digital networks.
Obama has tapped Howard A. Schmidt, longtime computer security executive who worked in the Bush administration and has extensive ties to the corporate world, according to a senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement will not be made until Tuesday.
There's a lot of dismay/rage on the left over Obama, a number of cries that he isn't the man progressives thought they were voting for.But that says more about the complainers than it does about Obama himself. If you actually paid attention to the substance of what he was saying during the primary, you realized that
(a) There wasn't a lot of difference among the major Democratic contenders
(b) To the extent that there was a difference, Obama was the least progressiveNow it's true that many progressives were ardent Obama supporters, with their ardency mixed in with a fair bit of demonization of Hillary Clinton. And maybe they were right — but not on policy grounds. (I still remember people angrily telling me that if Hillary got in, she'd fill her economics team with Rubinites).
So what you're getting is what you should have seen.
... "Respectable lady," [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad said, "this approach has failed... raising the stick of sanctions and then saying let's negotiate. It has failed. It's over. It's not repeatable." Ahmadinejad rejected evidence that Iran is working on a neutron initiator, a device which has no civilian uses but is the trigger for a nuclear weapon. It was first reported in the Times of London which cited an internal Iranian document. The plans for a neutron initiator has been described as the "smoking gun" that allegedly proves Iran's nuclear program is intent on building a bomb.You see, Diane, waving around a piece of paper purporting to be 'evidence' doesn't mean shit. Were we (the U.S. and U.K.) still in control of the moral high ground, it might mean something, but after this:
When Sawyer asked the Iranian president if he wanted to see the document, he waved it away.
"No, I don't want to see them at all. I don't," he said. "They are all fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government." White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod told ABC News the accusation that the U.S. fabricated documents was "nonsense."
The Niger uranium forgeries refers to forged documents initially revealed by Italian Military intelligence. These documents purport to depict an attempt by the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase "yellowcake" uranium powder from Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis.Any credibility we might have had was flushed. Any 'documentation' we produce now has as much worth and use as toilet paper.
On the basis of these documents and other indicators, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq had attempted to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating what they called weapons of mass destruction, referred to as WMD, in defiance of the United Nations Iraq sanctions.
Let me posit this to the folks who now claim Iran is the next big, bad, bogeyman: Were there a limited (while destroying the better part of a city is a horror, in the big scheme of things it is nothing compared to what the Soviets could have done) nuclear detonation in the U.S. (or some other western nation, Israel included) by a terrorist group, don't you think, if Iran's (or North Korea's) complicity was determined, Iran (or North Korea) would be a smoking hole in the ground? Don't you think all those ICBMs we have stashed underground in the Dakotas and Montana and SLBMs on subs would be on their way minutes later? We kept the Soviets in check for 50 years with that threat; do you think the Iranians don't understand that little fact of life?
Listen to me, it's one thing for some retard on the street to blow himself up in a bus or in a market. There are more than enough of them to go around but do you think the Grand Ruling Council of Iran, or Mr. Ahmedinejad himself, are willing to martyr themselves? Of course not; they enjoy their power too much. If they gave a nuke to a terrorist, there would be nothing left; no nation to rule over, no holy sites, and certainly no Council. Don't you think we have their GPS coordinates programmed into at least one missile crew commander's console? I'll bet a paycheck they aren't willing to risk that, just as the Soviets weren't.
Iran's nuclear ambitions are just another tool used to scare the population into compliance, as 9/11 was, as Iraq's yellowcake was, nothing more.
A self-styled Nevada codebreaker convinced the CIA he could decode secret terrorist targeting information sent through Al Jazeera broadcasts, prompting the Bush White House to raise the terror alert level to Orange (high) in December 2003, with Tom Ridge warning of "near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experience on September 11," according to a new report in Playboy.This clown defrauded the government out of millions of dollars. Why isn't he living down the cellblock from Bernie Madoff?
The report deals another blow to the credibility of the Department of Homeland Security's color-coded terror alert system, and comes after Ridge's claim that the system was used as a political tool when he was DHS secretary
"When a soldier becomes pregnant or causes a soldier to become pregnant through consensual activity, the redeployment of the pregnant soldier creates a void in the unit and has a negative impact on the unit's ability to accomplish its mission," an Army spokesman said. (emphasis mine)
Poor people who are desperate for cash have been advised to go forth and shoplift from major stores - by an Anglican priest.
The Rev Tim Jones said in his Sunday sermon that stealing from successful shops was preferable to burglary, robbery or prostitution.
He told parishioners it would not break the eighth commandment 'thou shalt not steal' because it 'is permissible for those who are in desperate situations to take food that they might not starve'
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Who is this woman and why is she wearing buckles on her arms?
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John Bolton, Human Events name Dick Cheney president of 2009
John Bolton has named Dick Cheney the "conservative of the year" in one of the strangest articles on the current Internet. You know why America loves Dick Cheney, according to this demented mustache? He presents direct challenges to Barack Obama's "insouciance" towards national security. Not only is Barack Obama nonchalant, but he's the gay Frenchy-lookin' synonym. [Human Events via Salon/War Room]
Chris Mattthews? Your take?
"Those soldiers of the right over at Human Events magazine came out today with their Conservative of the Year Award. They gave it to the bath-tub ring of the Bush administration himself, that residue of eight years that won't go away, Dick Cheney."
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Fat cat postal service spent bazillions on food orgies and retirement watches
On a pleasant sunny day, have you ever looked up from your desk and glanced out the window at your friendly neighborhood mail carrier trotting around in little blue shorts issuing cheerful hellos and thought, "That is the best job ever invented by Jesus"? Many postal service employees would agree! MORE »
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The recession's jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/21/AR2009122103269.html
Good thing they don't have to help the self employed or they'd really be broke.
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11 plants and animals that have become endangered in the 00s.
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