Thursday, September 30, 2010

Headlines - Thursday September 29

 
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"One closing remark: It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible..." Obama, Link 

Sir, with all due respect, who are YOU to tell us being on the sidelines is inexcusable?
Who are you to tell us that sitting on our hands is irresponsible?

Some of us have been fighting the enemy every day while you were ...busy with other things.
Truth is, your inattention (and the constant caving in) has sapped the party's will and strength.

I'm not sure you're in a position to lecture anybody about coming to work.  
 
Sidebar:
I don't like having to straighten the president out so often, but why does he keep saying these things?
Telling us to "wake up" is like Bristol telling girls how putting off sex is better. 
After sleeping and kissing GOP ass for two years, why is he telling us to get in the game?

We've been here every day since you were inaugurated, Sir.
It is YOU that has chosen not to engage - how can WE fix that?
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"I cannot help you. And don't say anything to my children. I will tell them you already have a new job ... and from now on you don't know me, and I don't know you. You have never seen me, and I have never seen you. Do you understand me?"- Meg Whitman (CA-Teabagger candidate for Governor) firing her maid via voice-mail for being illegal, Link
 
But I thought wingnuts hated illegals?
 
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Hecate nails it:

Dear Mr. Biden,

Thank you for your letter asking me to donate to elect Democratic candidates. I've given some money to the Democrats over the last two years. I think you should stop whining and get behind what I've already done.

Your friend,

Hecate

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Human Impact on World's Rivers 'Threatens Water Security of 5 Billion'
Study on effect of all human intervention on water supplies finds water security and biodiversity severely damaged
 
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If you've got a question about religion, ask an atheist. That's the short version of the findings of a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll. Pew polled 3,400 Americans and asked questions about broad religious knowledge. Of 32 factual questions, the average atheist was able to answer 20.9. Meanwhile, the talk-about-God-all-the-damned-time people -- white evangelical protestants -- managed to get only 17.6 correct. If you want to know about religion, don't ask the religious -- they don't know crap.

This is one of those "man bites dog" stories that isn't as surprising as you'd think. Most atheists become atheist after being born into some faith tradition. Atheism isn't really a religious belief (disbelief can't logically be belief), so much as it's a conclusion. And it's a conclusion reached after investigation.
Keep reading:
http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/09/fanaticism-disguised-as-skepticism.html
 
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Christine O'Donnell Tells Christian TV:
God Wants Me In The U.S. Senate

The audio is out of sync on this clip, which kinda only makes it better.
 
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Tweet Of The Day - NOM

Here's what NOM is very upset about.
An Indianapolis bakery is under fire from the gay and lesbian community over a choice not to serve a diversity group. A campus organization said it was denied service in what's become a flashpoint in the fight for equal rights. This is what they were after: a mulitcolored cupcake to celebrate "National Coming Out Day" next month; a rainbow confection to honor the diversity on the campus of IUPUI. But the student who had the order placed at Just Cookies was told no. "We're right on the cusp of being equal with anyone else, I don't know why they would do that," said student Shan Parker. "I explained we're a family-run business, we have two young, impressionable daughters and we thought maybe it was best not to do that," said co-owner David Stockton.
"Christian family business forced to bake perverted cupcakes!" Only that never happened, the students took their business elsewhere. Watch for this lie to be repeated by anti-gay groups for the next ten years, just like that wedding photographer in New Mexico. (Who actually was fined by the local human rights commission.) 

 
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More of this, please ...
 
Saying that the Catholic Church should be feeding and clothing the homeless rather than mailing out hundreds of thousands of anti-gay DVDs, a group of lay Catholics in Minnesota has launched a campaign to send those DVDs back to their bishops.
 
The group stresses that they are not soliciting or accepting donations. They invite their supporters to instead send money to groups doing the real "work of Jesus."
 
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Tell Us How You REALLY Feel...
 
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The following has nothing to do with health care or crackpot teabagging candidates or which party is going to win the House in November but this is the type of news story I love best.  Conservationist Gordon Buchanan was hoping to confirm that tigers were living at high altitudes in Bhutan. Here is what he found and how he reacted.  I like this guy.
 
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BBC: Cyclist Alberto Contador, winner of the 2010 Tour de France, has said he has tested positive for a banned substance.

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This is what it means to be gay in America. And shame on all of us.

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James O'Keefe tries to get CNN reporter onto his dildo lube boat

Yes, everyone wants to fuck that.

CNN is doing a documentary on the three or four people who are young American conservative activists, so they decided they would follow around that criminal James O'Keefe, the guy who made those ACORN videos and tried to rape Mary Landrieu's phones. But you know the one thing they weren't expecting? They weren't expecting James O'Keefe to try to lure CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau alone onto a boat filled with dildos and lube and a "condom jar" and "fuzzy handcuffs" and "an obvious sex tape machine," so this is precisely what he did. Presumably it was to record himself raping her, of course, but O'Keefe says it was just a goof. Huh?

Thankfully, Boudreau was tipped off by O'Keefe's female colleague, Izzy Santa. (Haha, IS HE SANTA? IS HE?)

"I noticed [Santa] had a little bit of dirt on her face, her lip was shaking, she seemed really uncomfortable and I asked her if she was OK," Boudreau said. "The first thing she basically said to me was, 'I'm not recording you, I'm not recording you. Are you recording me?' I said, 'No, I'm not recording you,' and she showed me her digital recorder and it was not recording."

Santa told Boudreau that O'Keefe planned to "punk" her by getting on a boat where hidden cameras were set up.

Haha, "punk'd," that is a thing hip young people say in 2010.

CNN got hold of a document that supposedly is O'Keefe's plans.

"Instead, I've decided to have a little fun. Instead of giving her a serious interview, I'm going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I'm going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she'll get seduced on camera and you'll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath.

Oh, we get it! It's because all attractive women want to have sex with James O'Keefe. How can you resist that O'Keefe charm? CNN won't like it very much when their reporter is forced to have sex with him on a boat! (Forced as in forced by her amazing sexual attraction to him, not rape or anything like that.)

This is why CNN should not employ women. They're too liable to want to fuck James O'Keefe.

Also included in this story? This hilarious list of items in the boat!

Equipment needed

a. Video

1. hidden cams on the boat

2. tripod and overt recorder near the bed, an obvious sex tape machine

b. Props

1. condom jar

2. dildos

3. Music

a. Alicia keys

b. 80s romance songs, things that are typically James

c. avoid Marvin Gaye as too cliche

4. lube

5. ceiling mirror

6. posters and paintings of naked women

7. playboys and pornographic magazines

8. candles

9. Viagra and stamina pills

10. fuzzy handcuffs

11. blindfold

Looks like journalism to us, James O'Keefe. [CNN]

Disgusting pigs. I'd like to see them have to 'pull stunts' for the general population in a federal prison.

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We've been saying it for years: the next world war is going to be over water. "About 80% of the world's population lives in areas where the fresh water supply is not secure, according to a new global analysis. Researchers compiled a composite index of "water threats" that includes issues such as scarcity and pollution. The most severe threat category encompasses 3.4 billion people. Writing in the journal Nature, they say that in western countries, conserving water for people through reservoirs and dams works for people, but not nature. They urge developing countries not to follow the same path."

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Screenshot from Faux News:

I guess their viewers are just small government conservatives who are concerned about the size of the deficit.

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White America has lost its mind.

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If Mexican-Americans ever decide to convert to Islam en masse,
it's all over for White Christian America.

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Tax breaks for cable and oil companies (and the rich)

Because that's how the party of the Confederacy rolls.

By the way, British Petroleum: You can stop running those stupid television ads and buying full-page ads in the New York Times and other papers, touting how you're going to "make this right" and how you've set up a $20 billion dollar fund to help mitigate damages due to your reckless conduct in drilling the Macondo oil well. First off, we all know that the Obama Administration damn near wrenched your arms out of their sockets to get you to agree to the restitution fund. Second, that $20B isn't fully funded.

BP, if you had your way about it (and you would have if George Bush were president), you wouldn't have done fuck-all to help anyone. Everyone who has suffered along the Gulf Coast would have had to sue you in some court where everyone in the courthouse, from the judges to the guy who swamps out the bathrooms, is in your pocket.

Your ads are a waste of money. You're not convincing anyone.
 
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Some advice for President Carebear

I'm in the Will Rogers wing about the Dims, they are too unorganized to be a political party. That said, the farther left you look, the more unorganized it becomes. This is one of the reasons that the blaming of the Left for the so-called enthusiasm gap falls flat with me.

There is no monolithic Left, we don't have talking points, there is no morning phone call to get the ducks in a row. And I think it is safe to say with this White House, there is no communication plan, there is no strategy. The White House guys have no message, you are failing in communicating just about anything. I bet you couldn't even make a coherent lunch order to Round Table.

Back to topic: so the blaming of the Left, is it trying to shift the focus from the abandonment and the many failures of your campaign promises, President Carebear? Maybe. But the larger point I think is this:

Instead of blaming the Professional Left for the enthusiasm gap, do something to bridge the gap. Explain to us why we should be enthusiastic.

It's true that considering the GOP alternative is grim, but that's not motivation to support you, President Carebear, that motivation to not support them. And there is a difference, and you of all people should understand that. This does not mean we are going to support the GOP, so quit raising that strawman. It's stupid and beneath you — but it is as close to a communication plan as you have.

No one is asking for you to weep, or rend your clothing or do something emotional, we are asking you to lead.

For instance, President Carebear, instead of telling your Justice Department to continue pressing the DADT lawsuit, take a stand yourself. You have the power with a stroke of your pen to issue an executive order to end DADT, and you could. There's issue after issue you could actually push, but you have not, and that's what the enthusiasm gap is about. We are as enthusiastic about you as you are about us.

Throw us a bone, you'd be surprised at how much good that would do.

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Whoopsie! It seems No'Donnell didn't attend Oxford OR Claremont Graduate University. That said she did receive a fellowship from a conservative think tank named the Claremont Institute, also in Claremont, CA. This was for her ground-breaking work in the war on masturbation.

Maybe for my next resumé update, I can list all the prestigious schools I never attended, too, to fight the scourge of Onanism! Thanks for the tip, Christine!

(TPM)

Fun fact:

O'DONNELL: A lie, whether it be a lie or an exaggeration, is disrespect to whoever you're exaggerating or lying to, because it's not respecting reality.

MAHER: Quite the opposite, it can be respect.

IZZARD: What if someone comes to you in the middle of the Second World War and says, 'do you have any Jewish people in your house?' and you do have them. That would be a lie. That would be disrespectful to Hitler.

O'DONNELL: I believe if I were in that situation, God would provide a way to do the right thing righteously. I believe that!

MAHER: God is not there. Hitler's there and you're there.

O'DONNELL: You never have to practice deception. God always provides a way out.

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Moments later, this 9/11 truck ran over a baby Panda, causing another 9/11.

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Finally ..... something for the self-employed?

There was a nice little tax break for self-employed people tucked away in that Small Business bill the President just signed into law. "There's a new tax break for the self-employed buried in the small business jobs legislation that was signed into law on Monday. ... Self-employed workers who pay their own health insurance premiums have always been able to deduct those costs, along with premiums for family members, when calculating their federal income taxes. The new law allows them to also deduct those costs before computing their self-employment taxes, also known as payroll taxes, which cover Social Security and Medicare. ... This is a welcome break - payroll taxes, after all, are far more burdensome for the self-employed than regular employees. That's because the self-employed - generally sole proprietors, freelancers and the like - must pay the entire 15.3 percent tax on their own. Workers, meanwhile, typically split payroll taxes with their employers: each pays 6.2 percent of the employee's gross income to cover the Social Security piece and each pays  an additional 1.45 percent for Medicare."

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With two words - "I object" - Mike Enzi killed nearly a quarter million jobs "Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday tried to push a three-month extension of a stimulus bill jobs program that is set to expire on Thursday, jeopardizing tens of thousands of jobs. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) objected. ... "The majority has known this program was going to expire at the end of this month all year and has taken no steps to reauthorize this important social safety net program," said Enzi, who blocked Durbin's request for "unanimous consent" for a reauthorization. ... Having known about the expiration all year, Democrats first attempted to reauthorize the program back in March, but were blocked by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who objected to the $1.5 billion cost of the measure. The next attempt came last week when Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) included the program in a catchall "tax extenders" bill shot down by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)."

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