"James Carville is well-known for spouting off his mouth without always knowing what he's talking about. I intend to stay focused on fighting for the American people because what they don't need is 20 more years of performance art on television. And that's what James Carville and a lot of those folks are expert at ... a lot of talk and not getting things done for the American people." - Obama, Link
There he goes again, picking all the wrong battles.
Of all the people in the universe, he goes after James Carville?
There have been hundreds of thousands of Obama insults in the last 2-3 years and the ONE GUY Obama chooses to single-out a reply to is James Carville?
I never thought I'd say this, but Obama needs somebody like Bob Shrum.
He needs somebody who's watched a TV and read a newspaper during the last 20 years to advise him politically.
Sidebar:
Did David Axelrod have a stroke? What happened to him?
Why is Obama so civil with the Bitch and the Boner and then he lashes out at Carville who, truth be told, is really trying to help Obama be a better president.
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Sarah, are you really that stupid? "The Publishing World" isn't leaking your book, your publisher is. So yeah, have them arrested. That'll be entertaining.
-- Rep Joe "You lie!" Wilson, Link
Butt Joe, you've had TEN YEARS of tax cuts for the super-rich and you bastards have created ZERO JOBS.
This crap could only work against refuse-to-fight-Democrats.
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Continue reading 'New York Hospital Sued After Amputating Woman's Legs During Routine Surgery'
"We should roll back secondary education to the point where our students are graduating from high school by age 16. We can teach them everything they need to learn at the secondary level by then, and prepare them for the next stage in life, which could be further education, apprenticeship, or vocational education. We should expect them to be launching into some kind of career trajectory by the time they are 16."There are implications in all of this for the institution of marriage. By idolizing adolescence, we have artificially prolonged the age at which people enter in marriage. The average is now, according to 2007 figures, about 27.5 years for men and 25.6 for women. But the young men and women whom God has created become sexually mature by their mid-teens. The bodies that God has created are ready for sexual intimacy by the time they are 16. Unless God has made a mistake in the way he has designed our sexuality, then we need to rethink our whole understanding of the optimum age for entering into marriage." - American Family Association radio host Bryan Fischer, saying he agrees with Iranian president Mahmoud Admadinejad and "the Jews" and that children should be ready to marry by age 16. Fischer also says that children as young as 12 should be tried as adults and subject to the death penalty.
Sounds like Bryan's got an announcement forthcoming.
The American Family Association (AFA) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that promotes conservative Christian values[1][2][3][4] such as traditional marriage, anti-pornography, and pro-life activism,[5] as well as other public policy goals such as deregulation of the oil industry and lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act.[6] It was founded in 1977 by Rev. Donald Wildmon as the National Federation for Decency and is headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi. Donald Wildmon served as chairman of AFA until he announced his retirement on March 3, 2010. His son, Tim, who is president of AFA, is expected to take over as chairman .[5]
The Southern Poverty Law Center, the nation's leading watchdog of hate organizations, has added the Family Research Council and American Family Association to its list of anti-gay hate groups. Also making the list for the first time is the Illinois Family Association, the former home of Porno Pete LaBarbera, whose group also makes the list. Here's the SPLC's updated list, via Truth Wins Out. 1. Abiding Truth Ministries [Scott Lively]In addition to the "hate group" designations of those listed above, the SLPC lists the following organizations as "anti-gay": National Organization for Marriage, Concerned Women for America, Liberty Counsel, Coral Ridge Ministries, and the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.
2. American Family Association
3. Americans for Truth About Homosexuality
4. American Vision
5. Chalcedon Foundation
6. Dove World Outreach Center [Terry Jones]
7. Faithful Word Baptist Church [Steven Anderson]
8. Family Research Council
9. Family Research Institute [Paul Cameron]
10. Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment
11. Illinois Family Institute
12. MassResistance
13. Traditional Values Coalition
I cannot fucking WAIT for the OUTRAGED press releases from Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer, and Porno Pete! Squeee!
Last night's episode of the Simpsons took a great dig at Fox News. Watch the clip here. First funny Simpsons in a loooong time.More than a few Republicans know that while the politics of trying to nitpick provisions and curb funding are appealing, any wholesale repeal of major provisions of the health care overhaul is likely to generate a backlash.Even the Republican-leaning electorate on Nov. 2 was evenly split on repealing Obamacare, the exit polls showed. And many of the major provisions of the bill command broad support or could expose critics and repeal advocates to embarrassing contradictions.
I'd love to see the Republicans try to repeal the subsidies in the exchange. Tell middle class families that they'll have to pay an extra $10,000 on annual premiums. That's a winner. But they won't do it. Healthcare reform will not be repealed. Ever. It will only be augmented as we go.
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Hatred of Obama Trumps National Security
Posted by JM Ashby
I would call this the quote of the day, but the day is still young.
Financial Times' Ed Luce speaking on this week:
Oh, absolutely. I think it's -- it's a dream -- if you picked two countries that would like to see a failure of ratification, it would be North Korea and Iran. And I think that -- if that argument doesn't work with the Republicans, that sort of basic elemental national security argument doesn't work, nothing is. There's -- there's a greater hatred of Obama than there is a love of American national security.
The Republicans are playing games while the START treaty with Russia edges closer and closer to expiring. The expiration of START would be a huge propaganda win for Iran and other countries looking for an excuse to ignore our calls for disarmament and transparency.
START, or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, is an agreement between the U.S. and Russia to limit the number of deployed nuclear warheads and further reduce our epic stockpiles.
Even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mike Mullen, is calling for the treaty to be ratified immediately. Aren't Republicans all about trusting the men in uniform?
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Following shelling in disputed waters off Yeonpyeong Island in South Korea in August, North Korea has made an attack on the Island itself, causing damage to homes and injuring residents and military personnel according to reports this morning.If this is some sort of negotiating ploy by the insane midget, he's stepped over the line. There are hawks in South Korea who look forward to refighting the Korean War and the more the North provokes, the more leverage they'll have. This could get really messy, really quick.
...
Wednesday is the busiest air travel day of the year, and a horde of paranoid zealots—techno-libertarians, Tea Partiers, rabble-rousers, Internet activists, andcongressional demagogues—has decided to make it even worse.
His whole column is a great example of how mainstream journalism has assumed the role of government enforcer since 9/11.
First, there's absolute acceptance of government justifications for the policy in question. He uses the innocuous term "electronic scanner" to describe the scanning machines. He points out that pat-downs are more time-consuming and invasive than the machines, without acknowledging that the TSA might have in interest in making pat-downs unpleasant to limit opt-outs. And he accepts without question that the underwear bomber's unsuccessful bombing attempt is sufficient justification for spending billions on a scanning system of questionable efficacy.
Second, everyone who opposes this reasonable government action is motivated by irrational fear or ignorance. He constructs a straw man of the weakest arguments of one opt-out group. He doesn't acknowledge the real issue, which is that people are fed up with years of pointless, time-wasting security theater, and that the scanners are just the last straw. There's no effort made to understand those protesting—their "idiocy" is manifest since they oppose a sensible government edict.
I'll grant that Saletan is an easy mark, but he's also a typical representative of the post-9/11 journalist. He swallowed the justifications for the Iraq war hook, line and sinker. Even though he issued an obligatory mea culpa five years later, it made no discernible impact on his reporting. Every day is 9/12, and until the ill-defined yet omnipresent enemy is defeated, Saletan's job is to make sure that nobody gets in the way of whatever the government says will keep us safe.
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In other news, House Republicans want to scrap the Office of Congressional Ethics, while arsonists want to shut down the fire department.
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Eat the Poor. Literally. That's the wingnut answer to unemployment. I kid you not:
Fox News tells Unemployed 99ers to: try Cannibalism to see you through ... like our forefathers did (if they did not freeze to death before - that is)
Charles Payne Fox Business Network contributor for the show Varney & Co. basically told the 99ers to tough it out, when responding to a question from 99ers Union Co-founder Gregg Rosen on todays show.
Gregg asked "So you're telling me, people would rather go hungry and homeless than to get a job? Does that make sense?"
To which Payne responded: "Faced with going hungry or homeless they will find a job..they will create a job...they will create opportunities because..Guess what? cuz [sic] when the first Americans landed here...there was nothing. Some of them froze to death, some of them resorted to cannibalism ... but they made it..."
I'm looking forward to watching Sarah Palin field-dress an unemployed person on her reality show. She'll then look at the camera and talk about the rugged individualism and opportunity creation of hardworking people in Alaska.
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Remember when the White House expended everything it had in order to try to woo Maine Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe to vote for health care reform, because Barack Obama believed that if two Republican Senators voted for his sop to the insurance companies (which in no way satisfies their gaping maw), that made it "bipartisan"? That's why single-payer never even merited a passing mention, and a public option was taken off the table before anyone could discuss it.
Well, here's how that worked out: Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are co-signing an amicus, or friend of the court, brief to be submitted to the federal court in Florida that will hear a constitutional challenge of the federal health care reform law.
Collins and Snowe are going to get Tea Partied right out of the Senate, as is anyone who dares to put the good of the nation, or even its national security, above Mitch McConnell's stated primary agenda of ensuring that Obama is a one-term president.
Meanwhile, Obama continues to preach the gospel of conciliation with these people, who would murder him with their own hands if they thought they could get away with it.
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Lucky Iowa!
Mooselini is seeking office space. Methinks that there is preznintial ambition on display.
May we suggest something out back of here?
(Guardian)
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Who killed American jobs? The corporations that killed the unions
Good jobs - plentiful, high-paying, high-benefit, defined-benefit-pension jobs - exist not because of low taxes for rich people, not because of non-existent taxes for corporations, not because of the complete absence of regulations.
Good jobs exist because of Unions.
When high-paying, high-benefit jobs were plentiful in this nation, unions were strong. Or rather, when unions were strong, high-paying, high-benefit jobs were plentiful.
That's because strong unions stop corporations from shipping jobs overseas, from cutting pay and benefits, from destroying the middle class.
Corporations know this, which is why they have waged extremely successful war against unions for 40 years. Actually, they've waged war against unions for 130 years, but only in the last 40 have they been successful.
Solidarity is the first rule of unions. If you sell anyone down the river, you weaken yourself fatally.On a larger scale, the destruction of unions remains job #1 of the oligarchy, especially that part of the oligarchy which prefers Republicans to Democrats. Why?
* Because union members vote Democratic, even if they are part of a demographic which normally vote Republican.
* Because the oligarchy's overall goal is to crush wages and benefits, both to pay for their bailouts and as a permanent, long-running goal. They do not really believe that domestic consumer demand is necessary to their own prosperity, and prefer workers who are in permanent debt-slavery. For a generation and a half now they have made most of their money through leveraged financial games, asset bubbles and by offshoring and outsourcing jobs. American workers are nothing to them, less than nothing.
Somehow corporations have forgotten that workers and consumers are the same people.
More than 100 years ago, Henry Ford - the quintessential capitalist - paid the workers on his Model T assembly lines the unheard-of-wage of $5 per day. The reason, he explained, was that unless his workers could afford to buy the cars they built, his business would fail.
Half a century later, the great labor leader Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers, was given a demonstration of the earliest robots on the General Motors Assembly line. A GM executive said to Reuther, "Let's see you get that to join a union."
Reuther replied: "Let's see you sell it a car."
A nation of walmart wage slaves can't support an economy of anything but walmarts.
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U.S. Gave Bunch of Money To Some Guy Pretending To Be Taliban Leader: http://wonkette.com/430837/u-s-gave-bunch-of-money-to-guy-taliban#more-430837
Pithy confession from Gitmo Gonzales
What I can say is that, yes I was aware of the techniques, I did have knowledge, and I know that a number of lawyers worked to look to see whether it could be administered in a way that was consistent with the anti-torture statute and guidance was given by the Department of Justice while I was in the White House about how these techniques could be implemented to gather important information, in a dangerous period for our nation, to gather information from the enemy that would be in America's favor.
– Alberto Gonzales
Note to Eric Holder: OK, Gonzales, Chimpy, and Blam-Blam have all now confessed to War Crimes in public forums, and have either published their stories in books or plan to. When are you going to prosecute them?
(TPM)
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