Friday, June 3, 2011

Hedlines - Friday June 3

Washington Post:
"Thanks for ruining our vacation."

— Piper Palin, 10, to a Time photographer, part of the media scrum following Sarah Palin's is-it-an-exploratory-campaign-or-what PAC-financed bus tour along the East Coast.
Someone needs to explain to the Palin kids that they come in a distant second to mommy's ego (even when they're hours away from being born).
 
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Arkansas Kids Name Bush & Cheney Worse People Ever, In School Yearbook

Whoops! Miss me yet?

School kids in the tiny Arkansas town of Russellville actually managed to learn something during their years of below-par public education. They learned, for example, that Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are two of history's worst people. This is something a lot of adults haven't even learned yet, in America. (It's well known in all the smart countries around the world.) So the kids decided to list the worst five people in their school yearbook, so when they sit in the smoking ruins of America a decade or two from now, they can remember. But the Arkansas grownups are mighty upset! How dare these smarty jones kids list Bush and Cheney alongside these other people, whoever they are! http://wonkette.com/446787/arkansas-kids-name-bush-cheney-worse-people-ever-in-school-yearbook

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While this is nice, it's what he's said before.  And then he caved.  I just don't believe him.  Yes, I believe he means what he's saying.  I just don't believe he'll keep his word.  Partly because he won't fight, sufficiently or early enough.  Which leads us to his back and forth with Dem. Congressman Waxman.  HuffPost reports:
"He was a little testy with the Waxman question. Essentially, Mr. Waxman was urging him to fight more," one legislator said. "The president reminded folks that he's the president sitting in that chair and he knows how to negotiate."

Obama also told the assembled Democrats not to count on more fiery rhetoric from the Oval Office.

"He said, 'There's a difference between me and a member of Congress,'" another lawmaker said, paraphrasing the president as saying: "When I say something the markets react, all of society reacts, other countries react. I've got to be careful with what I say. I can't just say it for brinkmanship. I've got to say it in a way so that I get what I want said, but I don't upset markets and so on."
Please. It's not like he's the first president to ever hold an opinion on something. Lots of presidents in the past have forcefully fought for their beliefs without bringing down the markets. The argument is a red herring. Candidate Obama didn't fight nearly hard enough against John McCain either, and there was a rather large blow up about it, involving the Netroots, major Obama donors, and the campaign that summer before the 2008 election. And there was no fear of hurting markets then.  And do we really think the markets would have crashed had the President actually fought for the public option?  This sounds like an attempt to justify a pre-existing behavior.  And it's not a good sign that he still doesn't get it.

Oh, the President also said he'll stand by Medicare (not clear what that means).  Again, the words are nice.  For what that's worth.
 
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QOTD: Jurassicpork: If any more Republicans join the 2012 presidential race in this upcoming political Special Olympics, they may just put the Onion out of business ...
 
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PHOENIX (Reuters) - Some local wags are calling it the "Wal-Mart of Weed" or "Home DePot."

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Clarence Thomas – The Original #Weinergate (via Allan Brauer)

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Jill: OK, Republicans, so tell me: Where are the jobs?
 
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The mythologized Ronald Reagan is unrecognizable to anyone who remembers the last 30 years. "Republicans attending a White House meeting on Wednesday didn't take kindly to President Obama telling them tax rates were higher during the Reagan administration. ... GOP members engaged in a lot of "eye-rolling," according to a member who was on hand to hear Obama, who invited House Republicans to the White House for discussions on the debt ceiling. The White House and Republicans are trying to reach a deal on spending cuts that could allow the $14.3 debt ceiling to be raised. ... "[The President] made a comment like the tax rate is the lightest, even more than (under former President) Reagan," Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) told The Hill following the meeting. ... House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) joked that during the meeting, "We learned we had the lowest tax rates in history ... lower than Reagan!" ... Obama has been pressing Republicans to agree to raise some taxes to close the deficit, but Republicans have been unwilling to budge. Debate has centered on wealthier taxpayers, with Obama pushing to raise tax rates imposed by President George W. Bush on taxpayers with income above $250,000 (families) and $200,000 (individuals) annually. ... Republicans say the focus must be on spending cuts and entitlements."

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Wash your hands. Wash your fruits and veggies. Stay away from raw meat. Avoid children. "The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the E-coli bacteria responsible for the deaths of 17 people across northern Europe is a strain "never seen before" in an outbreak. Preliminary tests show the bacteria is a mutant form of two different types of E-coli, that have aggressive genes possibly explaining why the outbreak has been so deadly. "This is a unique strain that has never been isolated from patients before," Hilde Kruse, a food safety expert at the WHO, told the AP news agency. Kruse said the strain has "various characteristics that make it more virulent and toxin-producing'' than the hundreds of E-coli strains that people naturally carry in their intestines". Chinese scientists at the Beijing Genomics Institute [BGI], who have been examining the bacteria, also said it carried genes that made it resistant to some classes of antibiotics. "This E-coli is a new strain of bacteria that is highly infectious and toxic," they said."

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Or are you some kind of atheist?
 
Deep in the confederate stronghold of Richmond, Virginia, there's something mighty queer afoot: The Federal Reserve building in Richmond has a homosexual rainbow flag fluttering beneath the American flag. Why? Apparently it's National Gay and Lesbian and BLT Month, and if President Obama wasn't already minority enough, he is also promoting this celebration of the degenerate "gay lifestyle." If that rainbow flag continues flying all month, as planned, up to 47% of straight white Virginians might "turn gay" just by being exposed to the colorful banner. http://wonkette.com/446746/virginia-confederacy-annoyed-by-gay-flag-at-richmond-federal-reserve
 
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Sarah Palin, on visiting Mt. Vernon, the home of George Washington: "Even Piper was able to grasp the significance of being in the presence of our first President - who had such diverse interests - when she told me later: 'how hard he must have worked to keep that farm going!'"
Stephen Colbert: "It's true. I cannot imagine how hard he worked with no help other than his African volunteers."
 
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Glenn Beck will be left behind
Beck's not Raptured

...his last broadcast is June 30, 2011.

I hope Uncle Rupert gives him a roadmap and a cheese sandwich.

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Crazy Eyes: I Will Repeal "Obamacare"

Just listen to all the idiots cheering that any health care reform will be taken away.

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A teenager in China reportedly sold one of his kidneys on the black market in order to buy himself an iPad.

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RIP, Jack.

 

Assisted suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian has died of a pulmonary thrombosis at the age of 84. Kevorkian claims to have helped over 100 terminally ill patients end their lives. He spent eight years in prison for doing so.

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The Family Research Council is asking its followers to pray that President Obama realize the inherent evil in his LGBT Pride Month proclamation, which "endorses the behavior that leads to AIDS."

Pray that God will protect America from the spiritual effects of this evil Presidential Proclamation. May Christians -- who will be targeted by HRC's smear campaign -- enjoy God's protection. And may this administration's efforts to promote homosexuality overseas be resisted and defeated at home and abroad! (Ps 16:1; 25:19-21; 27:5-6; 121:7-8; Ps 119:126; 140:1-13; Eph 6:10 ff; 2 Tim 3.

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"If children start to believe it is okay to be gay, they will think it's okay to be a pedophile or have sex with animals. It's a slippery slope. This gay pride nonsense is an abomination. God does not want to see homosexuals in our parks." - Pastor Ronald Ferguson, objecting to a planned gay pride picnic in a Harlem park.

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Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) brings The Funny™

"Recently radio evangelist Harold Camping calculated that the world would end at precisely 6 p.m. on May, 21," Markey recalled. "Well, he was wrong but much like Harold Camping's wildly inaccurate predictions, the House Republicans have come up with their own apocalyptic vision: The Republican Rapture."

"This budget decides who gets lifted up into the economic stratosphere and who gets left behind."

Billionaires and oil executives will get "raptured" by the Republican plan, while students and the poor get placed in "political purgatory," according to Markey.

Brilliant, but it may be more amusing if it weren't so true.

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2011 Republicans – Divorced From Reality

It appears that in the year 2011, being sane, intelligent and a conservative gives one little chance of winning the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. For many conservatives, traits such as these are viewed as negatives and guaranteed to get you labeled as a RINO.

For a party which is drifting ever closer to the edge of lunacy, you're much better off being a Michele Bachmann or a Sarah Palin than a Jon Huntsman.  And that last line is not speculation, it is fact. In the latest Gallup poll of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, Palin (15%) and Bachmann (5%) are ahead of Huntsman (2%).    Go figure.  Dim-witted, knowledge-challenged and batshit crazy is the recipe if you're the least bit hopeful of getting a teabagger or other low-information conservative to vote for you.

More proof needed? No problem. We've got a real winner for you.  The following video is an attack ad targeting Jon Huntsman, clearly the smartest, most balanced conservative out there.  It is speculated that it came from the Pawlenty camp.  After watching it you will be forgiven if you're not sure whether the ad is praising or attacking Huntsman.

Did you get all that?  According to this ad, working toward a climate of sane politics, showing concern for the environment, believing scientists, demanding affordable health care for all, working alongside non-conservatives and willing to put the welfare of Americans before party politics are seen as extreme positions unworthy of a true conservative. In the ass-backwards world of Republican politics, being a reasonable conservative gets you marked as a socialist traitor.

David Frum, a conservative deeply concerned about the direction his party is headed in, put it this way.

What's next? Black-and-white ads in which gravelly voiced narrators sneer, "What do we know about Congressman Jenkins? He says he was climbing the tree only to steal apples. But our video cameras clearly show him rescuing a frightened kitten!"

In a normal universe, being for cooperation, against pollution, for health care, for people, for your party's presidential nominee, and winning lots of votes would be admirable positives, not critical deficiencies. But since 2008, the Republican Party seems to have stepped into some dimension outside space and time, in which the rules of political physics have all been inverted.

Yep. And the only ones who cannot see it are the Fox News-watching, Obama-hating, delusional Koolaid-drinking crowd who have lost all sight of reality.  You almost want to pity them as the Republican Party self-destructs before their very eyes.  Almost.

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If Teabaggers weren't too stupid to read charts,
they'd see the debt skyrocketted under Reagan/Bush.

Then it dropped drastically under Clinton,
then Der Moron ran the debt thru the f-ing roof.

If Teabaggers could master reading graphs,
they might vote in their own self-interests
- for Democrats.

 

 

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