The women, aged 69 to 82, who live at the senior home up Mission street from the Bernal Heights Bank of America branch, decided to hold their own protest by doing what they called a “run on the bank.”
Tita Caldwell, 80, who led the charge of women with walkers and wheelchairs, said that they’re demanding the bank lower fees, pay higher taxes, and stop foreclosing on, and evicting, homeowners.
Aboard the fishing vessel al Mulahi, in the Gulf of Oman - Senior Iranian military officials this week bluntly warned an American aircraft carrier that it would confront the “full force” of the Iranian military if it tried to re-enter the Persian Gulf.
On Friday, Fazel Ur Rehman, a 28-year-old Iranian fisherman, had a warmer greeting for the carrier task force.
“It is like you were sent by God,” said Mr. Rehman, huddled under a blanket in this vessel’s stern. “Every night we prayed for God to rescue us. And now you are here.”
In a naval action that mixed diplomacy, drama and Middle Eastern politics, the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis broke up a high-seas pirate attack on a cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman, then sailors from an American destroyer boarded the pirates’ mother ship and freed 13 Iranian hostages who had been held captive there for more than a month.
If people would just stop trying to learn what our elected Congress is up to, we wouldn’t hate them so much.
It takes a few seconds to sink in, but Mitt casually steps in to remind old John what he was supposed to say.
"Me! You're supposed to say me you stupid old fart!" LOLz!
New Hampshire GOP Bill Mandates That New Laws Find Their Origin In 1215 English Magna Carta
One of the bill’s sponsors admitted that he wasn’t terribly familiar with the actual text, and mainly saw the measure as an homage. New Hampshire Democratic Party spokesman Ray Buckley said he was “mostly speechless” when he heard about the bill. “I appreciate all the hard work the Republican legislators are putting into the effort to make them look like extremists,” he said. “Saves us the trouble.”
High Powered Love
Making Believe
The Other Side Of Life
Blue Kentucky Girl
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"We won't make "bluh" people's lives better with welfare"? I don't want to give welfare to blah people? Blue people, maybe?
Well I listened to Rick's speech in its entirety, and I really have to wonder who is the "they" and "them" that he kept referring to. There just aren't too many blue and blah people running around these days.
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Too bad this 19-year-old is a Ron Pauler, he could really help our side out. Presenting the Santorum family (values):
The trouble with my uncle, Rick Santorum
If you want another big-government politician who supports the status quo to run our country, you should vote for my uncle, Rick Santorum. …My uncle’s interventionist policies, both domestic and foreign, stem from his irrational fear of freedom not working. [...]
My Uncle Rick cannot fathom a society in which people cooperate and work with each other freely. [...]
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That was today’s Quickie. Was it good for you?
One tax expert told TPM of “fairly sophisticated tax strategies” that would be “not available to ordinary tax payers.” A technique that puts you in a position that’s “like having an unlimited 401k account” sounds very attractive. But maybe not if you’re running for office, for Pete’s sake.
15. This is what Chris Matthews looks like "incognito."
10. Diversity is a bad thing
In Ottumwa, Rick said: "Diversity creates conflict. We can't celebrate diversity it because it creates conflict."
6. Rick's speeches got more conservative and fanatical the further away we were from civilization. The crowds were also bigger.
Northwest Iowa is the most conservative part of the state. I noticed that the further North and West we got, the more conservative his speeches got. There was more talk about terrorists and even a Michelle Obama "doesn't love her country" jab.
4. Coke cans = communist?
In Sioux City this question was asked: "We have so much foreign influence today. I'm looking at a Coke can with a polar bear on it. Where do we go from here?"
So what’s the problem with Cordray? There are two, one is an old Washington problem, and the other is purely Wall Street’s:
Republicans said they would never support anyone to head the CFPB — Period —that is, unless the White House made serious changes to the agency. (Politico)
He doesn’t just go after Wall Street Institutions. He goes after individual executives as well.
There’s your new sheriff, Wall Street. As we reported earlier today, it’s likely Republicans will fight Obama’s appointment in Court. In the meantime, Cordray will be able to nice and comfy at the CFPB.
Irresponsible mortgage and insurance companies preying upon the most impoverished homeowners in our country? Bankers and Wall Street financial specialists robbing Americans blind? Corporations refusing to raise the average worker’s dollar, even as CEO’s award themselves billions in annual bonus money?
No, no. None of these things led the the economic collapse of our nation, and the world at large. It was the gays, of course!
Listen to the bananas quote yourself over at Right Wing Watch. We suggest sitting on your hands for the duration so as not to pull out all of your own hair. You just can’t unhear something this stupid after it has touched your ears, unfortunately.
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It's a long list of things I would like to continue to have, and which one Party has pledged itself -- openly and publicly -- to taking away from me by election, litigation or fraud. One Party, which loathes me so profoundly for merely existing and believing what I believe that it built an entire, vertically-integrated industry around hating me and telling me exactly how hostile their coming fascist state will be to me, 24/7/365 from coast-to-coast, at the tops of their lungs for the last 30 years. One Party which has done more premeditated violence to our capacity for self-government in a shorter period than I would have ever believed possible back in the good old days when I blew my vote out the airlock by giving it to John Anderson.
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For one thing, as much as McCain dislikes Romney, he dislikes Rick Santorum more. For another, as much as McCain dislikes Romney and Santorum, he hates President Obama with the heat of a thousand suns.
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DES MOINES (The Borowitz Report) January 4, 2012 – Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was overjoyed today after finishing the Iowa caucuses in a virtual tie with a walking joke who wears sweater vests.
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Historians noted that the last time so few people decided a Presidential race they were all on the Supreme Court.
Obama makes recess appointment of Cordray to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Obama, McConnell said, “has arrogantly circumvented the American people’’ by making the recess appointment.
2) Wilder sighing
Heavy sighing is when you think the world is a miserable madhouse of suffering, violence and very little else. Sad sighing is when you think it's just tragic what happened to poor little Kim Kardashian and, oh my goodness, look what's happening to all the puppies and the honeybees and the supercute baby seals.
Wild sighing, on the other hand, is a different beast entirely. More guttural, raw, emerging from just below the genitals and shooting straight up the spinal chord like liquid fire, it pours out the throat like a slow, feral grunt, like you just ate raw unicorn heart from a skewer made of porcelain hummingbird skull you now wish to thank the gods without saying a word. You know?
If there was any question whether or not Newt Gingrich was serious last night when he hinted at waging a scorched earth campaign against Mitt Romney, he erased it this morning. Just watch the clip above if you had any doubts: in it, Gingrich not only slams Mitt Romney, but he praises Rick Santorum and says that he and Santorum together will make it clear to Republican voters that Mitt Romney isn't really a true conservative.
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Say goodbye to "The Girl with the Faraway Eyes" and "Governor Goodhair". That's my prediction.
Rick Perry says that he may drop out of the presidential race following a devastating fifth place finish in Iowa.
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Michele Bachmann’s campaign manager is saying that the candidate could be dropping out due to her last place finish in Iowa, the AP reports.
And the winner of the Iowa GOP caucus was...Barack Obama Here's the bottom line -- Mitt Romney dropped four million in the state, and what did it get him? Verification that three out of four people despise him, and that one out of those three will actualy go so far as to vote for Rick Santorum, who spent in the neighborhood of half a million bucks in the state, simply because he isn't Willard Mitt Romney. Ron Paul finished third, not far enough back in the field to make our 18-24-year-old male cousins and nephews shut the hell up about him, but at least they won't get louder, like they would have if he had finished in the top two. Newt Gingrich came in fourth, finishing about 10,000 votes behind Paul; Rick Perry and Michele Bachman brought up the rear, finishing fifth and sixth respectively. They are both skipping New Hampshire and heading for South Carolina; look for them both to drop out soon after that, Bachmann because she's broke, and Perry for a safe Texas sinecure somewhere, where people won't laugh and mock him, at least not openly and to his face.
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Moonlite BunnyRanch Endorses Ron Paul For President
"We decided to go with the guy that’s more about state’s rights -- and that's Ron Paul," club owner Dennis Hof said.
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"We thought real closely about supporting Newt Gingrich -- because he's a cheater -- and we like cheaters," Hof added.
Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.
This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.
First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.
Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.
Of course, America, with its rabidly antitax conservative movement, may not have a government that is responsible in this sense. But in that case the fault lies not in our debt, but in ourselves.
Recently, a mysterious organization calling itself “Americans Elect” has been making a lot of news. It claims that it wants to reform the electoral system and create a viable third party. I initially reacted with joy at the news – finally, an organization devoted to creating a system in which a third party can run, rather than merely picking someone and watching them fall to the spoiler effect and Duverger’s Law.
However, when I looked more at the organization’s plan, I noticed several worrying aspects:
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2.The process seems designed to choose a liberal candidate that will divert votes from Obama. One of the key aspects of AE’s plan is that it would use the internet to choose a candidate, without mentioning any option to mail in or call in a vote. Why is this suspicious? Because internet users tend to be younger and more educated, and younger and more educated people tend to be liberal. Older, more conservative people are far less likely to use or trust the internet over the traditional voting process. AE also lists the logos of five media organizations on their front page to advertise where they’ve been covered: the New York Times, MSNBC, PBS, the Daily Beast, and the Colbert Report. All of these are news organizations that the right alleges to have a liberal bias, and many of them are downright detested. If internet voting did not turn off conservatives, this list will.
3.They have mysteriously come up with a lot of funding out of nowhere, and are keeping their donors secret. [...]
Apparently plenty of people want to give money to this organization, but no one wants any credit for it. Seems odd.
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I’m not saying I have any knowledge or that there’s any smoking-gun evidence that AE is in fact a front, only that they look a lot like one. [...] However, the difference between this group and past third parties is that instead of being driven to prominence by well known politically minded individuals like Teddy Roosevelt, Ross Perot, or Ralph Nader, this third party owes its prominence to mysterious funding and tactically-minded individuals who came out of nowhere and often have prior loyalties to the Republican party. Now it could be that the secretive Republican members are just dissatisfied with the moronic extremists in their own party and would rather have a moderate bring the country together. But regardless of their motivations, the effect will be the same – a Republican will be much more likely to win if AE succeeds in getting young, educated internet users who watch the MSNBC and the Colbert Report to choose their candidate instead of Obama. If they truly want a viable third party candidate, they will fix the plurality voting problem first. Until then, I have a right to be suspicious.
Let's take a vote on this and to make
It official, we'll need a quorum ---
I nominate James & Rupert Murdoch
And two Ricks: Perry & Santorum.
Lo and behold, the Bible has gotten too liberal, according to a group of conservatives. And it needs a little editing.
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Yes, even scripture is not orthodox enough for the modern conservative. Not that it's the fault of the author(s), exactly. The group cites a few reasons why the Bible is too progressive: "Lack of precision in the original language ... lack of precision in modern language" and "translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one."
1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
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4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
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7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
Voters in the rural state of Iowa are preparing for the first test of the US election season as they choose a Republican candidate to take on Barack Obama for the White House in November.
Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum lead a field of six contenders in a race that remains too close to call.
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I really do think the Obama Campaign is going to run GOP Debate moments, unedited, through November.
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So, let me get this straight. Mitt Romney was pro-choice because a poll told him it was the easiest way to advance his political ambitions? And then he decided he wasn’t pro-choice anymore, when that was the easiest way to advance other political ambitions?
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A Pizza Ranch manager in Boone, Iowa, has renamed the restaurant’s chicken salad “Santorum Salad,” after Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum.
As 2011 draws to a close it should be noted that this year marked the 40th anniversary of Peter Watkins' "Punishment Park" — a small pseudo documentary about young anti-establishment protesters being tried for crimes against the United States. The young protesters are given a choice: several years in federal prison, or punishment park, where they'll be forced to walk across 50 miles of California desert to win their freedom. Along the way the young people must avoid the police chasing them and survive the desert heat without water.
Upon its release in 1971, "Punishment Park" screened for exactly one week in a Los Angeles theater and was quickly forgotten. It wasn't until the success of director Peter Watkins' later films that "Punishment Park" would be given a second look now.
This year has seen an entire world in protest. From massive protests in the Middle East, to recent anti-government rallies in Russia and finally, to our own Occupy Wall Street protests. Time magazine even named "The Protester" their 2011 Person of the Year. While these movements were not directly inspired by this 88-minute film, the themes and visuals very much apply to today's world.
Ultimately, "Punishment Park" is about social class roles, racism and the nature of morality. Some of the arguments made about the direction the United States are very much a product of their time. But the imagery of police brutality shows eerie similarities with the N.Y.P.D. and Oakland police departments' actions toward Occupy Wall Street protesters. Four decades after a limited release in one Los Angeles theater, the movie stayed alive through magazine articles, bootleg copies and word of mouth to become not only a warning for those who abuse their power, but hopefully a lesson about how to engage in political protest.
To the People of Iowa
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Dear Voters of Iowa:
In December I became Supreme Leader of North Korea. Pretty amazing development for a twentysomething who at the time was still living at home and spending all day playing Angry Birds. But there I was, receiving the cheers of millions of North Koreans, who usually don’t get that excited unless they’ve caught sight of a pork sandwich. (LOL)
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Here is why I am writing to you today: on Tuesday, you will go to your caucuses and choose from among a field of Republican presidential candidates. And let me tell you, the idea of any of these people getting nuclear weapons scares the shit out of me.
This is just one of many differences between your country and mine. In North Korea, we lock up the criminally insane. In America, you let them debate on TV. Right now you have people running for President I would not trust to take care of my plants.
So who do I recommend you vote for on Tuesday? In a word, me.
If you think about it, I am the most Republican candidate of all. In North Korea, we have no taxes. We have achieved that through a conservative policy of no jobs. Also, we have no wasteful “big government” programs providing food, shelter, or safe drinking water. And am I pro-life? Well, try this on for size: I believe that life begins at conception and ends at starvation.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: I’m too young to be President, since I’m under 35. Well, who would you rather have running your country, someone who’s under 35, or someone whose IQ is under 35? (LOL)
I think when you look at all the facts, voters of Iowa, you’ll realize that Kim Jong-un is the Republican who most deserves your vote. And if you’re still not convinced, remember this: at least I’m not Mitt Romney.
Peace out yo,
Your Supreme Leader
Republicans Say They Can Support New Taxes
Like a poll tax.
2012 Election Year Preview of Top 10 Lobbying Groups
Americans for Clean Air and Water - a consortium of the biggest oil companies
Citizens for a Healthy Tomorrow - drug company front group
Americans for America - anti immigrant vigilantes
America for Americans - armed white supremacists
Health Care for All Americans - insurance industry group against health care reform
Vote America - vote suppression group
Americans United for the First Amendment - want Christianity named official religion of the United States
Citizens for Freedom of the Press - want to make it easier to throw reporters and editors in jail
National Labor Rights Association - business group out to destroy unions
Americans for the Bill of Rights - group for legalizing indefinite detention, torture.
Fittingly perhaps, challengers Rick Perry and Rick Santorum are closing out the Iowa campaign with an argument about sodomy.
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The bottom line is that 2011 was a year in which our political elite obsessed over short-term deficits that aren’t actually a problem and, in the process, made the real problem — a depressed economy and mass unemployment — worse.
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A wave of arson attacks spread across eastern Queens on Sunday night, and the police said the firebombings were being investigated as bias crimes — with Muslims as the targets.
No one was hurt in the four attacks, in which homemade firebombs were apparently used. In three of the four attacks, the police said, Molotov cocktails were made with Starbucks bottles.
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