Sen. Vitter Denies He’s A Birther, Blames Rumor On “Liberal Thought Police”
I’m not a member of the “Liberal Thought Police.”
I do want to make that clear.
(However, I am in one of their training programs &
Am currently a volunteer.)
Democrats worried they face certain wipeout in the November elections take heart: campaign donations keep pouring in. In fact, Democrats have seen the percentage of overall contributions coming through online increase by 62 percent, comparing the second quarter of 2008 with the second quarter of 2010, according to a company that provides fundraising and compliance software for Democratic campaigns.
Internet-based political giving continues to democratize political engagement, giving greater voice to a larger number of small-dollar contributors, NGP says in a statement. While overall online contributions soared, the average online contribution amount decreased from $258.72 in the second quarter of 2008, to $211.34 in the second quarter this year. The online channel also continues to drive down the average donation across both online/offline, which fell from $471.92 in the second quarter of 2008, to $357.81 in the same period this year, the company added.
People are talking about how the Republicans might do in the elections this November. I say they can't win because the Republican party no longer exists. Those who claim to be the Republicans aren't. The party is dead. Only the name survives.
This is not the party of Abraham Lincoln. Ronald Reagan was far to liberal for today's Republicans. What is left of what the Republicans is the Ku Klux Klan wing, neocons like Dick Cheney, and those who are against the kind of people who think. The party is owned by corporate puppets that apologize to British petroleum. The party is led by Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. Republicans are only concerned about the deficit when they are out of power and spend like mad when they are in power.
Republicans need to take responsibility. They need to stand for something more than empty slogans. There are no ideas there anymore. It's all about their own self interest. So Republicans cannot possibly win because Republicans no longer exist.
So it begins.
The first knee-jerk response to the Great Dick Cheney Empathy Test (GDCET) is, of course, the easiest, and the most obvious, the most available to your giddy puppydog consciousness, and my guess is it shot through you like a fast and wonderful lightning bolt of OH MY SWEET JESUS YES the instant you read the story above.
That response was, shall we say, not very subtle. It was, I'm guessing, a not-so-secret howl to the universe that the sooner Dick exits this earthly plane, the healthier, lighter and happier we will all be, planetwide. Dark shadows will lift, flowers will bloom more brightly, 10 million female uteri can finally unclench, and so on.
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"How do you make rank and file Dems care about the midterms? It's unclear that yelling about how mean and nasty Republicans are is going to cut it."
No, it's not unclear. Fear of the Republicans just won't cut it, because the Democrats have been doing the very same things the Republicans used to do, or close enough that what they're doing will make little difference in improving lives any time soon. Yes, the only way the Democrats in Government can get the Democrats out of Government fired up is for the Democrats in Government to do some important things for their base that it recognizes is for them. Some things whose value is obvious, and doesn't need to be explained to them. Some things that would make the base care before the election whether or not the Democrats lost, and very, very sorry after it if they did. Some things that would make the base proud to be Democrats again. Some things that would make the base not wish that enough Democrats lost in the 2010 election that the whole Party ceased to exist, and opened up the way for a new party that would really represent working people again for the first time since the 1970s. What could those things be? Well, here are four things that could be done. But the last three things can't be done unless the very first thing is done, because there just isn't enough "Congress time" in an election year to do them the normal way. [my em]
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The combined global land and ocean surface temperature data also found the January-June and April-June periods were the warmest on record, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, which based its findings on measurements that go back as far as 1880.
In June, the combined average for global land and ocean temperatures was 61.1 degrees Fahrenheit
(16.2 Celsius) -- 1.22 degrees Fahrenheit (0.68 Celsius) more than the 20th century average of 59.9 degrees Fahrenheit (15.5 Celsius).
Temperatures warmer than average spread throughout the globe in recent months, most prominently in Peru, in the central and eastern United States and in eastern and western Asia, according to NOAA.
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The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first treatment that uses a so-called cancer vaccine, a drug that trains the body’s own immune system to fight the disease.
The drug, Provenge, developed by the Dendreon Corporation, was approved to treat advanced prostate cancer. In clinical trials it extended the lives of patients about four months compared with a placebo.
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Heres a virtual movie of the novelist John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968) discussing his reasons for writing his great novelThe Grapes of Wrath in a sound interview recorded in 1952. To my knowledge their is no surviving film recording of John Steinbeck discussing his work......
The Grapes of Wrath (1940) is an American drama film directed by Academy Award Winner Best Director, John Ford. It was based on the Pulitzer Prize winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939), written by John Steinbeck. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F. Zanuck.[1]
The film tells the story of the Joads, an Oklahoma family, who, after losing their farm during the Great Depression in the 1930s, become migrant workers and end up in California. The motion picture details their arduous journey across the United States as they travel to California in search for work and opportunities for the family members.
In 1989, this film was one of the first 25 films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
A. O. Scott reviews John Ford's 1940 film based on John Steinbeck's novel about the Great Depression.
HELENA — Liz Fowler, a key staffer for U.S. Sen. Max Baucus who helped draft the federal health reform bill enacted in March, is joining the Obama administration to help implement the new law.
Fowler, chief health counsel for the Senate Finance Committee, which Baucus chairs, will become deputy director of the Office of Consumer Information and Oversight at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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Fowler headed up a team of 20-some Senate Finance Committee staffers who helped draft the bill in the Senate. She was Baucus’ top health care aide from 2001-2005 and left that job in 2006 to become an executive at WellPoint, the nation’s largest private insurer.
She was vice president of public policy at WellPoint, helping develop public-policy positions for the company. In 2008, she rejoined Baucus to work on health reform legislation.
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All the spoiled unemployed layabouts have to do is snap out of it and start doing the work the free market is providing. As this fine fellow from the Heritage Foundation indicated the other day on Hardball --- unemployment insurance is keeping people from piling their family in the jalopy and heading out to Nebraska where the jobs are:
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... Ya gotta admire the phrase "entitlement people." It's the newest way to say, "Niggers." ...
Capitalism is dead, but we still dance with the corpse
AJIJIC, Jalisco, Mexico, July 6, 2010 - As an Anglo European white guy from a very long line of white guys, I want to thank all the brown, black, yellow and red people for a marvelous three-century joy ride. During the past 300 years of the industrial age, as Europeans, and later as Americans, we have managed to consume infinitely more than we ever produced, thanks to colonialism, crooked deals with despotic potentates and good old gunboats and grapeshot. Yes, we have lived, and still live, extravagant lifestyles far above the rest of you. And so, my sincere thanks to all of you folks around the world working in sweatshops, or living on two bucks a day, even though you sit on vast oil deposits. And to those outside my window here in Mexico this morning, the two guys pruning the retired gringo's hedges with what look like pocket knives, I say, keep up the good work. It's the world's cheap labor guys like you -- the black, brown and yellow folks who take it up the shorts -- who make capitalism look like it actually works. So keep on humping. Remember: We've got predator drones.
Conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh must have felt jealous that Mel Gibson was hogging the racially insensitive spotlight so he decided to "pay tribute" to Yankees owner George Steinbrenner on the day that he died by injecting race into the mix.
Media Matters caught Rush Limbaugh using George Steinbrenner's death as an occasion for race-baiting.
"That cracker made a lot of African-American millionaires," Limbaugh said Tuesday. "He fired a bunch of white guys as managers left and right."
Herein, some tips for those looking to hone their own personal ranty hatemongering sexist jerkface skillset:
1. First, last and always: Make lots and lots of money. I mean, truckloads. Mountains. Even more than you are imagining right now. No, no, I mean even more than that. Look, take that amount, multiply it by 100, then smack yourself in the skull with a petrified copy of "Lethal Weapon 4" until swarms of that amount are swirling around your head like bees. We're talking giant, obscene piles of it, strewn about Mel's personal Holy Family Catholic cult compound like piles of James Caviezel's trashed career.
In the parlance of the rich and repellant, Mel's millions -- a large portion of which he made on the sick success of "Passion of the Christ" -- is called "f-- you" money. It completely inures you from the slings and arrows of outrageous bloggers, creditors, film investors and divorce attorneys. It's the kind of money that allows you to do whateverthehell you want, because no one can touch you. Even if the lawyers take half, you'll still have plenty left over to buy lots of Russian hookers, vodka and the femur bone of Michael Jackson.
True sexist prickmonsters know that to attain true monsterhood, you gotta combine various evils. Stack them high and proud. This is the only real path to lasting disrepute. Try this: Sexist racist anti-Semitic drunk wife-beating verbal abuser sadomasochistic misogynist extremist religious bonk job with a torture fetish. See? Much better. All that's missing is raging homophobe. Wait, it was there before. Hmm.
4. Remember all the countless thousands of fundamentalist Christians and confused old people who numbly trucked in by the busload to watch "Passion of the Bloodbath" over and over again, often hauling their bewildered, horrified children along with them to witness what is easily one of the most grisly, disgusting, masochistic slasher-porn flicks masquerading as a "true" religious tale in the history of film?
They're the ones who basically made #1 possible. Which in turn, enabled #2. So on the path to monsterhood, be sure to toss a big, juicy bone to the fundamentalists, for believing so blindly in your nightmare vision of what amounts to about two lines in the Bible. Remember: Fundamentalism is always an excellent foundation for monstrous madness.
7. Do you know who else treats women like trash and blames them for being desirable, and claims that if they get raped, maimed, even killed, they probably deserved it for being so evil and enticing? The Taliban. Al Queda. Iraq. Most of Saudi Arabia, in fact. Radical Islam. Women are stoned to death, beaten and raped, and it's often their own fault, for being female, for being so tempting that weak, pathetic men can't control themselves.
"[Y]ou should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes," Jon Kyl said on Fox News Sunday. "Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to -- if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that's what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans."
What's remarkable about Kyl's position here is that it appears to be philosophical. "You should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans," he said. Never! This is much crazier than anything you hear from Democrats. Imagine if some Democrat -- and a member of the Senate Democratic leadership, no less -- said that as a matter of principle, spending should never be offset. He'd be laughed out of the room.
Back in the real world, tax cuts and spending increases have the exact same affect on the budget deficit. This sort of comment is how you tell people who care about the deficit apart from people who are interested in exploiting fears of the deficit to shrink the size of government. It's also the sort of comment that makes clear that the deficit commission's work is doomed, even if they do go with three-quarters spending cuts. Democrats won't accept an unbalanced product and Republicans won't accept a balanced product.
The Attack of the Real Black Helicopter Gang: The IMF Is Coming for Your Social Security
Could a $1.50 marijuana joint doom Prop. 19 in California?
"America's most irresponsible, incompetent and ideologically obsessed presidency not only left most of these political and economic crises on its successor's plate, it often masked significant problems that received virtually no attention, so prominent were the crises it caused....
"The result of this malign neglect is that post-Bush America is one disaster waiting to happen after another, all of which—when they do—are laid at the feet of the current president, regardless of whether addressing them is consistent with his policy agenda. For if he does not find a way to do so, they will likely overwhelm it....
"Faced with countless challenges merely to restore some sensible equilibrium to US policy regarding say, long-term deficits or financial regulation, Obama faces the conundrum of a system that, as currently constructed, gives the minority party no strategic stake in sensible governance. [...]
"We grew up with a set of assumptions. If you were born in the United States between, say, 1945 and 1965, you were raised in a basically liberal political culture when liberalism was the default position....
"When Reagan came, you thought: aberration....
"Thirty years later–actually, about 27 years later, or three or so years ago – I started to ask myself: What if all these presumptions I grew up with were wrong? What if Reagan wasn’t an aberration? What if Roosevelt and Johnson were the aberrations?...
"Think of this: We’ve experienced the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s, and the only mass movement to emerge from that reality is a right-wing populist one. [...]
"I say that a perhaps paradoxical comfort can be taken in these facts. If we insist on thinking of Obama–and in our personality-driven political culture, it’s so hard not to do this–as liberalism’s redeemer, he will always disappoint, as redeemers usually do. But if we think of him as one piece on a vexing historical chess board in a match that will take years to play out, we can exhale, and see the true shape of the tasks ahead of us."
BP CEO Tony Hayward was taken by surprise Tuesday by several U.S. senators' call for an investigation into BP's role in seeking the premature release of Abdel Basset al Megrahi, convicted in 2001 for the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie in Scotland. Beleaguered by the continuing Gulf oil spill caused in part by the legacy of John Browne, BP's former CEO, Hayward finds himself stuck with another poisoned inheritance from Browne—who personally flew to Libya several times with MI-6 officers to secretly negotiate access to Libya's oil. The deal, announced in 2004 by Tony Blair, was hailed as a breakthrough.
[...] Sen Frank Lautenberg has called for an investigation into whether BP lobbied the British government to prematurely release al Megrahi as part of a deal to get access to Libyan oil. The corporation admits mentioning al Megrahi's continued incarceration as a block to an oil deal.
Al Megrahi was released by the Scottish government under pressure from then-British prime minister Gordon Brown. Currently BP lacks the political clout in Washington to fight the senators’ campaign, but will urgently seek help from allies.