Open Thread
By Logan Murphy Sunday Jul 19, 2009 7:30pmIntroducing Sarah Palin's former speech writer -- Lee Stranahan.
Video courtesy of Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!
Open thread below...
John Amato’s virtual online magazine…OK, It’s a blog!
©2009 Crooks And Liars
Login or Register to post comments.
Word Salad????
Is he for real? They MET at an exorcism?
Wow. Just Wow.
The meth mouth is delicious.
Just snarkalicious!!
(YouTube) - War Crimes and the White House: The Bush Administration's Cover-Up of the Dasht-e-Leili Massacre
Thanks for this link. Please keep this story alive.
;)
Almost fooled me...
It's Jack Nicholson meets Juaquin Phoenix meets the bum in the alley across the street.
.
Unless you were playing the meta-parody card.
Damn. I'm over-thinking this.
Anyway, favorite line:
I'm a bit slow sometimes... ;)
Tell me that's real!
The only thing wrong is that we didn't do it sooner. You're supposed to be concerned with our opinions, not those of the Republicans.
Yep, and?
Anyway, Barry tries to pump us up with a better GDP in the next quarter. It ain't easy bein' a gay Jamaican. Arnie don't need no education. More slavery records involving the Virgin Islands. R.I.P. oldest WWI vet. Clinton admits we've back-pedaled on pollution. More bad banks. CalPERS sues Wall Street scam artists who ripped them off. A Cali tax collector agrees with the potential revenue growth from taxing pot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRNNPDnuIxU
It's scary-funny.
push this speech writer theory too far. I think it's a setup. Someone should do some real research on this guy.
http://leestranahan.com/
This piece he wrote condemns using religion to justify subjugation of women and girls.
Now he is my kind of Christian!
This is funnier:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMocEINn-E8
CBO Scores Confirm Deficit Neutrality of Health Insurance Reform Bill
July 18th, 2009 by Karina
News from the Energy & Commerce, Ways & Means, and Education & Labor Committees on the CBO estimates released last night on America’s Affordable Health Choices Act:
July 17, 2009
Washington, D.C. — The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released estimates this evening confirming for the first time that H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, is deficit neutral over the 10-year budget window - and even produces a $6 billion surplus. CBO estimated more than $550 billion in gross Medicare and Medicaid savings. More importantly, the bill includes a comprehensive array of delivery reforms to set the stage for lowering the future growth in health care costs.
Net Medicare and Medicaid savings of $465 billion, coupled with the $583 billion revenue package reported today by the House Committee on Ways and Means, fully finance the previously estimated $1.042 trillion cost of reform, which will provide affordable health care coverage for 97% of Americans.
“This fulfills the strong commitment of the President and House leadership to enact health reform on a deficit-neutral basis,” said Chairmen Henry A. Waxman, Chairman Charles B. Rangel, and Chairman George Miller. “The reforms included in this legislation will help control health care costs and expand access to quality, affordable coverage to all Americans in fiscally-responsible manner.”
The estimates also cover important reinvestments in Medicare and Medicaid, including phasing in the closing of the “donut” hole in the Medicare drug benefit. The bill’s long-term reform of Medicare’s physician fee schedule to eliminate the potential 21 percent cut in fees, and put payments on a sustainable basis for the future, will cost about $245 billion. Those costs, however, are not included in the net calculations above, as they will be absorbed under the upcoming statutory “pay go” legislation that is pending in the House.
that we see it first at C&L. I wonder how much MSM coverage this will get.
can read ?
Steele thinks people care about his opinions on health care. The feds choose to put a halt on uranium mining near the Grand Canyon. India doesn't want to do anything about emissions, but we'll sell them nuclear plants anyway.
Here's her comeback video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mWqr8pb2MY
She's not going anywhere, in "her own words". She has plans for the White House.
He postponed negotiations, just because one law-maker couldn't make it on time.
Funny!
.
This explains EVERYTHING. Except the moose-sex tapes.
No. Maybe them, too.
.
"[The White House budget director, Peter] Orszag, making the rounds of Sunday talk shows, insisted the economy at the end of last year, which the White House used for its optimistic budget forecasts, "was weaker at that time than anyone anticipated." He cited a "sense of free fall" not fully recognized at the time."
Um, if it really wasn't "fully recognized", why the fuck do you think Obama won last year?! Because Americans just felt like voting for a black guy to flip off the racists in the GOP?
Anyway, more Bush-tastic blundering on budget revisions and growth projections. Jeez, I'm actually beginning to believe that Poehler joke about Hillary being a bitch actually being helpful to getting things done had some merit...Oh, well. If we make it to '012 or '016, at least the next guy or gal we elect will have to be someone who looks and/or thinks like Nader and Kucinich, rather than someone who looks like a supermodel or acts like an extra on Hee Haw...
None of them look like supermodels so we're safe there. I do worry we'll be overrun with extras from Hee Haw. Aren't we now?
Do you get the feeling that we were led into believing that we'd be getting the next Mandela, and we got stuck with a Boris Yeltsin instead...?
Oh geez: the pressure is really on (now that I'm asked directly). Um, well, I could write a lot. I tend to be someone that follows my heart and my feelings (vs everyone here armed-to-the-teeth with awesome facts) but they haven't failed me. This is why I could write a lot, but none of it would be statistical. I don't deal in minutiae because it bores me. I'm a big picture type; always thinking of the globe (universe) and human nature.
That said, I don't think, nor did I ever, that Obama will be one to buck the system, or get all "mavericky". But, none of them would. What happened was you got rid of teh stupid (W). I doubt anyone that you were allowed to choose would buck the system, and it would have been a nightmarish-mistake to elect McCain/Palin: things would have got much much worse. So once the primaries were done, there was NO OTHER CHOICE POSSIBLE.
I do think he is inteliigent and even-handed. I think he has a good calming effect on a battered nation. I think he will raise the level of discourse, and repair America's badly badly tarnsihed name and image. I think people will realize that later, not now. I also think he will NOT, at this time, come out in a full "gun-fight" against the GOP. He has nothing to gain from that.
The problem is, no one (in politics) would benefit from taking on the status quo, or bucking the system: it is controlled by corporations and the wealthy. In fact, none need to buck the system because most Americans aren't paying attention. As long as enough people feel they're getting some of the pie, this will continue. This I feel is by far the greatest problem facing America, an apthetic and gullible electorate.
Most people are afraid. People are terrified of change (in my opinion). We are creatures of habit. We have been brainwashed from birth. People resist change. As long as their little world is OK...
What shakes up the status quo is disaster. Until then, most carry on oblivious to what's going on. (During Vietnam, the draft got people into the streets.)
So, I know you didn't get Mandela, and doubt you will, until something happens to wake up the American public. 9/11 did it for the worse (and in a very cheesy, lazy way, aided by non-stop propaganda, and built-in emotion.) How will people get involved again for the better?? The MSM is a serious liability!! So is online networking: people seek what they want to hear.
Getting the Democrats in is only half the victory. They can run on keeping the GOP out, but that's hardly a way to run a nation: elect the less bad guys, you have no other choice.
To sum up, it all looks pretty fucked up. You could have done worse. But that's really not very good, or good enough, is it? (I'm happy I'm not American-- woo-boy!)
Hope that's not too rambly. I'm an armchair philosopher. Politics isn't my cup of tea. I came here because Bush/Cheney/torture drove me here.
too many morons. it's like playing "extreme whack-a-mole". hard to keep up, and it gets kinda boring after a while.
PS People believe what they want to believe. Always have: always will.
FFRF Sues to Stop Religious Engravings at Capitol Visitor Center.
[ http://ffrf.org/legal/AyersComplaint.pdf ]
U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, claimed that without the engravings of "In God We Trust" and the Pledge of Allegiance, the Visitor Center would reflect an effort "to scrub references to America's Christian heritage" and to eradicate "the role of Christianity in America."
H. Con. Res. 131:
Mr. Constitution... Ron Paul, 1 of only 8, "No" votes!
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote...
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis, 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here".
The 1940s & 50s had a distinct fascist overtone and once again the fascist strike again at the Constitution and its declaration of a secular society.
"In God We Trust" as a motto, and the insertion of "under God" into the formerly secular Pledge of Allegiance, were both adopted belatedly in the 1950s during the Cold War. The godly motto, adopted in 1956, did not appear upon paper currency until 1957. The pledge was tampered with by Congress in 1954, after generations of schoolchildren had learned the original, godless version composed in 1892. Both changes were the result of religious lobbying. :-/
The U.S. Constitution...
Tue, 07/14/2009 - 23:26 — Truth_Critic
[ http://thirdbranch.crooksandliars.com/big-ten... ]
Well, we had to have some way of showing the distinction between us and the "godless commies". You know that a godless commie would burst into flames upon uttering the name of god.
Though I did see Hitchens smoking, during his god is not great book tour ;)
Trust me, we do.
E. Haldeman-Julius:
On this date in 1889, Emanuel Julius, later known as E. Haldeman-Julius, was born in Philadelphia, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Beginning odd-job work as a young teenager, Emanuel eventually became a newspaper copy boy. An early socialist, he educated himself at party headquarters, reading tracts on freethought, philosophy and economics. In 1906, Emanuel left his home for good, heading for New York City. His self-education continued when a sympathetic librarian at a girls' school in Tarrytown, where he had found work, introduced him to visiting dignitary Mark Twain. Emanuel's first attributed article, "Mark Twain: Radical," was published in a socialist periodical in 1910...
Haldeman-Julius revolutionized the publishing industry, bringing avant-garde authors to the masses. His radical politics, including attacks against President Herbert Hoover, brought him to the attention of the FBI, which he in turn pilloried in print. The businessman further alienated the status quo by publishing Joseph McCabe's allegations of Vatican collaboration with the Axis during World War II. J. Edgar Hoover's 20-year investigation of the publisher resulted in a verdict of tax evasion in 1951. E. Haldeman-Julius appealed the verdict, but was found drowned in his swimming pool later that year. → http://ffrf.org/day/
I cannot, at this time, match the wit and anger I read in this thread - AND IT'S JUST STARTING!
Maybe now, the apologists can stop imitating the repuglyKKKan "base" and see the DLC/DSCC/DCCC for what it is: A THREE-HEADED CORPORATE LOBBYING FIRM THAT IS THE SAME AS K-STREET, BUT KEEPS A LOWER PROFILE.
This guy was too funny.
who gets interviewed after either losing his trailer in a tornado or he's the guy who claims he was abducted by aliens.
It looks like a joke but then again...you never know with someone as stupid sounding as Sarah this just might be real.
SARAH IS GOING DOWN!
(and not in a good way)
hee
Nate Silver Issues a Challenge to Climate Change Extinctionists/Deniers/'Skeptics' - http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/nate-...
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, an ace prognosticator and sometimes pundit, seems to be getting a little hot under the collar when it comes to dealing with climate change skeptics. First Silver took it to George Will over his misapplication of climate data, and now Silver has turned his ire to those who mistake weather for climate.
It seems a blog post out of Minnesota got Silver started. John Hinderaker at PowerLine blogged that his summer in Minnesota has been filled with cold, cold days.
In essence, Silver challenges skeptical bloggers to this: "For each day that the high temperature in your hometown is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit above average, as listed by Weather Underground, you owe me $25. For each day that it is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit below average, I owe you $25."
Public health and environmental advocates Friday asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to deny a request from Dow AgroSciences for a permit allowing it to release large amounts of sulfuryl fluoride onto farm fields in four states. The chemical is a toxic pesticide whose global warming effects are thousands of times stronger than carbon dioxide.
- http://www.enn.com/press_releases/3042
New, Highly Toxic Pesticide Is Greenhouse Gas 4,780 Times More Potent Than CO2
Question....why the F, are they 'allowed' to use this? Big Agri-business is just as bad as Big Oil & Big Coal.... Buy local, buy organic See the movie: Food, Inc.
India Rebuffs New Efforts for Binding Carbon Targets - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/world/asia/...
There's a way to fix this...its called the Glass Steagall Act, Sherman Anti-trust Act, and progressive ('protectionist') policies...which brought us back from the brink...in FDR's time & shortly thereafter....(before the dark times, before the Reagan 'free marketeer' hocus pocus circus was pimped on us)
If you marginalize an 'emerging economy'...they will get with the program...
Bogus Racism allegations mar Senate hearing on clean energy economy - http://www.grist.org/article/2009-07-16-exxon...
Thursday’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on climate change blew up into an argument over race between Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and the chairman of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (a.k.a. 'self-hating con-servative token black men for hire or interviews on Fox Noise').
...Perhaps not, when you note that Alford’s group has received $350,000 from ExxonMobil since 2003 and Alford has a history of offering up climate skeptic talking points.
Exxon’s most recent disclosure form shows it donated $75,000 to the group in 2008 [PDF]. The group has received at least $40,000 from the charitable arm of Exxon each year for the past six years. As the Guardian recently reported, Exxon also continues to fund climate-change deniers despite the company’s pledge last year to stop funding any group “whose position on climate change could divert attention” from the need for clean energy.
Britain’s dirty little secret as a dumper of toxic waste - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environ...
What we already knew: Bailout Overseer Says Banks Misused TARP Funds - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/...
Congress Woman Introduces Bill to Ban All Credit Default Swaps - http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/congre...
Congresswoman Maxine Waters introduced a bill to ban all credit default swaps. As Waters said: Preventing all credit-default swaps is essential to bringing stability to the market and preventing a similar crisis in the future. Many top experts - including nobel prize winning economists and numerous other well-known PhD economists - agree.
Indeed, just today, Credit Sights published a report documenting - as I have previously pointed out - that CDS drive companies into bankruptcy.
'Recovery' You Can't Believe In - http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/07/recov...
...Toss in Goldman Sachs' announcement on Tuesday that it had recorded its richest quarterly profit in the bank's 140-year-history and that it has so far earmarked $11.4 billion in compensation this year (NYT headline: "With Big Profit, Goldman Sees Big Payday Ahead"), and the writing is on the wall.
Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner called these absurdly large profit announcements an "important sign of recovery." For the financial behemoths in whose pockets he so neatly fits, recovery it sure is. But for the 1.9 million homeowners who filed for foreclosure in the first half of this year and the small businesses teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, "recovery" couldn't be farther from the truth.
Must Read, Ted Kennedy: ‘The Cause of My Life.’ Inside the fight for universal health care. - http://www.newsweek.com/id/207406/page/1
Obama Campaign Arm Doubles Down, Targets House Dems On Health Care - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/18/obam...
Ignoring criticism - namely from Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid - that intra-party targeting was ineffective, Barack Obama's campaign arm is expanding its health care ad buy into the districts of key conservative House Democrats.
Universal Health Care Closer Than a Moon Shot for US - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/19-2
Here's a good way to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing: Exceed that achievement with one of greater value. Going to Mars would be nice. Getting universal health care would be cheaper. It would do more good to millions of people than expeditions to outer worlds to pick up rocks and plant flags. It should also be easier.
Yet we put a man on the moon within eight years of setting the goal but haven't managed to bring about a civilized health system in six decades of trying. Maybe 2009 will be different. To the nation's credit, health reform is holding its own against other circuses (Michael Jackson, Sonya Sotomayor, moonshot nostalgia), though it remains a Bataan march through the good, the bad and the ugly.
Here's an even better idea, lets do both; by ending the Iraq Occupation, and cutting the Pentagon budget in half (they'll still be light years ahead of the China the 2nd highest military budget)...
The last of the finest: A true class act, Walter Cronkite, has passed away at the age of 92. What an amazing news career, a TV news one at that. His news sense and legacy is something to ascribe to, even now. He will be missed. "That's the way it is." The last of the Murrow generation. Now it's just corporate "news" and entertainment.
- http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-...
Before the con-servatives rewrite history as they always do, here are some links about this great man (and how much of a liberal/progressive icon he really was): http://www.truthout.org/071709Z
10 Questions For Walter Cronkite (Oct 26, 2003) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9...
AIG Closed Climate Change Program Last Month - http://www.enn.com/business/article/40222
AIG has received about $180 billion from the government to keep it afloat. Treehugger made the following observation about AIG closing its climate change program:
"It's kind of ironic, really--the company that had a hand in creating a global recession by making unsustainable investments was on the brink of making some of the most important, most sustainable investments of all."
A Real Win for Single-Payer Advocates - http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/452493...
By August, 65% of all filers for unemployment insurance will have run out of their standard 26 weeks. And that's just the beginning.
- http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/17/news/economy/...
Why is the Obama Administration Ignoring Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz? and Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman for that Matter? Both of Them Have Offered Presicent Advice in Their Work, But the White House Has All But Ignored Them. Instead, the WH is going with an outdated welfare for Wall Street approach and an insufficient working class stimulus progam. Why?
- http://www.newsweek.com/id/207390?from=rss
Texas State Board of Education May Bar Students from Learning About Cesar Chavez, Thurgood Marshall - http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/07/16/texas-may-b...
History....it scares the crap out of those that live in fantasyland...
President Carter: Many Children Were Tortured Under Bush - http://www.opednews.com/articles/President-Ca...
History is just beginning to sort out the Bush era, with stubborn facts showing a resilience that Fox News talking points cannot, and more emerging. Today, even among Republicans, it is difficult to find those who will embrace Richard Nixon, though for a while he was every bit the perceived victim of "left-wing hate" that Bush and Cheney are now.
Incredibly, to compare Nixon to Bush-Cheney is to do a deeply flawed man a disservice. Nixon inherited Vietnam. He did not orchestrate from whole cloth a campaign to link Saddam with 9/11, and strenuously push to war despite the objections of his countrymen and the world. Nixon spied on political enemies. He did not use a tragedy to illegally spy on millions, the true numbers of which we still do not know because congress has never investigated.
The Potential Violence from the Right Wing Continues to Threaten America: Randall Terry warns of ‘potential violence’ if health care reform passes
- http://www.examiner.com/x-5697-Grassroots-Pol...
The POS that pimped Schiavo so he could build a new beachfront house in Florida....how anyone can take this (insert words here) seriously...is a testament to just how stupid some in this nation can be....
The Republicans Can't Help Exposing Their Racism, Because They are Generally White Male Racists and Sexists (Except for the Screwing the Pooch Part
- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/opinion/18b...
It's the Same Old Song: Blood and Oil in Central Asia - http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6266
Richard Power: While the Economic Royalists, & Their Enforcers in Politics & Media Live the High Life, Will "We, the People" Fade into Oblivion?
- http://words-of-power.blogspot.com/2009/07/wh...
Yet another conservative official sends racist anti-Obama e-mail. - http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/17/yet-anoth...
Coal industry downplays prospects for CCS as it seeks more handouts in Senate climate bill - http://www.grist.org/article/2009-07-17-coal-...
Gee...wonder why? "Clean Coal is an oxymoron" - Dennis Kucinich
Political Irony: http://politicalirony.com/2009/07/18/beam-me-up/
http://politicalirony.com/2009/07/19/gold-in-...
Yesterday in the grocery store I was in the international aisle looking at Jamaican food. They had a package of soup, just add water, that had in big letters Cock Flavored.
I wondered if it was one of those cream soups.
jamaican jerk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXaxZarMjDc&fe...
at 1st i doubted the authenticity of this story; that is, until i remembered you'd never blow smoke up anyone's @$$ unless it was the only way to save a poor, helpless gerbil!!
this is a joke, right?
i'm out of this political game. i'm off to go record music and edit film & publish a comic online. meant to retire 7/4 but had a couple more things to comment on.
i've been out here for about 4 years; i've said all i can say & the "bullfrog" handle has served it's purpose.
it's been fun and i look forward to continuing to read what you all have to say every day. edwin, fastfeat, ysbdadden, tyler durden, nonny mouse, liberalNmoderation, alice x, ron, cointelpro -that's just to name a few. keep up the good work!
before i go:
if anyone sees don rumsfeld, tell him i'm sorry about that time back in october 2006 i wrote that the only way to get him out of his office was to leave some yummy strudel outside his door; and that when he clamored to gobble it up you could then conk him over the head w/ a whiffle ball bat & finally haul him off in a paddy wagon. that wasn't very funny.
also, if anyone sees john boner (sp?), please tell him i'm sorry i said he looks like a melting ken doll. that wasn't a nice thing to say.
and if anyone runs into michelle bachmann, tell her i'm sorry i said the kool-aid man pissed in the lake she was drinking from -on second thought, i'm not sorry -that one's actually true.
but most importantly, if anyone sees lord rothschild (who in truth is more like the wizard of oz than nosferatu), tell him i'm sorry about all the times i called him "lord rottenchild"; i'm sorry about the times i called him a rumpelstiltskin posing as a rich uncle pennybags -that wasn't very sporting of me. i should know better.
anyhoo, without further ado, i bid thee all "adieu" (frog for "see you" -it's true).
peace.
bauer
Sounds like you're about to have a bit of fun, must be nice!
i've been putting off these projects for far too long. so much energy spent writing about the bad stuff; i need to get back to my true love again, if for no other reason than to remember what it is i've been fighting for. kinda sappy but 100% true.
take care, libmod -and good luck w/ the brew...
I too am about to pursue one of my dreams...I FINALLY got my hands on a digital video camera, and will begin shootin my zombie movie real soon..
I know what you mean. I'm surprised I have been here this long. It's likely because I have become a hermit in Korea. (They do call it "the Hermit Kingdom," but for different reasons.)
I'm about to pursue one of my dreams, starting in two weeks (Aug. 5). Right now, I'm off. It's summer vacation, but my job is over, so really I'm unemployed (by choice), and packing my boxes to move on.
All the best. Maybe you'll stop by to visit now and then. I'll watch for your posts.
Where john boner get's his spray-on tans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uCDV8OWRQA
nice. consider it bookmarked.
"hello, world!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S0zNFzK_ns
Hope you enjoy doing what you're going to write. I know the political sh*t can get downright depressing at times--can't let it define ya or drive you insane. You've always got a place here--check back occasionally, will ya? Gonna miss your point of view.
Peace.
And to add to that, as a Canadian, America's going to do as it does anyway. You always have. The rule of thumb is something like this: We're America, so if you don't like it, too bad.
And you know it's true.
In honor of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing faking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18WXmuZxyCI
This guy looks like John Amato after a two-month meth binge.
If you thought this guy was for real, you may want to avoid criticizing anyone's intelligence.
Dude, do you remember how many people on this site thought that THIS guy was for real????
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW4Ym9IS7Ks
That's hilarious! I can't believe I've never seen that vid before. Great satire, and a pretty catchy song......
IS that John Amato?
hahaha... "Just cause you're blind doesn't mean your parents don't have money."
hahahahahahahaha
Ponderous. Fucking ponderous.
courtesy of Logan.
Login or Register to post comments.