Watchdog back soon

its been a few years since i was there, but there's a great mexican restaurant down on the south side of denver:

Blue Bonnet Mexican Cafe & Lounge‎

...kind of a contradiction.

Snoozing Watchdog/Couching Tiger...my favorite form of martial arts

Thanks for the comments on the 2nd to the last thread!

"eyeroll"

Don't know why but that really pissed me off this AM.

>>Don't know why but that really pissed me off this AM.

I know what you mean, I think its the `know-it-all' aspect of eye-rolling?

The Animal Rescue Site!

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=3

Your clicks count! Since The Animal Rescue Site began in 2002, together we have funded more than 126,000,000 bowls of food for rescued animals in shelters and sanctuaries

Biden: Obama Acts Like a President, Chooses a President (Brent Budowsky)
@ 8:50 am
In his first truly presidential decision, Barack Obama acted like a president and chose a presidential-caliber candidate for vice president. I recently wrote that this choice would speak volumes about the kind of president he would be, that if he choose one of the heavyweight contenders, such as Sam Nunn or Joe Biden, over the less-qualified candidates it would be an enormously positive sign. Obama came through, big time. Joe Biden's arc began when his first wife and one of his children were sadly killed in a tragic auto accident before he was sworn into the Senate; today his son is headed to Iraq in uniform: Biden is a military dad. > Read More

http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/08/23/biden-obama-acts-like-a-president-...

Democrats Should Remove Joe Lieberman as Committee Chairman (Brent Budowsky)
@ 9:17 am
Joe Lieberman has questioned Barack Obama's patriotism, and for that he should be removed as chairman of any congressional committee or subcommittee by Democratic leaders. The minute Lieberman said that Barack Obama does not put our country first is the minute that he disqualified himself from being chairman of any committee in a Democratic Congress.

This is an extraordinary step that I do not propose lightly. It is bad enough for Sen. Lieberman (I-Conn.) to be campaigner in chief for McCain and bad enough for him to speak at the Republican convention. When Lieberman goes the next step and questions Barack's patriotism, that is the limit; that is the end; that should lead every Democrat to support stripping Joe Lieberman of any committee chairmanship. > Read More

http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/08/21/democrats-should-remove-joe-lieber...

I really wonder why such a large percentage Hillary supporters didn't contribute to her campaign.

Did these supporters expect their dates to pick up the tab?

maybe they weren't voting for Hillary as much as voting against the other candidates.

when a hack like this writes you just have to ignore it. the basic message is that no matter what course obama chose he would have found something wrong with it.

>>Democrats Should Remove Joe Lieberman as Committee Chairman

yes. Do it BEFORE McCain picks him as VP.

its a delicate issue which is really a stalemate because taking decisive action against this scum will force him to declare himself a republican and then the dems lose control of the senate.

on the other hand we've seen the senate gridlocked because of this 60 vote nonsense, so maybe losing control is irrelevant, especially if liebermann is eviscerated in the process.

probably a lot of truth in that. the crossover vote was the only reason hillary won ohio.

>>maybe they weren't voting for Hillary as much as voting against the other candidates.

I'm sure some did...but the extremely vocal `Hillary or else' crowd?

A developer, his deals and his McCain ties
By David D. Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg

Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Donald Diamond, a wealthy Arizona real estate developer, was racing to snap up a stretch of virgin California coast freed by the closing of an army base a decade ago when he turned to an old friend, Senator John McCain.

When Diamond wanted to buy land at the base, Fort Ord, McCain assigned an aide who set up a meeting at the Pentagon and later stepped in again to help speed up the sale, according to people involved and a deposition Diamond gave for a related lawsuit. When he appealed to a nearby city for the right to develop other property at the former base, Diamond submitted McCain's endorsement as "a close personal friend."

Writing to officials in the city, Seaside, California, the senator said, "You will find him as honorable and committed as I have."

Courting local officials and potential partners, Diamond's team promised that he could "help get through some of the red tape in dealing with the Department of the Army" because Diamond "has been very active with Senator McCain," a partner said in a deposition.

For McCain, the Arizona Republican who has staked two presidential campaigns on pledges to avoid even the appearance of dispensing an official favor for a donor, Diamond is the kind of friend who can pose a test.

A longtime political patron, Diamond is one of the elite fund-raisers McCain's current presidential campaign calls Innovators, having raised more than $250,000 so far. At home, Diamond is sometimes referred to as "The Donald," Arizona's answer to Donald Trump — an outsized personality who invites public officials aboard his flotilla of yachts (the Ace, King, Jack and Queen of Diamonds), specializes in deals with the government, and unabashedly solicits support for his business interests from the recipients of his campaign contributions.

McCain has occasionally rebuffed Diamond's entreaties as inappropriate, but he has also taken steps that benefited his friend's real estate empire. Their 26-year relationship illuminates how McCain weighs requests from a benefactor against his vows, adopted after a brush with scandal two decades ago, not to intercede with government authorities on behalf of a donor or take other official action that serves no clear public interest.

In California, the McCain aide's assistance with the army helped Diamond complete a purchase in 1999 that he soon turned over for a $20 million profit. And McCain's letter of recommendation reinforced Diamond's selling point about his McCain connections as he pursued — and won in 2005 — a potentially much more lucrative deal to develop a resort hotel and luxury housing.

In Arizona, McCain has helped Diamond with matters as small as forwarding a complaint in a regulatory skirmish over the endangered pygmy owl, and as large as introducing legislation remapping public lands. In 1991 and 1994, McCain sponsored two laws sought by Diamond that resulted in providing him millions of dollars and thousands of acres in exchange for adding some of his properties to national parks. The Arizona senator co-sponsored a third similar bill now before the Senate.

http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=12214277

GOP rolls out hefty list of Denver party ‘crashers’
By Jared Allen
Posted: 08/21/08 02:14 PM [ET]
Republicans are planning quite the party crash at next week’s Democratic convention in Denver.

Traditionally a time for one party to own the spotlight and the opposition to linger in the shadows, Republicans are determined to steal as much thunder as possible from the Democrats during their week-long coronation of Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the party’s likely presidential nominee.

To accomplish this, Republicans — in coordination with the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) — are set to bring to Denver a list of heavy-hitting surrogates, including two of McCain’s former presidential rivals and multiple members of Congress, who will do on-site media interviews all week long.

Leading the list of Republicans heading to Denver are former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Romney will anchor the GOP’s Tuesday press availability — the same day Obama’s former presidential rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), is scheduled to speak to the Democrats.

The heavy GOP presence at the Democratic convention is a sharp change from four years ago, when there was not much of a response team on the ground in Boston.

Romney, along with Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (Fla.) and Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), will be camped out in the Republican war room, which houses its own television studio and is within “walking distance” of the Democratic convention floor, GOP officials said.

Republicans will also be working to book Romney and the members of Congress on the morning shows of the local network affiliates and local radio stations throughout the week, all in an attempt to divert as much news coverage as possible from the Democrats' show. Colorado is seen as a key state that will be fiercely contested in the general election.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-rolls-out-hefty-list-of-denver-p...

does one hyperventilate while under water? This synchronized swimming sport is still a huge mystery to me. How do they do that stuff?

>>does one hyperventilate while under water?

If there was ever a question for the `Hyperventilating Bed-wetter', this is it.

I figger they start off by imagining Obama getting elected and surrendering to bin Laden?

200,000 Homeless veterans vs John "10 House" McCain
by Hesiod
Fri Aug 22, 2008 at 06:12:57 AM PDT
In order to keep this whole house flap alive, you have to constantly come up with new angles to push. One obvious one is that, according to the Veterans Administration, "nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. And nearly 400,000 experience homelessness over the course of a year."

The contrast with John McCain -- and his multiple million dollar homes, is about as stark as it gets.

Not only that, it allows the Obama campaign to hit McCain on his lackluster support for veterans programs, such as his initial opposition to Jim Webb's GI Bill.

Last year, Barack Obama introduced a major homeless veterans bill. In July of this year the House version was passed overwhelmingly, but President Bush threatened to veto the bill.

The senate bill is here.

Will John McCain support the bill, or will he support President Bush's veto threat?

Support the Homes for Heroes Act.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: For ways you can get involved and help homeless veterans visit the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans website. This isn't some political tactic. It really should be something we work hard to deal with regardless of the election.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/22/8506/94630/59/572522

>>200,000 Homeless veterans vs John "10 House" McCain

so...if we can find 2000 more McCain-type veterans (ones w/ a 10:1 house to veteran ratio) the issue will average itself out, there'll be (an average of) one home per veteran.

The problem of homeless veterans will be solved!

is a good interview with Biden. Right now he's talking about the tragedy he went through with his family.
3pm a live show of him and Obama

Sychronized Swimming on NOW!
Submitted by Fernando on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 1:26pm.
-----------
Fernando,

The following Men's Synchronized Swimming video is presented for your comedy pleasure.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4122944961711350389

that's what i'll be praying (forget the rain) i'll be praying that they end up in those metal cages

Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 1:10pm.
...I think its the `know-it-all' aspect of eye-rolling?
--------
Well, DUH!

Chuck Hagel: "An Obama-Biden Ticket Is A Very Impressive And Strong Team"

Talkin Points Memo

This statement on Biden, just out from GOP Senator Chuck Hagel, won't make him any more friends on the right:

"Joe Biden is the right partner for Barack Obama. His many years of distinguished service to America, his seasoned judgment and his vast experience in foreign policy and national security will match up well with the unique challenges of the 21st Century.

An Obama-Biden ticket is a very impressive and strong team. Biden's selection is good news for Obama and America."

The whole thing edges awfully close to an endorsement, and the claim that Biden's national security experience "will" match the 21st Century's challenges sounds a lot like an outright prediction of victory.

Free Democracy

>>Well, DUH!

I know you are, but what am I?

DENVER, Aug. 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement on the selection of Senator Joe Biden as Barack Obama's running mate:

"Senator Obama has made an outstanding selection in Joe Biden. Joe Biden is a strong leader, fierce advocate, and devoted family man with values rooted in the best of what America stands for. He will be a strong partner with Barack Obama in bringing the change America wants and needs.

"Delegates here in Denver are already buzzing with strong enthusiasm for the Obama-Biden ticket.

"Senator Obama's selection shows that unlike the Bush-McCain way of doing politics, Obama is not afraid to have strong people around him helping to lead our great country.

"Together they will serve America well over the next eight years, and our Party is ready to rally behind them and put them on the path to the White House starting right here in Denver."

NEW ORLEANS - Signs are emerging that history is repeating itself in the Big Easy, still healing from Katrina: People have forgotten a lesson from four decades ago and believe once again that the federal government is constructing a levee system they can prosper behind.

In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

Dozens of interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.

"People forget, but they cannot afford to forget," said Windell Curole, a Louisiana hurricane and levee expert. "If you believe you can't flood, that's when you increase the risk of flooding. In New Orleans, I don't think they talk about the risk."

Tyrone Marshall, a 48-year-old bread vendor, is one person who doesn't believe he's going to flood again.

"They've heightened the levees. They're raised up. It makes me feel safe," he said as he toiled outside his home in hard-hit Gentilly, a formerly flooded property refashioned into a California-style bungalow.

Geneva Stanford, a 76-year-old health care worker, is a believer, too. She lives in a trim and tidy prefabricated house in the Lower 9th Ward, 200 feet from a rebuilt floodwall that Katrina broke.

"This wall here wasn't there when we had the flood," Stanford said, radiant in a bright kanga-style dress. "When I look at it now, I say maybe if we had had it up it there then, maybe we wouldn't have flooded."

They're not alone. A recent University of New Orleans survey of residents found concern about levee safety was dropping off the list of top worries, replaced by crime, incompetent leadership and corruption...........

>>"Welcome to Wal-Mart"

I bet the combined square footage of his many homes would be larger than most Wal-Marts...

The Biden pick caused me to wonder a lot of stuff about Delaware.

For instance:

Is Delaware the least visited state in the nation?

Does anyone know anyone who vacationed in Delaware?

Does anyone live in Delaware whose last name is not Inc?

Are there any white cliffs in Dover?

Does a Fire Marshal restrict the maximum occupancy of Delaware?

>>The State No One Has Seen

are you trying to raise our `Del-awareness'?

Hey Chubby and Fernando,

Did you see the Olympic boxer from Bahrain?

When the cornerman removed his hooded robe, he was wearing a keffiyeh and aba underneath.

[rim shot]

Do you get that at Chinese or Japanese restaurants or just French?

>>and aba underneath.

was the Aba playing `Dancing Queen' (McCain's favorite song)?

Back in the 90s anyhow it used to be a pretty big queer (ok, mostly gay) vacation spot (not like Ptown but you know) and generally a pretty nice beach.

Don't hear much about it these days, but I assume it's still there.

And when I went there, there were no income taxes, so the cops supposedly gave lots of tickets.

That's all I know. Happy to help.

Or maybe it was no sales tax. Not sure.

Submitted by gloryoski on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 3:22pm.
...when I went there, there were no income taxes,
----
Submitted by gloryoski on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 3:23pm.
Or maybe it was no sales tax. Not sure.
------------------------
Or maybe it was no corporate tax. One of the three.

Two erudite and articulate speakers in the White House?

Be still, my beating heart.

I guess there's one good thing about voting for a 3rd party for president: There's no risk they'll be in any position to break their campaign promises...

Video: Bush says gas prices are Dem's fault
Renewed call for offshore drilling, tax cuts for energy companies.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Bush_blames_Democrats_for_high_gas_0823.ht...

PUMA declares: “We will overthrow Biden and install Hillary. Just watch us!”

Court rules jail strip-searches were illegal
US 9th Circuit Court rules San Francisco violated rights of thousands.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/23/BAQP12H067.D...

Submitted by Kevin © on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 4:04pm.

--------

June 29, 2008

The very backbone of PUMA is supposedly the idea that they will fight for Hillary to become the Democratic nominee, YET, this PAC form was filled out 4 days before Hillary “suspended” as in, conceded, her campaign. That doesn’t sound like someone who REALLY cares about Hillary Clinton’s campaign much. For months Hillary had been taking the heat from the sexist media. Why wasn’t PUMA- the angry feminist “movement”- created sooner if they were founded on some principle to help Hillary?

Also, the founder Darragh C. Murphy, an outspoken Clinton supporter on FOX news, doesn’t seem to think that it is too important to tell her followers that she felt sooo compelled to help John McCain in 2000 that she donated $500 to his campaign, only that she NOW supports John McCain because of Hillary’s loss. $500 from a “Homemaker” is pretty hefty dinero, don’t you think?

http://yestodemocracy.org/2008/06/29/puma-founded-by-republicans/

Obama went out of his way to insult Hillary by sending the text message [of selecting Biden] at 3 am…..

El oh el

* PUMA meaning "party unity my ass". Basically, people who threaten to vote for McCain because Hillary didn't get the nomination.

Hagel Weighs In
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) issued the following statement on the Biden selection:

"Joe Biden is the right partner for Barack Obama. His many years of distinguished service to America, his seasoned judgment and his vast experience in foreign policy and national security will match up well with the unique challenges of the 21st Century. An Obama-Biden ticket is a very impressive and strong team. Biden's selection is good news for Obama and America."
--David Kurtz

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/chuck_hagel_an_o...

Just stopped by for a sec on the way to somewhere else.

Now Kevin's got me laughing so hard I'm gasping for breath.

LSHIGFB

Bush's Bureaucratic Dark Arts: Why the Federal Register Is the Most Important Publication in America Right Now

By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive.

Bush has vowed to sprint through the final five months of his Administration, and you better believe him.

Because he is pulling all the bureaucratic levers in the Executive Branch to advance his right-wing agenda.

Unable to accomplish his goals legislatively, Bush is trying to get them done by fiat.

If you look at proposed regulatory changes at the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of the Interior, and the Justice Department you get a sense of how vast this hustle is.

"Political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush Administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers' on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins," The Washington Post reported last month.

The Department of Labor is not exactly making the safety of workers a priority. As the Post reported, this change "would address longstanding complaints from business."

The Bush Administration was trying to sneak this one through. "The agency did not disclose the proposal, as required, in public notices," the Post reported.

The proposed change at the Department of Health would redefine some kinds of contraception as abortion, even contraception before implantation. Hospitals that offered such contraception would forfeit federal aid. They would also forfeit the aid if they refused to hire health professionals who opposed abortion or birth control. This regulatory change "could also undermine state laws that require hospitals to prove emergency contraception to rape victims," according to womensenews.

At the Department of the Interior, the Bush Administration is going after the Endangered Species Act. It has published a proposed regulatory change in the Federal Register that would, as the New York Times noted, "eliminate the requirement for independent scientific reviews of any project that could harm an endangered species living on federal land."

http://www.alternet.org/story/95975/

ROFLASTC*
Thanks, Kevin ©!
_______________________

They are tricky but I am not so easily fooled.

*Rolling on floor laughing and scaring the cats.

gosh

I have heard the right wing attach machine complain about biden's "verbal gaffes"

these from the people that gave you george bush and now want mcain

There's never any corporate tax anywhere. Duh! So eye roll right back atcha.

For McCains, a Public Path but Private Wealth

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
PHOENIX — When Senator John McCain is in Washington, he lives in a luxury high-rise condominium in Arlington, Va., owned by his wife, Cindy Hensley McCain. Mrs. McCain also owns their condos in Phoenix, San Diego and Coronado, Calif., and their vacation compound near Sedona, Ariz. And it is the beer business, Hensley & Company, she inherited from her father that is the source of the McCain family fortune.

That fortune makes Mr. McCain one of the richest members of the Senate. Yet barely a sliver of it is in his name.

Democrats have increasingly highlighted Mr. McCain’s wealth. Senator Barack Obama ridiculed him on Thursday for being unable to say how many homes he owned, saying it showed that Mr. McCain was out of touch with ordinary Americans. But with the McCains’ money in Cindy McCain’s name, as dictated by a prenuptial agreement, the senator’s finances are more difficult to assess and scrutinize than those of many other political candidates.

The husbands and wives of senators are subject to fewer disclosure requirements than their office-holding spouses. In addition, Mrs. McCain, who files separate tax returns from her husband, controls a privately held company and invests mainly through a web of limited-liability corporations and trusts that have few disclosure requirements. She declined to be interviewed.

“Cindy is a private person, and I think in many ways that defines her,” said Robert Delgado, her father’s successor as chief executive of Hensley & Company, who spoke at the McCain campaign’s behest.

But the Hensley family wealth, from its rough-and-tumble origins to prominence in Arizona’s corporate world, is also the fortune that propelled John McCain into national politics. A clearer picture of that fortune emerges from a review of public records and interviews with employees, business associates, friends and relatives.

Hensley & Company has grown from a tiny operation in the 1950s to the dominant beer wholesaler in Arizona and the third-largest Budweiser distributor in the country, with more than $300 million in annual sales. It plays a leading role in corporate Phoenix — Andy McCain, the senator’s stepson from his first marriage and a top executive of the beer company, is now president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce — and is a forceful presence in state politics on the issues that matter to it. (I'm wondering if they meant son from hi first marriage)

Much more here and interesting

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/us/politics/23mccain.html?_r=1&th=&emc...

Terence McKenna on 'culture':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOy3H4yyocQ&NR=1

WASHINGTON – John McCain broadcasts his affection for Theodore Roosevelt, but his opposition to regulating the local telephone industry suggests that he may not share the former president's passion for busting huge corporate trusts.

Unlike Roosevelt, who railed against "malefactors of great wealth," McCain's positions frequently have echoed those of the giant regional Bell phone companies, now consolidated as AT&T, Verizon and Quest, the big survivors of the telecommunications wars of the last quarter-century.

McCain's opposition to the 1996 Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act, intended to spur competition by pressuring the Bells to lease their lines and switches to competitors cheaply, offers a window into how he might view regulation of other markets as president.

The Arizona senator characterizes his unsuccessful stand against the measure, and his later attempts to thwart its implementation, as in keeping with his commitment to free markets and his maverick positions on behalf of American consumers. He was the only Republican senator to vote against the legislation.

Critics charge, however, that McCain backed an approach to telecommunications that has limited competition and kept prices high. They note that executives of the big three telecom giants and their lobbyists have raised and donated millions of dollars for his political committees.

With McCain on their side, the Bells wound up escaping the stringent sanctions of a 1982 federal court antitrust case that broke up AT&T and the curbs of the 1996 law. They now dominate local and long-distance phone markets.

In two stints as the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee from 1997 to 2004, McCain proposed legislation and sent tough letters aimed at hindering the Federal Communications Commission from implementing the 1996 law. He even tried to persuade a nominee for FCC chairman not to appeal a court ruling that would have neutered the law. McCain's legislation stalled, and the Clinton-era FCC stood its ground in court.........

Red State Update offers to moderate a debate forum for all non-corporate candidates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EtsOGe1Rxo&NR=1

This is in reference to the BANKRUPTCY BILL.

There are rewards for serving Mammon instead of serving humankind.

And I very much liked Biden. He was so good at sharp questions and the 'flare of righteousness', I called it, during the Iran Contra hearings was it? and I had great hopes for him. But somehow his moments of brilliance never went further than that. He never seemed willing to lose it all for the principle of the thing. He became more of a bureaucrat, and then a servant to the corporations. Despite this VP thang, such potential unrealized imo.

is it smart to put two Irish old men on one ticket? Isn't that a bit too Irish?

O'bama/Biden

Way too Irish, and that is coming from a person who loves the Irish...

An overwhelming number of the Democratic senators who voted to authorize use of force indicated they would vote differently today, including former and current Democratic Senators Joe Biden of Delaware, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, John Breaux of Louisiana, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. - ABC Jan 2007

Any more questions? The Bankruptcy Bill? That was pandering for the #1 employer in his state :( He needs to talk about that vote because it represents a complete failure of progressive values. Not that Obama has much support left from true progressives...

"It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting". : Alfred Emanuel Smith - Source: in a speech in Albany

Crunch Time

By Mike Whitney

The impending global recession has nothing to do with crafty mortgage lenders, opportunistic loan applicants, dodgy rating agencies, or crooked home appraisers. That's like blaming Lindy England for Abu Ghraib. The source of the troubles is the Federal Reserve and monetary policies that are designed to rob people of their life savings.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20595.htm

"Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. . . . " Frederick Douglass - July 4, 1852

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c8an2XZ3MU&NR=1

Terence McKenna on rewriting the culture program

Patraeus as VP

only if he gets to keep the uniform...

;)
==

at bestbuy using a mac. keys are a little different

what was the big Sammy news? missed it.

~`~`~`~`~`~
Jamesbennett

Although I can't agree about the anarchistic utopia of libertarianism being the solution, the Libertarians have my utmost respect for zeroing in on the festering problems in the system and pursuing them doggedly for decades, and those problems include: the Federal Reserve, IRS tactics, the below the radar structures of our powerful instittutions.

got to sign off....

Rythumic(sp) gymanstics(sp) was on ....

[how to get the spell checker to work on a mac?????

by. ttl.

~`~`~`~`~`~
Jamesbennett

Social Security recipients are getting "shortchanged" due to government manipulation of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), say two economic experts. Kevin Phillips, the author of 13 books on the economy and politics, says government distortions of the CPI are "shortchanging Social Security Cost-Of-Living Adjustments (COLAs)." California economist John Williams contends that flawed methodologies are used in calculating the CPI allows politicians, who are intent on "stealing income from Social Security recipients." Read more

http://www.seniorsleague.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2...

>>what was the big Sammy news? missed it.

it certainly did not live up to the hype.

I think he's an hour long, internet only, show for the next couple weeks.

better than nothing, but...

To our third party fanciers....
Submitted by toniD on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 5:39pm.

"It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting". : Alfred Emanuel Smith - Source: in a speech in Albany

___________________

Who counts the votes?

FIRST --- I HAVE BEEN SIGNED.... EEK
...guess now I should stay on until L.o.t.R. this eve ... but i also want to talk some politics with RAD Greens ...
...now my computer is sooooooooo sloooooooooowwwww ..

But now to talk of what I can't stand.....

It is SELFISH EGO-FILLED Cowardly NUKE/COAL Puppet, LION (and i like most lions, like Bill) OBAMA which has destroyed my PARTY so much so for the FIRST time EVER I contemplated to start a very RADICAL/ECO PARTY (I found out the info) OR BETTER YET -- JOIN THE GREENS, as they have been "courting" me, especially since I believed in the two parties, but have been ALWAYS since a teen, been A DEM -- mostly for strategy!

It Was ALWAYS JUST ABOUT HIM, Obama -- instead of WE ALL OF THE BLOODY PARTY!

HE CHOSE TO TEAR THIS PARTY TO PIECES!

Rights Group Suing AT&T for Spying Will Sue Government Too

A civil liberties group suing AT&T for helping the government warrantlessly spy on Americans isn't abandoning its lawsuit after Congress voted to give retroactive immunity to the nation's telcoms.

Instead, the scrappy San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation now says that it will expand its efforts and sue the government over the spy program that operated outside of the court system for more than six years.

"If Congress wants to shut down one avenue, we will go down another," EFF legal director Cindy Cohn said, noting that the amnesty provisions in the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 do not apply the government itself as the Administration had first wanted.

The full extent of the government's warrantless spying has yet to be revealed, but it is reported to involve massive data-mining of Americans' phone records, and broad wiretapping of communicationst that enter or leave the U.S. border .

After the portion that targeted Americans' international communications was submitted to the nation's acquiesent secret spying court for blanket approval in January 2007, the program was quickly found to be illegal.

That prompted the Bush Administration to scare Congress into giving it wide, but temporary powers to turn American internet and phone companies into de facto extensions of the nation's spooks.

After a few months of standing up to the Administration's typical terrorism rhetoric, a Democratic-controlled Congress caved to political pressure in July and handed a significant victory to President Bush by approving retroactive amnesty to telecoms that spied on Americans without following the st helping the government warrantlessly and secretly spy on Americans.

Other groups have attempted to sue the government over the warrantless spying, but even the most successful of them have eventually failed since the plaintiffs can't convince a court that they were spied on.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/rights-group-su.html

Sorry, I missed Seder's big announcement too,
and I listened to it twice!

Apparently this series of words had a hypnotic effect on me:

Seder: but, uh, here's the announcement, that, uh, well, I should, lemme preface it, by, uh...

>>FIRST --- I HAVE BEEN SIGNED.... EEK

you are giving new meaning to the phrase `hysterical woman'.

Submitted by toniD on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 4:51pm.
“Cindy is a private person, and I think in many ways that defines her,” said Robert Delgado, her father’s successor as chief executive of Hensley & Company, who spoke at the McCain campaign’s behest.

--------

Too bad that didn't apply to Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Might be misinterpreting the quote, but I think that's the hidden meaning. "Who counts the votes?" There should be representatives of all parties ovverseeing the vote count.

WD-- just how much did you contribute to Hillary?

If she was honestly a viable candidate her campaign would not be over 20 million in debt.

You lost, get over it.

If it wasn't for the support from Limbaugh's `Operation Chaos', it would have been over months earlier.

Submitted by WiccanDruid on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 6:31pm.
-----

Go tell the wiccan to smack the druid, then, shut the hell up.

The strangest thing about people like Nobody's orWiccan Druid's rabid support of Hillary -- These are individuals who are normally very leftist, but somehow they overlook Hillary's right/middle corporatist tilt.

McCain's AP Surrogate Strikes Again

Ron Fournier, the Washington chief for the AP has published an "analysis" of Obama picking Biden. The headline alone tells it all:

Analysis: Biden pick shows lack of confidence

This is the kind of garbage the AP puts out, and also the kind Yahoo is keeping on top of their news page right now. It's amazing that people would consider this as some unbiased view given the history of Ron Fournier.

So does Fournier's article have any merit? Well to answer that we must be able to look into the future. Rumors have been out of McCain picking David Petraues as his running mate. Speaking in hyperbole, if McCain did that would that indicate the military is McCain's weakness? I doubt it, and you can be the right would be up in arms to even suggest it.

If Romney is picked, does that indicate McCain's weakness on economic issues? Again - no.

Let's also look at some of Fournier's past charms. Like when he wrote that Karl Rove needs to "keep up the fight", or how about when he was considered for a spot on team McCain?

This guy has proven a definite bias in the past towards the GOP and John McCain. How in the world can the AP publish an article by him as some unbiased view? Anything Fournier writes should conclude with "I'm John McCain and I approve this message".

http://intoxination.net/jamie/mccains-ap-surrogate-strikes-again

RANDOM BIDEN-RELATED OBSERVATIONS.... While the political world digests the big announcement about Joe Biden joining Barack Obama on the Democratic ticket, I thought I'd pass along a few random observations.

First, Obama/Biden is only the second Democratic ticket in the last 35 years not to have at least one candidate from the South.

Second, if Obama/Biden wins in November, Biden will be the first Roman Catholic vice president in American history.

And third, Biden happens to be up for re-election in Delaware this year. As I understand it, he will, like Joe Lieberman in 2000, run simultaneously for both seats.

Just thought I'd pass these along.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014383.php

Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 6:56pm.
-----

Their white slip is showing Bubba.

WiccanDruid,

Are you working on any progressive campaigns at the state and/or local levels?

Are you working with any independent groups (rather than political parties)?

Is Fournier Moonlighting for McCain?
by Jonathan Singer, Sat Aug 23, 2008 at 11:02:17 AM EST

Contact the Associated Press (updated)... Kathleen Carroll (Fournier's boss) at kcarroll@ap.org or (212) 621-1500. Be POLITE, but be FIRM. Let them know that you don't want to see them serve as stenographers and amplifiers for pure spin by the McCain campaign.

I wrote earlier that the Associated Press' new Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier was sounding an awful lot like a surrogate for John McCain in his "analysis" piece on the Biden pick that ran across the wires overnight. What I didn't remember at the time was that it wasn't a long time ago that the McCain campaign was actually trying to hire Fournier.

Before Ron Fournier returned to The Associated Press in March 2007, the veteran political reporter had another professional suitor: John McCain's presidential campaign.

In October 2006, the McCain team approached Fournier about joining the fledgling operation, according to a source with knowledge of the talks. In the months that followed, said a source, Fournier spoke about the job possibility with members of McCain's inner circle, including political aides Mark Salter, John Weaver and Rick Davis.

Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that it sounds like Fournier is working hard to carry water for John McCain, or that he engaged in months of conversations at the highest levels of the McCain campaign about taking a senior level position with the outfit. This is, after all, the guy who told Karl Rove to "keep up the fight" during the investigation into the death of Pat Tilman, who editorialized about Howard Dean in what was supposed to have been a straight ahead news piece ("his lack of foreign policy experience, testy temperament, policy flip-flops, campaign miscues and edgy anti-war, antiestablishment message"), who was one of the worst disseminators of entirely false and scurrilous GOP attacks on Al Gore in 1999 and 2000 ("He [Gore] claimed credit for inventing the Internet" and "Gore, who once claimed to have invented the Internet", to take two examples).

If pure Republican spin and McCain talking points are what we are to expect out of the AP under Fournier, it's going to be a long hard slog full of truth squading between now and election day.

Update [2008-8-23 11:6:1 by Jonathan Singer]: Much more on the specifics of the problems with the Fournier piece from the inimitable Steve Benen, who has moved from his Carpetbagger Report over to The Political Animal over at The Washington Monthly.

Update [2008-8-23 11:49:45 by Jonathan Singer]: "McCain camp delights in Fournier piece", writes Jonathan Martin. No doubt they should delight -- they appear to have the AP's Washington bureau chief, who they almost hired, in their back pocket.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/23/11217/1320

>>last 35 years not to have at least one candidate from the South.

Delaware is pretty close to a southern state...They were one of the slave states that were on the union side during the civil war.

This is why I can't trust Biden...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlintz/26624298/

As I posted the other day, when I saw Phelps chin, I thought steroids. Apparently, the above is photo of him posted 37 months ago on Flicr. Sorry, I still haven't figured the photo post thingy.

ToniD, would you do the honors, please?

Anybody?

"Change," "Hope" ... Why They Must be Talking About Joe Biden!

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

"Change” and “hope” are not words one associates with Senator Joe Biden, a man so ripely symbolic of everything that is unchanging and hopeless about our political system that a computer simulation of the corporate-political paradigm senator in Congress would turn out “Biden” in a nano-second.

The first duty of any senator from Delaware is to do the bidding of the banks and large corporations which use the tiny state as a drop box and legal sanctuary. Biden has never failed his masters in this primary task. Find any bill that sticks it to the ordinary folk on behalf of the Money Power and you’ll likely detect Biden’s hand at work. The bankruptcy act of 2005 was just one sample. In concert with his fellow corporate serf, Senator Tom Carper, Biden blocked all efforts to hinder bankrupt corporations from fleeing from their real locations to the legal sanctuary of Delaware. Since Obama is himself a corporate serf and from day one in the US senate has been attentive to the same masters that employ Biden, the ticket is well balanced, the seesaw with Obama at one end and Biden at the other dead-level on the fulcrum of corporate capital.

Another shining moment in Biden’s progress in the current presidential term was his conduct in the hearings on Judge Alito’s nomination to the US Supreme Court. From the opening moments of the Judiciary Committee's sessions in January, 2006, it became clear that Alito faced no serious opposition. On that first ludicrous morning Senator Pat Leahy sank his head into his hands, shaking it in unbelieving despair as Biden blathered out a self-serving and inane monologue lasting a full twenty minutes before he even asked Alito one question. In his allotted half hour Biden managed to pose only five questions, all of them ineptly phrased. He did pose two questions about Alito’s membership of a racist society at Princeton, but had already undercut them in his monologue by calling Alito "a man of integrity", not once but twice, and further trivialized the interrogation by reaching under the dais to pull out a Princeton cap and put it on...
www.counterpunch.org

I think the link is good for that photo. Take a look at the whole photo and you will see what I mean.

the most liberal label
Submitted by mire on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 2:00pm.
most likely will be helpful to these candidates and allay some of the base fear that these are corporatists

=================================================
Biden's shepherding of the bankruptcy reform bill, and his acts to ensure that Delaware remain a friendly environment for the credit industry is glaring proof that Obama/Biden will not shake the corporatist tag.
*TLL*

McCain misfires as he attacks Obama's home purchase.

Summary
On the defensive over the extent of multiple McCain homes, the GOP candidate strikes back. But his TV spot gives an oversimplified and misleading account of how Obama bought his own $1.6 million house in Chicago.

The ad says Chicago power broker Tony Rezko got "political favors" including "$14 million from taxpayers."

But there's no evidence of any connection to the Obama home purchase. The $14 million was to build apartments for low-income seniors. Obama wrote a letter supporting the "worthy" project, but both men say Rezko didn't ask for the letter.

It says Rezko "purchased part of the property [Obama] couldn't afford." Rezko's wife did buy an adjoining tract but later sold the land at a profit. Obama paid market price for his home.

McCain launched the attack after Obama ran one capitalizing on McCain's inability to recall for an interviewer how many homes the McCains own. Obama's ad says it's seven.

The best tally we've seen puts the figure at eight, counting all the apartments and homes owned by McCain's wife, Cindy, and various family trusts, for themselves and their children............

>>Obama/Biden will not shake the corporatist tag.

oh, yeah...and that Hillary, man, is she ever tough on the corporations. Like the "experience" she would have brought to the White House...experience giving blow-jobs to the insurance lobbies.

Run time: 00:38

"Ladies and gentlemen, your kitchen table is like mine. You sit there at night before you put the kids -- after you put the kids to bed and you talk, you talk about what you need. You talk about how much you are worried about being able to pay the bills. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. It's a pretty hard experience. He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJeQTTkOzF4

...

Maybe they will approve something for what ails YOU...

why are people disappointed because Sam is doing an internet show? I never get to hear him on air waves so I've always depended on an "internet" stream. I don't know how to say this easier. America can't handle the truth.

Progressive Campaigning and Organizing - WiccanDruid
Submitted by Star Vox on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 7:05pm.

;)

Please stop the fighting about Obama and Clinton on the blog.

Thanks!

Joe Campbell was talking about this in the Moyers interviews..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPqJrJ6Vd_c
Alan Watts: Nothingness And The Illusion Of Opposites

hey 2 thee from the bunny and me!
(\___/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

(¯`*._(¯`*._(--)_.*´¯)_.*´¯)
(¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸¸,ø¤°`°¤

Majikthise : Ron Fournier: If Obama were confident, he would have picked a ficus tree:

Because nothing says confidence like picking a VP who adds nothing to your ticket. A photosynthesizing running mate would have been a decisive break from the status quo, not to mention a source of fresh air. By picking a ficus tree, Obama would have signaled his readiness to win the entire election by himself.

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2008/08/ron-fournier-if.html

vinegar, water and douchebag media, inc.

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2008/08/peace-mom-v-guardian-of-power.html

*

How dare Cindy not start from the bottom up...

How's it going? Must be very hot where you are, because it is here...

how do you do it?
Seriously.

Honest people count the Dem votes, I guess, because when they win, there's no mention of fraud...

What do we know about Landslide Lyndon? Democrats have "fixed" close elections in the past, but it seems that the Republicans are getting away with murder. There is a danger that people will get so disturbed at the shenanigans, and do more than not vote. They may demand democracy, see take action until they get it.

Majikthise : She used to blog here...

>>Obama/Biden will not shake
new
Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 7:41pm.
>>Obama/Biden will not shake the corporatist tag.

oh, yeah...and that Hillary, man, is she ever tough on the corporations...
===================================
Hillary is a corporate lackey, too. All senators are, more or less. Will not get elected otherwise.

Fuck. Off.

You incoherent nitwit. The Green's will luv you.

The case is straightforward. U.S. disregard for civilian life, human rights, democracy and the lives of Afghan women has been shocking. Marina, a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, can’t use her last name for fear of assassination, but she recently told journalist John Pilger:

We, the women of Afghanistan, only became a cause in the West following September 11, 2001, when the Taliban suddenly became the official enemy of America. Yes, they persecuted women, but they were not unique, and we have resented the silence in the West over the atrocious nature of the Western-backed warlords, who are no different. They rape and kidnap and terrorize, yet they hold seats in [U.S.-backed Hamid] Karzai’s government.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/the-antiwar-movement-and-the-good-...

Hillary did the "Party-Line" ... still YOU BLAME Obama's weakness on the Clinton's
... I WAS/IS for Gore ...

I saw, here FIRST, the continued Hillary and Bill Clinton BASHING... for past several (and past) threads. GET OVER IT! (I believe you said to ME PERSONALLY "GET OVER IT" -- FIRST!)

FINALLY, I am seeing and hearing even more speak out TRUTH.....Even Malloy.

Obama is a republican-lite in DEM "clothing...

THE ONLY HOPE IS TO SEE AND SPEAK TRUTH...
stand and then DEMAND TRUE DEM Demands from Obama but most here is willing to let Obama do EVERY BLOODY BAD ... a wee example OKAYING DRILLING, especially ON/OFF MY COAST.
(plus I do not TRUST ANYONE WITHOUT A FURRY FRIEND - not a "show" for "the media".)

Now, sadly my "fly bys" are in several hour cycles ...

I will probably tell my PAST AGAIN AAT Eye-roll .. but maybe not, since I have SAID IT MANY TIMES BEFORE ... & I DO NOT HAVE TIME TO WASTE......

I do not attack you personally -- but you have now so done to me... LOL Yawn Eye-roll

REGARDING CAPS -- DEAL WITH IT...

SIGNS OF ENTROPY.... and critical mass ... some may "GET IT"

BBL

Your Timing is different than mine.

Oh, and my past IS VERY EXTENSIVE ... >>>>> EDIT <<<<< whatever , eye-roll
BBL *Poof*

has the the luxury that Clinton or McCain does. He leads a relatively simple life compared to others of his ilk.

None of these people are progressive. Especially not McCain or Clinton. They would spit on any of us as soon as shake our hands.

...

___

.♡. - .☮.

Why are you asking her that question, I'm curious...

Submitted by Alice on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 7:49pm.
Progressive Campaigning and Organizing - WiccanDruid
Submitted by Star Vox on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 7:05pm.

____________________

I also am curious.

Based on WiccanDruid's posts, I believe that she is a Democrat (as she has stated). I also think that she is especially concerned about the environment.

There are other campaigns and races that progressives can get involved in.

These campaigns can include supporters of Clinton, Obama, and Nader.

Why is the central focus on the race to the White House?

p.s. By the way, I believe that I read that you are involved in your local precinct now (which is Republican "red"). Is that correct, Alice? Just curious!

Submitted by WiccanDruid on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 8:15pm.
--------
WiccanDruid,

In September of 1753 I was thrown overboard during a storm in the Lesser Antilles. A dolphin who had lost her calf suckled me until I was strong enough to provide for myself on an unpopulated cay off the north coast of South America.

The dolphins taught me their language. They predicted many things including my subsequent lives and a series of crappy movies made by Eddie Murphy.

One dolphin in particular, known by the humorous nickname of Clickety-Click-Squeak-Click-Clickety (I still laugh when I think about it), warned me that I would encounter fantasy-engrossed, self-aggrandizing, muckraking idiots like you.

It is long past time for you to hook up with a kindred sack of hammers, cuddle together in a hollow tree and enjoy the raggedy remains of your otherworldly life.

Thespian Lipstick -- Here's a good quote about Biden from the CounterPunch link you gave:

http://www.counterpunch.org/
...
His “experience” in foreign affairs consists in absolute fidelity to the conventions of cold war liberalism, the efficient elder brother of raffish “neo-conservatism”. Here again the ticket is well balanced, since Senator Obama has, within a very brief time-frame, exhibited great fidelity to the same creed.
....

___
bluerootsradio

poorest Senator. Seems very different than McCain/Clinton. He's no better off than many Americans including me.

..anyone?

I can't believe he's related to Laura Flanders.

I'm very encouraged by Biden's ACLU Congressional Scorecard. Financial votes aside (of course he will have the ability and duty to tell the Delaware Banking Cartel to kiss his ass if he gets in the WH) Biden votes heavily in favor of civil/human rights. That's good.

___
bluerootsradio

Please accept my apologies for diving off the deep end.

When I grow weary of cleaning the horse shit off of my boots, one option is to strongly suggest that the horse shit elsewhere.

Biden got Obama call during root canal By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 22 minutes ago

DENVER - Joe Biden got the call from Barack Obama while undergoing a root canal

As he sat in a dental chair Thursday, Biden received word that Obama was on the line and interrupted the procedure to accept the presidential candidate's invitation to be his running mate.

It capped a six-week process of elimination that always pointed in Biden's direction even if the Delaware lawmaker couldn't believe he would actually be the pick.

The Democratic ticket, revealed Saturday in Springfield, Ill., began to form when Obama approached Biden in July and asked him if he'd consider being a contender for vice president, according to two Biden associates.

Biden said he would and submitted the requisite paperwork to the vetting committee, but was skeptical that it would ever happen. A longtime friend who requested anonymity to speak freely said Biden wouldn't allow himself to believe he was in serious consideration because his hopes and expectations had been beaten down so much by such a miserable showing in the Democratic presidential race.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080823/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_veep_tick_tock_1

What a weird day. huh?

No one could have predicted THIS day on the blog...aside from Wiccan Druid self-righteous frenzy, I never thought I'd see Alice say "I will not bbl..." (not be back later)...

I mean...What are the chances? The woman is usually online here at least half of every day...

I, for one, am really going to enjoy her absence, but I honestly doubt it'll be more than an hour before she logs in anonymously.

Ted Kennedy is fighting back
Joe Sudbay (DC) · 8/23/2008 04:59:00 PM ET · Link
13 Comments · reddit · FARK · Digg It!

Today's Washington Post has an update on Senator Ted Kennedy:
Kennedy, 76, has spent much of the summer in hospitals. The cancer, which was discovered in May, required brain surgery in June and daily chemotherapy and radiation treatments for six weeks after that. But the veteran senator has still found time and energy in the past three months to:

· Record an emotional video for the first day of the Democratic National Convention on Monday, recapping inspiring moments throughout his life.

· Fly to Washington in the midst of treatments to cast a decisive vote in favor of legislation that would prevent a sharp cut in Medicare payments to doctors. Several Republicans, moved by his grit, switched their earlier votes on the bill, giving it a veto-proof majority.

· Orchestrate bipartisan talks on a universal health insurance bill he hopes to have ready for Congress to consider by the time a new president is inaugurated.

· Craft a Peace Corpsesque youth service bill he hopes to introduce next year to round out his legacy.

· Form a nonprofit group with friends to raise money and build an institute in Boston, next door to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, that will be dedicated to research and education about the U.S. Senate.

And if his condition permits, he might make a surprise appearance at the convention in Denver.

Not bad for a guy with brain cancer. Hope is he well enough to make it to Denver.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR200808...

some are really very nicely done, aesthetically...he's also the only one (that I've seen, anyway) that has them in HD

not that it matters, I guess, then again, maybe it does....just an observation

>>Please accept my apologies for diving off the deep end.

hey, everyone's doing it!

Thanks for posting the audio of Seder v. Maron on the blog.

-----------

"There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia."

-Kurt Vonnegut

"It capped a six-week process of elimination "

jeez...that was awful

A pharmacist friend gave me a valium the size and shape of a NFL football with the Rx: Lick every 90 seconds.

Actually I've been cured since mire and Crank's posts earlier.

___
bluerootsradio

"Biden got Obama call during root canal"
Submitted by 60th Street on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 9:33pm.
--------
Obama: "Would you rather be Vice-President or have a root canal?"

Biden: "I want it all!"

guess I'm not the only one that noticed

"I’ve seen ads from both Barack Obama and John McCain watching the Olympics this evening, but Obama’s ads are in HD and McCain’s are not. In comments, please explain how this serves as a metaphor for the entire campaign."

"errr…let’s see…oh! oh! obama is a better-defined candidate than mccain! damn i’m good."

"HD is what elitists watch on their really expensive big screen teevee’s that real american’s can’t afford cause they need to gas up the regular guy dodge hemi."

>>he's also the only one (that I've seen, anyway) that has them in HD

kinda pointless to do McCain commercials in Hi-Def, most of his supporters...(something to do w/failing eyesight)

are High and Deaf

...best I could do

Couldn't have someone made the observation that McCain ads air earlier in the day than Obama?

That way I could have quipped that McCain supporters all go to bed by nine.

much easier old person joke...

and there has to be a joke set up that leads into a punch line about going out to dinner at 4 pm...

Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 9:40pm.
kinda pointless to do McCain commercials in Hi-Def, most of his supporters...
--------
...need Hi-Vol.

>>...best I could do

have to give you points for fast work.

long live Biden!

Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 9:44pm.
much easier old person joke...
--------
Bait: "What IS the easiest old person joke?"

Chubby: "Depends."

in 10 minutes 9 pm NOLA time; after that Joe Biden with his book about family and life, didn't catch the title, you know, the kind of book aspiring presidential candidates like to write, but it'll be interesting

Jack Kevorkian’s strategy for getting elected to Congress may be unique in American politics.

“Don’t register and don’t vote,” he told a group of about a dozen persons who came to hear him speak Thursday evening at the Troy Community Center.

So if no one registers or votes, how will he get elected?

The response wasn’t clear, but Kevorkian was trying to make a point that the party system has poisoned American politics. “Parties are like religious sects,” he said. “You say and do what they tell you.”

Kevorkian is running as an independent in the 9th U.S. House race. He will face incumbent Republican Joe Knollenberg and Democratic challenger Gary Peters. Also on the ballot will be Libertarian Adam Goodman.

More here.

talk about McSame proof.

Yiou know what Seder ought to do?

if he had a show...he could arrange an interview with Corsi about his Obama book...then, when the interview starts he could ask about nothing but Corsi's ties to kiddie porn.

THAT would get some media notice, eh?

I had a JUMBLE flashback there...i'm sure I could do worse if I really think about it

>>No Need To Thank Me

No groan could ever be long enough to deserve that joke...

>>I had a JUMBLE flashback there

no one really cares where a joke comes from, just as long as they keep coming. ;)

kinda pointless to do McCain commercials in Hi-Def, most of his supporters...

...would opth out

...would need Bi-Def

...would think it's cornea

ugh

>>kinda pointless to do McCain commercials in Hi-Def, most of his supporters...

have cataracts, anyhow...

triple digits here, but my brother sez fall is in the air...

most of his supporters are either stoned on 'scripts or hard-of-hearing

>>kinda pointless to do McCain commercials in Hi-Def, most of his supporters...

are assholes

(ok, it has nothing to do with the set-up, but it is unexpected and somewhat true)

Submitted by 60th Street on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 10:07pm.
---------
Yo, Chubby,

60th has thrown down the Groaner Gauntlet.

Apparently he thinks that he has the bad joke chops to solo with the best of the worst.

Sunshine Jim,

I am concerned about Bob based on his earlier post on the blog.

Have you heard from him today? I would appreciate any updates.

>>60th has thrown down the Groaner Gauntlet.

In the words of the great Jimmie Durante, "Everybody wants to get into the act."

to Rielle Hunter:
"We'll be together when Elizabeth is gone."

What a laughably evil bastard.

www.sigzone.blogspot.com

>>What a laughably evil bastard.

yeah...anyone who would spread such a rumor is definitely a "laughably evil bastard."

Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 10:26pm.

You were probably one of the people who told me that the initial report of his love child was false when I insisted it was probably true, right?

LOVE CHILD! NEVER MEANT TO BE!

www.sigzone.blogspot.com

Iraqis desperate for water.
Although the United States has spent $2.4 billion on Iraq’s water and sanitation sector since 2003, the United Nations “estimates that less than half of Iraqis get drinking water piped into their homes in rural areas. In the capital, people set their alarm clocks to wake them in the middle of the night so they can fill storage tanks when water pressure is under less strain.” Additionally, a billion liters of raw sewage is dumped into Baghdad’s waterways each day. The World Bank estimates that at least $14 billion is needed to refurbish Iraq’s water system.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/lifestyle-iraq-water.html

What fold would you focus on?

Cheney linked to Stevens corruption trial.
Newsweek reports that in a conversation “secretly tape-recorded by the FBI on June 25, 2006,” Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) “discussed ways to get a pipeline bill through the Alaska Legislature with Bill Allen, an oil-services executive accused of providing the senator with about $250,000 in undisclosed financial benefits.” Stevens promised Allen, “I’m gonna try to see if I can get some bigwigs from back here and say, ‘Look … you gotta get this done’.” Two days later, Vice President Cheney undertook the unusual move of writing a letter to the Alaska Legislature urging members to “promptly enact” a bill to build the pipeline.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/23/cheney-linked-to-stevens-corruption-...

"it's a dick thing"
~John Edwards

>>>>What a laughably evil bastard.

You know where that "quote" originated?

The freerepublic.com picked it up from the NYpost.

certainly no reason to question the veracity of that....

Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 10:31pm.

keep going...

which got it from... yes? yes?
The National Enquirer... which got it from its inside source.

Game. Set. Match.
The guy is so loathsome... and he said it after the interview about the affair.

www.sigzone.blogspot.com

>>kinda pointless to do McCain commercials in Hi-Def, most of his supporters...

..are watching on TV's with tubes.

___
bluerootsradio
..in 6 foot long boxes with a real Hi-Fi platter scratcher.

>>LOVE CHILD! NEVER MEANT TO BE!

I know this story upsets you ...Why did Edwards have to act in such a classless way?

Only a jerk waits until after his wife dies to marry his mistress.

Giulian didn't.

McCain didn't.

you know that turning up the brightness won't make him sound any smarter right?

>>The National Enquirer... which got it from its inside source.

yes, that's the story's origin.

but not the quote.

But, the real point is, he didn't do anything McCain didn't.

it's difficult for me to understand your congress
Submitted by air-ono on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 10:14am.
your representatives vote according to their corporate affiliation
in australia, you have 99.9% party unity
you're in party A -- you vote party A (period)
you deviate from the party line...
you pack your bags

_____________________

Generally, the Republicans in Congress do vote together.

The challenge is with the Democrats.

Lobbyists fill the money bags of too many politicians.

>>he didn't do anything McCain didn't.

so if the affair makes Edwards a douche-bag, so is McCain.

and Giuliani...

and Gingrich...

and Reagan....

___
Change Congress

Hope y'all had a good week!
Don't forget to tune in FREE SPEECH TV this week!

Free Speech TV to Carry Denver "Open the Debates" Rally Live

• Next Wednesday, Denver is going to be rockin.

  Thousands will be gathered at the University of Denver Magness arena to protest the corporate lockdown on the Presidential debates.

  Sean Penn, Val Kilmer, Cindy Sheehan, Tom Morello, Jello Biafra and others will join Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez.

  Demanding an end to the corporate control over the Presidential debates.

  So, if there is any chance you can get to Denver Wednesday, you can make a donation to reserve your ticket here.

  If you can't get to Denver, no problem.

  Free Speech TV will be streaming the event live on the Internet. (Wednesday, August 27, 7 p.m. Mountain time, 9 p.m. Eastern.)

And your Sunday Talkie Schedule is up, too.

Brick TeeVee R.I.P Stephanie Tubbs-Jones

maggiesboy has the ability to read aloud desert-dry political information while making it sound...uh...did I mention that he plays great tunes?

I'm framin' that baby!

Maybe if I played raunchy porno music in the background?

___
bluerootsradio

Agreed!
Submitted by Thespian Lipsti... on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 8:12pm.
>>Obama/Biden will not shake
new
Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 7:41pm.
>>Obama/Biden will not shake the corporatist tag.

oh, yeah...and that Hillary, man, is she ever tough on the corporations...
===================================
Hillary is a corporate lackey, too. All senators are, more or less. Will not get elected otherwise.

»
-------------------------------
--------------------------------

Appears to me the majority of the Founders understood just what they were doing when they adopted the idea of the Senate from the Roman Republic model. The Founders were men of property and business, and it seems likely they did not want to give up that edge outright. (Historian Michael Parenti explains the Constitution is a document that sets up business practices and a framework for laws for doing commerce and trade, exactly what would concern the property and business-minded who were American gentry.)

For the Romans the Senate was the seat of power of the ruling families. Back then it was a combination of long term aristocracy and 'earned' aristocracy. From the 'optimates' (rightwing) of the Roman Senate came the destruction of attempts to wrest even some of the wealth and power from The Tyrannical Few and share it with the Roman citizenry: Reformers Gaius Gracchus, Tiberius Gracchus, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Servilius Glaucia, Marcus Livius Drusus, Sulpicius Rufus were brutally murdered for their attempts and egalitarian ideals.

(If one can acknowledge that the dominant corporations are just fronts for today's super rich few, then it's possible to start moving beyond the rose-colored-glasses view of over-simplified U.S. Federal Government we are spoon-fed ad nauseum.)

Actually, it was very big of the Founders to allow for a House of Representatives, with representatives who have shorter terms in order to reflect the everchanging wishes of The People.

But could the U.S. Senators be the Thoughtful Deliberators on the Whims of The People at the same time they were concerned with the interests of the Very Few Landed and Wealthy? You bet your seat on the stock exchange they could! (Oh, you don't have one? Too bad.)

Was it the post World War I growth of the Military Industrial Complex that changed the House's role to be a direct link to The People? (No typo. I say it was born during WWI not after WWII. Look up the history of the reorganization of the U.S. arms industry in 1914 by National City Bank (owned in part by William Rockefeller) and the Rockefeller Family (via Percy Rockefeller who controlled the Remington Arms Company). By 1917 when the U.S. entered the conflict, things were falling into place and the Bush family got its foot in the door when Prescott Bush's father, Samuel, became the interface agent between government and weapons businesses. "With the war mobilization conducted under the supervision of the War Industries Board [run by Bernard Baruch, "a Wall Streeet speculator with close personal and business ties E.H. Harriman" railroad magnate], U.S. consumers and taxpayers showered unprecedented fortunes on war producers and certain holders of raw materials and patents. Hearings in 1934 by the committee of U.S. Senator Gerald Nye attacked the "Merchants of Death" -- war profiteers such as Remington Arms and the British Vickers company -- whose salesmen had manipulated many nations into wars, and then supplied all sides with the weapons to fight them." Sound familiar? [Quote from Chapter 1 'House of Bush: Born in a Bank', in The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush by Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, c. 1992, page 15.)

Oops, got off track with the Military Industrial Complex and its being a link in our losing our voice in the House of Representatives too....

So just WHERE does the vox populi (Voice of the People) reside now in the U.S.? Even The People's LAST SAFEGUARD -- the Fourth Estate of the FREE PRESS -- has been stolen from us.

Man! Where do we go from here?

More of the same in the sloganeering of "Change" from corporatist Obama?

Do you realize how depressing this would be if there were not even one alternative? I say thank you to those individuals who can see forward to TRULY change the direction of government in the U.S. and form "third" parties.

Is that all there is?

For all those millions of dollars from caring Americans who desire "Change", watching those ads is the result. Ads made by those image-making advertising companies and placed with another giant media corporation. Your money -- right back in the hands of those who don't want things to change.

Too weird. Too weird.

>adopted the idea of the Senate from the Roman Republic model.

I believe the model for a representative democracy was actually model off of the Iroquois Indians.

Very interesting social order, if what I remember is correct...It was a matriarchy in which men owned no property.

Women chose a male to represent them in council.

http://www.iroquoisdemocracy.pdx.edu/html/iroquoiswoman.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois

Iroquois nations' political union and democratic government has been credited as one of the influences on the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution.[22][23] However, there is heated debate among historians about the importance of their contribution. Historian Jack Rakove[24] writes: "The voluminous records we have for the constitutional debates of the late 1780s contain no significant references to the Iroquois." Researcher Brian Cook writes: "The Iroquois probably held some sway over the thinking of the Framers and the development of the U.S. Constitution and the development of American democracy, albeit perhaps indirectly or even subconsciously... However, the opposition is probably also correct. The Iroquois influence is not as great as [some historians] would like it to be, the framers simply did not revere or even understand much of Iroquois culture, and their influences were European or classical - not wholly New World."[25] However, Cook concedes that much of the heated debate around the influence of Amerindians on the United States Constitution amounts to academic knee-jerk reactions and protectionist turf-wars. Cook further notes "The National Endowment for the Humanities rejected a number of research proposals that dealt with the Iroquois influence theory... [and] Johansen's first book on the Iroquois influence, Forgotten Fathers, was ordered removed from the shelves of the bookstore at Independence Hall."

Although their influence is hotly debated, it is a historical fact that several founding fathers had direct contact with the Iroquois, and prominent figures such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were closely involved with the Iroquois, their stronger and larger native neighbor. Whether this was purely politics for protection or true admiration, perhaps can never be fully determined.

In 2004 the U.S. Government acknowledged the influence of the Iroquois Constitution on the U.S. Framers.[26] The Smithsonian Institution also noted the similarities between the two documents, as well as the differences. One significant difference noted was the inclusion of women in the Iroquois Constitution, one group among many that the framers of the U.S. Constitution did not include.

Of all the tribes of North America, the Mahican and Mohegan tribes are probably the ones most frequently confused. Even ordinarily reliable online sources like the Ethnologue of Languages and Wikipedia are incorrectly lumping these peoples together. This confusion is nothing new, either--in the 19th-century classic "Last of the Mohicans," James Fenimore Cooper famously confused important details from at least these two tribes (he may have gotten the idea of a tribe on the verge of extinction from a third Algonquian tribe of New England, since neither the Mahicans nor the Mohegans were in this situation.)

http://www.native-languages.org/mohicans_words.htm

and that doesn't include Mohawks...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/the-book-they-cant-stop/

The Book They Can’t Stop!
by Michael Collins / August 23rd, 2008

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
By Vincent Bugliosi
Vanguard Press (May 26, 2008 )
ISBN-10: 159315481X
ISBN-13: 978-1593154813
Hardcover: 352 pages

...
While a trial and conviction of George W. Bush for murder would be an event of momentous proportions, it would pale in comparison to enduring impact due to the precedent established. Presidents could no longer offer up the lives of soldiers and civilians sent to a war that was stated for anything other than national defense or imminent danger to the country.

Although the president had rotating rationales for the invasion, that act and occupation had little to do with protecting the United States. As Bugliosi said in a recent interview with this author, over 4,000 soldiers have died “not your war or my war or America’s war, but George Bush’s war.” The explanations offered by Bush have been discarded by all but the perpetrators and none of the financial or political motives suggested by others are acceptable justifications for the death and destruction caused.

Were there a prosecution and conviction, any future president would need to think long and hard before serving his political interests or necessities by filling the trough of financial backers and other chosen few no matter what they gave or promised. The president and his top aids would be accountable for a fundamental individual right that is obvious to us but not them: the right of each citizen to be free from death due to a president’s egotistical, political, or financial desires. Presidents would no longer be able to conceal the sin of premeditated murder by draping it in the fiction of necessary losses in the service of a larger national interest. The real basis for presidential decision making would be opened up to the scrutiny of communities through their local prosecutors.

The long standing conflict between individual rights versus collective rights would be resolved as well. By having to serve each member of the public by refraining from unnecessary war making, the chief executive would need to show restraint thus eliminating the requirement for an oversized military establishment designed as an imperial presence throughout the world. The tools of diplomacy would devolve to shared interests rather than coerced solutions forced on weaker states. And this would not just be for major wars.

The United States has engaged in over 40 military incursions since World War II. Unless a president could be assured that no one soldier died, he or she would be wise to have a solid justification for defense of the nation for any military action in order to avoid an indictment carrying a hefty sentence. The president would also have the example of a convicted and sentenced ex president who was vulnerable ddue to nonstop lying about the rationale for war.

The national defense was sorely lacking during the 9/11 attacks, despite an awesome world wide military potential. Similarly, the administrations successful efforts to exempt themselves from the consequences of international war crimes tribunals since 2003 occurred while the potential existed for domestic prosecutions as Bugliosi outlines in this book. It poses a much more serious and final threat to willful leaders who casually use their citizens as fodder in their wars to benefit the narrow goals of financial interests that fear real competition on an even playing field.

Michael Collins writes for Election Fraud News and the Money Party. He is one of few to report on the ongoing struggles of Susan Lindauer, an activist accused of being a foreign agent, who was the subject of a government request for forced psychiatric medication. Read other articles by Michael.

FOOD IRRADIATION. It's a "gimmick" that the FDA will mandate, creating a moneystream to the nuclear industry.

The leafy green vegetables producers of California have, on their own, begun new protocols to make sure their products reach market in clean form such as providing sanitation facilities for field workers and keeping animals out of fields -- logical steps that seem like they should have been instituted long ago without resistence.

But this isn't good enough for the FDA. And having more FDA inspectors doesn't work for the FDA either. No, what works for the FDA corporate handmaiden is making sure the nuclear industry irradiation offshoot is mandated to the tune of billions of dollars of profit.

And corporate supermarkets want products in their "Food Mausoleums" that have a shelf life of forever. What they say goes with the FDA! Are we mere consumers supposed to let these purveyors of DEAD foodstuffs guide the way to irradiating everything? E. coli makes you sick in hours, can be avoided by proper handling and sanitation practices; but that course of action is too alive. "Dead" food and radiation take decades to reduce health and cause deadly disease, but that is now the FDA's first choice.

When people die from bad food, it matters not if they die in weeks or years, if there is disaster profiteering possible, any moneystream will be manufactured.

=====================================

At the same time the FDA is shilling for the nuclear irradiation industry, it is attempting to reduce/soften labelling that discloses food or food ingrediants which have been irradiated.
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/food_irrad.cfm

Senate as seat of modern equivalent of aristocracy
Submitted by nora on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 12:35am.

So just WHERE does the vox populi (Voice of the People) reside now in the U.S.? Even The People's LAST SAFEGUARD -- the Fourth Estate of the FREE PRESS -- has been stolen from us.

Man! Where do we go from here?

________________________

The vox populi resides with the people.

Woman! We move forward together. We organize and mobilize with other people.

Any suggestions? I think the corporate media is a good place to start.

Have you finished reading your book yet? I have not read it, but it sounds like a book that I would be interested in reading.

I also have some information that I plan to post for you, nora. I will post it soon.

p.s. Per Aspera Ad Astra! I enjoyed seeing the Latin, nora.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/the-antiwar-movement-and-the-good-...
...

Those forces in the antiwar movement that don’t include opposition to the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan are at risk of being made irrelevant by the dedication of increasing amounts of U.S. military firepower and personnel to the “good war.”

The movement needs to create a political consciousness about the occupation of Afghanistan so that it will be possible to mobilize the social forces–communities, neighborhoods, students, workers and U.S. troops–necessary to force the U.S. to withdraw.

Failure to do so will mean that the further the occupation of Iraq fades in the media and from American political discussion, the more difficult it will get to mobilize sufficient numbers to compel the U.S. to exit both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The case is straightforward. U.S. disregard for civilian life, human rights, democracy and the lives of Afghan women has been shocking. Marina, a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, can’t use her last name for fear of assassination, but she recently told journalist John Pilger:

We, the women of Afghanistan, only became a cause in the West following September 11, 2001, when the Taliban suddenly became the official enemy of America. Yes, they persecuted women, but they were not unique, and we have resented the silence in the West over the atrocious nature of the Western-backed warlords, who are no different. They rape and kidnap and terrorize, yet they hold seats in [U.S.-backed Hamid] Karzai’s government.

What the U.S. really wants, says Tariq Ali, is “to construct an army able to suppress its own population but incapable of defending the nation from outside powers; a civil administration with no control over planning or social infrastructure, which is in the hands of Western NGOs; and a government whose foreign policy marches in step with Washington’s.”

It’s an encouraging sign that the leadership of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) sent an August 14 e-mail to its members organizations to encourage discussion about the issue of Afghanistan, given its growing importance for U.S. war aims. In it, UFPJ quoted from its own national assembly resolution passed last summer stating that “our movement has been too silent on Afghanistan, and UFPJ must take leadership to expose the horrors and costs of this engagement.”

But during the last year, UFPJ has done very little to rectify this “silence,” and the August 14 e-mail doesn’t show any sign of exercising “leadership to expose the horrors and costs” of the occupation of Afghanistan. Instead, the e-mail poses a series of questions without making any case whatsoever.

And some of the questions are framed in a way that leaves the door open to continued support for U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, such as “Should the peace movement support U.S. military forces in a policing role, rather than counter-insurgency role?” and “Was a military invasion of Afghanistan an appropriate reaction to the September 11 attacks?”

In addition, UFPJ continues to orient its efforts on influencing Congress rather than exposing Congress’ commitment to pursuing U.S. global hegemony. As disastrous as this strategy has been in ending the U.S. war on Iraq, it will be that much worse in the case of Afghanistan, considering that support for the war in Afghanistan is an article of faith within the Democratic Party.

....

Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 12:34am.
>adopted the idea of the Senate from the Roman Republic model.

I believe the model for a representative democracy was actually model off of the Iroquois Indians.

Very interesting social order, if what I remember is correct...It was a matriarchy in which men owned no property.

Women chose a male to represent them in council.

http://www.iroquoisdemocracy.pdx.edu/html/iroquoiswoman.htm
==================================================

Chubby Bubba, what I am saying does not dispute the Iroquois source for ideas about democracy. When I read about Thomas Paine and the great success of his pamphlet Common Sense, it was clear that the settlers WERE receptive to his ideas because they were already actively discussing having a part on their own government inspired by the Iroquois' example. But the Founders did not embrace pure egalitarianism or representation (as the slavery/indentured servant debate shows); it is likely they were aware of the ideal The People desired and attempted to meet it through creation of the House of Representatives (as the ancient Romans did with their plebian institutions); but these American "gentry" were the only class that wrote the Constitution, and their education would have been more practical (for the function of facilitating business) and classical (studying the classics). Look at our Greek/Roman revival architecture in Washington DC and I think you'll get where I am coming from with just where the Establishment got its inspiration.

so we are the news

too close to really perceive

honest nonetheless

Last Call for Change We Can Believe In

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/opinion/24rich.html?_r=1&hp

By FRANK RICH
Published: August 23, 2008

AS the real campaign at last begins in Denver this week, this much is certain: It’s time for Barack Obama to dispatch “Change We Can Believe In” to a dignified death.

This isn’t because — OMG! — Obama’s narrow three- to four-percentage-point lead of recent weeks dropped to a statistically indistinguishable one- to three-point margin during his week of vacation. It’s because zero hour is here. As the presidential race finally gains the country’s full attention, the strategy that vanquished Hillary Clinton must be rebooted to take out John McCain.

“Change We Can Believe In” was brilliantly calculated for a Democratic familial brawl where every candidate was promising nearly identical change from George Bush. It branded Obama as the sole contender with the un-Beltway biography, credibility and political talent to link the promise of change to the nation’s onrushing generational turnover in all its cultural (and, yes, racial) manifestations. McCain should be a far easier mark than Clinton if Obama retools his act.

What we have learned this summer is this: McCain’s trigger-happy temperament and reactionary policies offer worse than no change. He is an unstable bridge back not just to Bush policies but to an increasingly distant 20th-century America that is still fighting Red China in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in the cold war. As the country tries to navigate the fast-moving changes of the 21st century, McCain would put America on hold.

What Obama also should have learned by now is that the press is not his friend. Of course, he gets more ink and airtime than McCain; he’s sexier news. But as George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs documented in its study of six weeks of TV news reports this summer, Obama’s coverage was 28 percent positive, 72 percent negative. (For McCain, the split was 43/57.) Even McCain’s most blatant confusions, memory lapses and outright lies still barely cause a ripple, whether he’s railing against a piece of pork he in fact voted for, as he did at the Saddleback Church pseudodebate last weekend, or falsifying crucial details of his marital history in his memoirs, as The Los Angeles Times uncovered in court records last month.

What should Obama do now? As premature panic floods through certain liberal precincts, there’s no shortage of advice: more meat to his economic plan, more passion in his stump delivery, less defensiveness in response to attacks and, as is now happening, sharper darts at a McCain lifestyle so extravagant that we are only beginning to learn where all the beer bullion is buried.

Too Much of a Bad Thing

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/opinion/24dowd.html?hp

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: August 24, 2008
WASHINGTON

My mom did not approve of men who cheated on their wives. She called them “long-tailed rats.”

During the 2000 race, she listened to news reports about John McCain confessing to dalliances that caused his first marriage to fall apart after he came back from his stint as a P.O.W. in Vietnam.

I figured, given her stringent moral standards, that her great affection for McCain would be dimmed.

“So,” I asked her, “what do you think of that?”

“A man who lives in a box for five years can do whatever he wants,” she replied matter-of-factly.

I was startled, but it brought home to me what a powerful get-out-of-jail-free card McCain had earned by not getting out of jail free.

His brutal hiatus in the Hanoi Hilton is one of the most stirring narratives ever told on the presidential trail — a trail full of heroic war stories. It created an enormous credit line of good will with the American people. It also allowed McCain, the errant son of the admiral who was the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific during Vietnam — his jailers dubbed McCain the “Crown Prince” — to give himself some credit.

“He has been preoccupied with escaping the shadow of his father and establishing his own image and identity in the eyes of others,” read a psychiatric evaluation in his medical files. “He feels his experiences and performance as a P.O.W. have finally permitted this to happen.”

The ordeal also gave a more sympathetic cast to his carousing. As Robert Timberg wrote in “John McCain: An American Odyssey,” “What is true is that a number of P.O.W.’s, in those first few years after their release, often acted erratically, their lives pockmarked by drastic mood swings and uncharacteristic behavior before achieving a more mellow equilibrium.” Timberg said Hemingway’s line that people were stronger in the broken places was not always right.

So it’s hard to believe that John McCain is now in danger of exceeding his credit limit on the equivalent of an American Express black card. His campaign is cheapening his greatest strength — and making a mockery of his already dubious claim that he’s reticent to talk about his P.O.W. experience — by flashing the P.O.W. card to rebut any criticism, no matter how unrelated. The captivity is already amply displayed in posters and TV advertisements.

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, the pastor who married Jenna Bush and who is part of a new Christian-based political action committee supporting Obama, recently criticized the joke McCain made at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally encouraging Cindy to enter the topless Miss Buffalo Chip contest. The McCain spokesman Brian Rogers brought out the bottomless excuse, responding with asperity that McCain’s character had been “tested and forged in ways few can fathom.”

When the Obama crowd was miffed to learn that McCain was in a motorcade rather than in a “cone of silence” while Obama was being questioned by Rick Warren, Nicolle Wallace of the McCain camp retorted, “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.”

When Obama chaffed McCain for forgetting how many houses he owns, Rogers huffed, “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison.”

As Sam Stein notes in The Huffington Post: “The senator has even brought his military record into discussion of his music tastes. Explaining that his favorite song was ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba, he offered that his knowledge of music ‘stopped evolving when his plane intercepted a surface-to-air missile.’ ‘Dancing Queen,’ however, was produced in 1975, eight years after McCain’s plane was shot down.”

The Kerry Swift-boat attacks in 2004 struck down the off-limits signs that were traditionally on a candidate’s military service. Many Democrats are willing to repay the favor, and Republicans clearly no longer see war medals as sacrosanct.

In a radio interview last week, Representative Terry Everett, an Alabama Republican, let loose with a barrage at the Democrat John Murtha, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who is the head of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, calling him “cut-and-run John Murtha” and an “idiot.”

“And don’t talk to me about him being an ex-marine,” Everett said. “Lord, that was 40 years ago. A lot of stuff can happen in 40 years.”

The real danger to the McCain crew in overusing the P.O.W. line so much that it’s a punch line is that it will give Obama an opening for critical questions:

While McCain’s experience was heroic, did it create a worldview incapable of anticipating the limits to U.S. military power in Iraq? Did he fail to absorb the lessons of Vietnam, so that he is doomed to always want to refight it? Did his captivity inform a search-and-destroy, shoot-first-ask-questions-later, “We are all Georgians,” mentality?

Remember all the shit Obama ate after having the audacity to claim he was a world citizen?

Why didn't McCain get similar treatment after claiming to be a citizen on a foreign (and sovereign) nation?

I mean, shit...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/totalitarianism-it-can-happen-here...

Totalitarianism: It Can Happen Here
by Paul Street / August 23rd, 2008

Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
By Sheldon Wolin
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008)

...
The citizenry, supposedly the source of governmental power and authority as well as participant, has been replaced by the ‘electorate,’ that is, by voters who acquire a political life at election time. During the intervals between elections the political existence of the citizenry is relegated to a shadow-citizenship of virtual participation. Instead of participating in power, the virtual citizen is invited to have ‘opinions’: measurable responses to questions predesigned to elicit them. (p. 59)

…In elections parties set out to mobilize the citizen-as-voter, to define political obligation as fulfilled by the casting of a vote. Afterwards, post-election politics of lobbying, repaying donors, and promoting corporate interests — the real players — takes over. The effect is to demobilize the citizenry, to teach them not to be involved or to ponder matters that are either settled or beyond their efficacy. (p. 205)

Once votes have been counted (or not) in America’s totalitarian system, the people” fade back into the woodwork. Politicians from both sides of the nation’s corporate-sponsored “one-and-a-half party system” — the more explicitly authoritarian Republicans or the “inauthentic opposition” advanced by neoliberal corporate Democrats (whose 2004 presidential candidate made a point of stating his opposition to the redistribution of wealth) — proceed to do precisely what the American ex-citizenry wishes them not to do. They advance empire, inequality, and repression, concentrating riches and power ever further upward in what has long been the industrialized world’s most unequal and wealth-top-heavy society.

American “democracy” has been “domesticated” by modern managerial business technique. Its wild democratic risk has been removed for and by the Few. It has been quietly subsumed by corporation, whose mission is to guarantee returns on capital by minimizing chance and maintaining a “stable” environment (including a safely supine domestic population) for investors. Democracy has been incorporated.

....

Dear MoveOn member,

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P.S. If you'd like to learn a little more about Joe Biden, check out his Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden

And here's a page specifically on his issue positions:

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=4085&id=13561-2636901-m2g7x1x&t=6

For the record, Obama/Biden will not lose the election because two liberal women in California voted (may vote) for another candidate.

If Obama wins the election, it will be with the majority of women in the country.

Regardless, WiccanDruid and Alice have the right to vote for any person that they choose.

I encourage everyone to vote.

>>Look at our Greek/Roman revival architecture in Washington DC and I think you'll get where I am coming from with just where the Establishment got its inspiration.I'd be a fool to dispute Roman influence on our system of gov't, but I don't think architecture is a good example of the influence.

Classical Greek architecture has arguably influenced all forms following it. I'm sure you could find examples of non-representative and non-democratic governments whose capital buildings are also based on the classic Greek styles.

>>Regardless, WiccanDruid and Alice have the right to vote for any person that they choose.

Last I knew, Wiccan Druid doesn't live in CA.

and how can you be absolutely positive the CA vote won't be won by a single vote?

All I know is they are encouraging people to vote against the only candidate who has an honest chance of beating McCain.

That seems like a bad idea if you don't like the direction the country is going.

SECTION TWO: MIND OBJECTIVE

§ 483 The objective Mind is the absolute Idea, but only existing in posse: and as it is thus on the
territory of finitude, its actual rationality retains the aspect of external apparency. The free will finds
itself immediately confronted by differences which arise from the circumstance that freedom is its
inward function and aim, and is in relation to an external and already subsisting objectivity, which
splits up into different heads: viz. anthropological data (i.e. private and personal needs), external things
of nature which exist for consciousness, and the ties of relation between individual wills which are
conscious of their own diversity and particularity. These aspects constitute the external material for the
embodiment of the will.

§ 484 But the purposive action of this will is to realize its concept, Liberty, in these externally
objective aspects, making the latter a world moulded by the former, which in it is thus at home with
itself, locked together with it: the concept accordingly perfected to the Idea. Liberty, shaped into the
actuality of a world, receives the form of Necessity, the deeper substantial nexus of which is the system
or organization of the principles of liberty, whilst its phenomenal nexus is power or authority, and the
sentiment of obedience awakened in consciousness.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/14/1508938/Philosophy%20of%20Mind.pdf

Have you ever read any of this? Wow, what a bunch of bullshit.

Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 2:35am.
>>Regardless, WiccanDruid and Alice have the right to vote for any person that they choose.

and how can you be absolutely positive the CA vote won't be won by a single vote?

_______________________

Ahhhhhh! I looked into my crystal ball.

I am not concerned about California.

If Obama lost CA with one vote, he would have bigger problems across the country.

Chubby Bubba, I agree with you "fundamentally" --- not literally.

I WAS BORN AND RAISED IN MY STATE -- CALIFORNIA.

I am quite amazed -- with the many times, throughout the YEARS HERE -- AND I KNOW ALICE KNOWS ... you do not know ....

I know many do not name their state -- but I have!
I am SOOOOO California I even would mention the Irony of me in a PINK Vic on CALIFORNIA -- CA STREET in the wonderful state of CA, which VOTED FOR HILLARY.

Twit Obama had a chance to reach out to "us" -- but he didn't.
(Be thankful I did not speak like Randi, Stephanie, and others here, ... and say WHORE.)

Who're the people who make up the clump that pisses you off so much, other druid?

Leave us a loan!!

I'm joining my Main Squeeze toward the even-ing void.

bon nuit

Philosophy of Mind by G.W.F. Hegel (.pdf)
Submitted by dada on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 3:08am.
SECTION TWO: MIND OBJECTIVE
Have you ever read any of this? Wow, what a bunch of bullshit.

__________________

Yes, I have read his central thesis.

(Then I read his antithesis. Eventually, there was a synthesis.)

I don't believe you are a Right Hegelian, dada.

However, I would not be surprised to read a dialectic by dada based on your philosophy of life. Let's call it speculation.

p.s. Good to read you on the blog, dada.

About mad cow disease:

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/mad_cow_di3.cfm

"...Tissue from infected cows' central nervous systems (including brain or spinal cord) is the most infectious part of a cow. Such tissue may be found in hot dogs, taco fillings, bologna and other products containing gelatin, and ground or chopped meat. The process of stripping every last piece of meat from a cow carcass, including connective tissue from bone, can contaminate this meat with infected nervous system tissue. Transmission of vCJD between people has also occurred in over two-dozen cases as a result of transplants or injections of body tissue from infected people.

Despite the adoption of additional safeguards following the discovery of mad cow in the United States, the FDA still allows the risky practice of recycling animal offal into feed: ruminant animals (cattle, sheep, goats, deer) are fed to non-ruminants (pigs and poultry), and these non-ruminants are rendered and fed back to ruminants. Such practices are banned in Britain and Europe. Also, in spite of the wake-up call the FDA and the USDA recently received, only a small percentage of slaughtered or soon-to-be slaughtered cows are tested for BSE in the U.S. By contrast, Britain tests 70 percent of its beef cattle and Japan tests 100 percent.

So far, none of the vCJD cases diagnosed in the U.S. have been linked to domestically-produced beef, but this fact may have little bearing on the reality of the situation: the disease has a long incubation period and few dementia-related deaths in the U.S. are investigated. Creutzfeld-Jakob disease is not yet a reportable disease with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)...."

is really bad at what he does. Unless his objective is to deceive or misinform, he is really, really bad at what he does.

ellwort on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 3:50am.ellwort on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 3:50am.
BBL *Poof*

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14858

Canada sand oil extraction explained.

I am bored as fuck.

Lemme know ,.........

304-277-1585

Is there a source for this Plame case quote?
Submitted by nora on Fri, 08/15/2008 - 1:19pm.

The court ruled Cheney and the others were acting within their official capacity when they revealed Plame's identity to reporters.

Government employees who engage in questionable acts, such as abusing prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay facility or engaging in defamatory speech, cannot be held individually liable if they are carrying out official duties, the court said.

==============================
Oh, I'd like to read the source for this horrid court statement. Is there a date on this? Thanks.
______________________

The D.C. Court denied any remedy to Valerie Plame Wilson and Joe Wilson in their case against Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and I. Lewis Libby.

There may be another claim against former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (since he worked in a separate government agency).

However, they were all employees of the U.S. government.

The Court ruled that they engaged in what is considered "official conduct" in this instance. As a result, it examined whether it would be covered under the Privacy Act.

The Court decided that the Privacy Act does not apply to the Vice President or aides to the President or Vice President. (This would include Rove and Libby.)

The Court concluded that they cannot pursue a claim under federal tort law (the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act).

It does not apply to actions by government officials within the "scope of their employment" and they performed acts while employed by the U.S. government.

However, the Court rejected the additional claims by Cheney. Next, they can appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

I will post some excerpts from the decision especially since it is long and in PDF format.

---------

Excerpts:

U.S. Court of Appeals

Valerie Plame Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson, IV, Appellants v. I. Lewis Libby, Et Al., Appellees

Appeal from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

The case proceeded against the U.S. under the Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”).

“Because the Wilsons had not exhausted administrative remedies as required by the FTCA, the court dismissed the claim for lack of jurisdiction. The Wilsons appealed."

“The Vice President argues that we do not have jurisdiction under the political question doctrine because the case involves the identity of a covert agent and thereby implicates foreign-policy and national-security decisions that are reserved to the Executive Branch."

"We conclude that the allegations do not implicate the political question doctrine...The doctrine does not apply here."

"...the Wilsons have not challenged any foreign policy or national security decisions entrusted to the Executive Branch. They have instead challenged disclosures made by high-level executive branch officials when speaking with the press.

The disclosures may have implicated national security by identifying a previously covert agent, but the lawsuit itself is not about national security in a manner requiring application of the political question doctrine.

We therefore will proceed to the merits of the Wilsons’ claims."

---

"It is true that the Wilsons cannot obtain complete relief under the Privacy Act because the Act exempts the Offices of the President and Vice President from its coverage."

“The intentional omission of the Presidential and Vice Presidential offices from the comprehensive coverage of the Privacy Act requires us to deny the additional remedies to the Wilsons which they seek.”

“Therefore, because Congress created a comprehensive Privacy Act scheme that did not inadvertently exclude remedy for the claims brought against these defendants, we will not supplement the scheme with Bivens remedies.”

“The district court’s decision in this regard is affirmed.”

-------

B. Tort Claim

“The Wilsons argue that the disclosure of a covert agent's identity cannot fall within an employee’s scope of employment with the United States because the disclosure is unlawful and threatens the security of the nation, its covert agents, and its intelligence-gathering functions.”

“We have since held, under D.C. scope of employment law, that the alleged 'authorization, implementation and supervision of torture' was within the scope of employment of military officers who interrogated detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Rasul v. Myers."

"The conduct, then, was in the defendants’ scope of employment regardless of whether it was unlawful or contrary to the national security of the United States. Therefore, we agree with the district court that the Wilsons’ arguments about the illegality and impropriety of the alleged conduct are misplaced.

The government’s scope-of-employment certification is proper, and the district court’s dismissal of the tort claim is affirmed."

CONCLUSION

[2-1 decision by the Court]


“Because the Wilsons have failed to state constitutional Bivens claims for which relief may be granted and have failed to exhaust their administrative remedies as required to pursue a tort claim against the United States, we affirm the judgment of the district court dismissing the Wilsons’ amended complaint in its entirety."


“Neither the Vice President, his chief of staff, nor a close advisor to the President punches out of the work at the end of the day or when he leaves White House property.”

“Because our decision, based on the grounds considered by the district court, results in the dismissal of all claims against the Vice President of the United States, we need not, and do not, consider his alternate claim for absolute Vice-Presidential immunity.”

Dissenting - [Privacy Act part]

“But an omission in the statute can mean that Congress either decided not to provide a damages remedy or did not contemplate much less decide ‘what it considers adequate remedial mechanisms for constitutional violations that may occur’” Opt. at 10 (quoting Chilicky, 487 U.S. at 423)

[Did Congress inadvertently omit damages for certain claimants with a lack of comprehensiveness in the law?

For example, did Congress envision the Vice President and other executive employees releasing critical and sensitive information about other government employees?

The dissenting opinion is worth reading.]

Here’s a good line:

“The cat is out of the bag as Ms. Wilson’s cover has already been compromised...”

--------------

Link to decision:

http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/200808/07-5257-1132633.pd...

Pdf document (42 pages)

---------------

Here is an article about the decision.

Appeals Court Upholds CIA Leak Lawsuit Dismissal

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN12487250

Former Reagan Official: White House Sanctioned Georgia-Russia Conflict

Posted on Aug 15, 2008
Roberts on Russia Today

Paul Craig Roberts, who was assistant secretary of the treasury during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, sees the Georgia-Russia conflict differently than the Bush administration does: “Americans themselves have nothing to gain,” Roberts said Friday; “What is operating is the dangerous ideology of the American neoconservatives whose goal is to assert American hegemony over the entire world.

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20080815_former_reagan_official_bus...

Noam Chomsky on Latin America-Sloan/MIT Latin Conf.

Noam Chomsky was the keynote speaker at the 2008 Latin Conference at The Sloan School of Management/MIT.

Recorded covertly by Charngchi Way

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/noam-chomsky-on-latin-ame...

FOR ALICE :)

Whats the latest most disturbing or good news you have heard lately ? :)

What's cooking?

What's for breakfast?

Have you gone shopping recently? Did you get nifty reusable bags?

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq "1,252,595"

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In U.S. War And Occupation Of Iraq 4,146

Cost of U.S. War and Occupation of Iraq

$547,917,763,169

More info below:

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((9

***************************************************************

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Nuclear Chicken in Poland
Putin Can't Afford to Back Down

By Mike Whitney

The last thing Putin wants is a nuclear standoff with the United States. But he will not shirk from his responsibilities either. If the Missile Defense system is deployed, Putin will be forced to raise the stakes and send warplanes over the construction site. That is the logical first-step that any responsible leader would take before removing the site altogether. Continue

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20606.htm

*******************************************************

In Case You Missed It

Naked Imperialism

The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance

An Interview with John Bellamy Foster

Imperialism is inherent to capitalism and only varies in form and intensity. What is new in the post-9/11 period is the fact that U.S. empire and U.S. imperialism is more nakedly promoted than at any time since the Spanish-American War at the very end of the nineteenth century. Continue

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20609.htm

************************************

American Jews and the Palestinians

The Long Silence

By HOWARD LISNOFF

For many years, now decades, I have been silent as a Jew about Israel’s relationship to, and treatment of, the Palestinian people and my place as an American Jew in that equation. Recently, I looked back at the Jews who I have known personally, as friends and acquaintances, and examined how their views about Palestinians and Israel have affected me and deepened my silence. Continue

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20607.htm

******************************

No reusable bags. BUT, got the lightbulbs. Things been going OK. Pretty Relaxing, Just mellowing out. The reuses are too small and two dollars a piece :o

Enjoying my Life :)

Sipping an expresso. ......... You hun?

Trying to decide how to spend my day :/

any ideas

My mountain bike just broke :(

Maybe shoot some hoops, I got some new clothes :)

Im actually just sobering up lol :D

By James Quinn

For the last seven years the American consumer has carried the weight of the world on its shoulders. This has been a heavy burden, but when you take steroids it doesn’t seem so heavy. The steroid of choice for the American consumer has been debt. We have utilized home equity loans, cash out refinancing, credit card debt, and auto loans to live above our means. It has been a fun ride, but the ride is over. We can’t get steroids from our dealer (banks) anymore. Continue

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

Afghanistan government says U.S. killed 76 civilians: President Hamid Karzai on Saturday denounced an airstrike by U.S.-led forces that his government said killed 76 Afghan civilians.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan24-2008aug24,0...

****************

Civilian deaths anger Afghans: The Afghan interior ministry has said that at least 76 civilians died in Thursday's attack, most of them women and children.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/08/200882310305732758.html

*****************

‘6,000 Afghan troops in Kurram’: Security officials here said the statement of the two detained soldiers had proved that the Afghan government was actively involved in terrorist activities in the tribal areas.

http://www.dawn.com/2008/08/23/top14.htm

******************

Taliban win over locals at the gates of Kabul: While clashes in remote Helmand dominate the headlines, another battle is being waged by the insurgents on Kabul's doorstep. There, the Taliban are winning support by building a parallel administration, which is more effective, more popular and more brutal than the government's

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/24/afghanistan

***********************

More than 12 Afghan civilians killed by U.S. occupation forces: More than a dozen civilians have been killed in an air strike by U.S.-occupation troops in Afghanistan's eastern province of Laghman, two provincial officials said on Thursday.

http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=308603

****************************

Afghan bomb kills 3 Canadian soldiers: The blast that killed the Canadians happened Wednesday in a dangerous district west of the main southern city of Kandahar — two days after a Taliban ambush killed 10 French troops — and was announced on

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-08-21-Afghan-bomb_N.htm

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

What a nightmare

Hello Star Vox
Submitted by Bob26003 on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 5:57am.
Whats the latest most disturbing or good news you have heard lately ? :)

___________________

I think Obama could have made a better choice for VP.

I wanted a better pro-choice choice with a good voting record.

Instead, there is Biden on the ticket.

Do you think people there will vote for Obama with Biden on the ticket?

Now I do have a favorable impression of Dr. Jill Biden. I look forward to learning more about her.

It seems to me like Obama ain't fallin for the "foreign experience bullshit, cause after all, McCain is embracing Bush's foreign policy.

So, I dont reckon it'll be a hawk. I look for a more progressive leaning Dem. Somebody like so called progressive Pelosi. Even though we know she aint.

Either that or just some handsome real likable type no doubt.

After all if it's about change, itll be a youf, definately not Biden IMO.

The importance of this election for Obamee is to resonate as the man for the mid and working classes. The man who aint afraid to put the brakes on the barrons and war profiteers.

So in that case, Edwards would be nice. Personally I would like to see Feingold. Or Waxman.

Cause Edwards is toast politically.

But I mean really.... I bet all those guys have multiple call Girls and affairs and who knows what else. Hell , People throw themselves at them.

You know what they say: Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Like I said, look for handsome or pretty youthful types who are energetic and can actually debate and think and speak clearly. Cause after all, this is all about getting the young vote out. Am I wrong?

Friday 22 August 2008

»

by: Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers

As Democrats gather, liberal positions gaining in popularity.

Denver - As they meet for their national convention Monday through Thursday, Democrats are poised to shift their party's course - and the country's.

They're turning to the left - deeply against the war in Iraq, ready to use tax policy to take from the rich and give to the poor and middle class, and growing hungry, after years of centrist politics, for big-government solutions, such as a health-care overhaul, to steer the nation through a time of sweeping economic change.

They are, in short, more liberal than at any time in a generation and eager to end the Reagan era, which dominated not just the other party, but also their own, for nearly three decades.

Cont.......

http://www.truthout.org/article/liberal-positions-gaining-popularity

http://www.truthout.org/article/this-is-not-change-we-hoped-for-house-co...

In a major address, Noam Chomsky says there has been little change in the conventional debate over a US invasion abroad: from Vietnam to Iraq, the two main political parties and political pundits differ only on the tactics of US goals, which are assumed to be legitimate. On the other hand, public opposition to war has also remained consistent, Chomsky says, but, whether Iraqi or American, ignored. [includes rush transcript]

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February 26, 2008 DEMOCRACY NOW!

Attila was King of the Huns.

He was one of the enemies of the Roman Empire and known as the "Scourge of God" or flagellum dei in Latin.

Attila the Hun invaded Italy and was known for his cruelty and fighting.

Attila and the Huns fought against the Latin lovers!

----------

Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_the_Hun

Women's Equality and The Right To Vote
new
Submitted by Star Vox on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 2:18am.

For the record, Obama/Biden will not lose the election because two liberal women in California voted (may vote) for another candidate.

If Obama wins the election, it will be with the majority of women in the country.

Regardless, WiccanDruid and Alice have the right to vote for any person that they choose.

I encourage everyone to vote.

********************************

I have voted third party candidates more than anything. In state elections I rather vote for a schoolteacher running on a third party or independent label than a Dem. or Rep.

The Dems are as corrupt as the Reps in this state.

I also think the Nader's and Barr's of the country should be in the Presidential Debates.

Century City Doctors Hospital Begins Shutting Down

Financially troubled Century City Doctors Hospital gave up hope of finding a buyer and began shutting down Friday, according to hospital executives. Officially, the facility said it would cease operations late next week.

The hospital's emergency room -- a key element of the county's increasingly fragile emergency safety net -- will be closed today, and about 30 remaining patients will be discharged or transferred to nearby facilities beginning this weekend.

Regionally, 14 emergency rooms have been closed in the last five years, including 10 in Los Angeles County. After the closure, there will be 74 ERs remaining in the county.

On Friday, the hospital filed for financial liquidation under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Employees said they didn't get paid this week; other employees said payroll checks they received had bounced.

Hospital executives said they were petitioning the federal Bankruptcy Court to use emergency funds to pay employees as early as next week but acknowledged that they might not be able to do so.

"I haven't been paid in two weeks and I'm afraid I'm just not going to get paid," Tamara Tobin, a nursing assistant, said as she arrived at the hospital Friday.

The 176-bed facility, on Century Park East in the Century City Medical Plaza, has tried for months to improve its finances but has struggled to pay its growing debt, which the hospital estimated in a recent interview with The Times at more $60 million.......

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-century23-2008aug23,0,1039555,prin...

California Churches Plan a Big Push Against Same-Sex Marriage

Early on a late September morning, if all goes according to plan, 1 million Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, evangelical Christians, Sikhs and Hindus will open their doors, march down their front walks and plant "Yes on Proposition 8" signs in their yards to show they support repealing same-sex marriage in California.

It is a bold idea, one that may be difficult to pull off. But whether or not 1 million lawn signs are planted in unison, the plan underscores what some observers say is one of the most ambitious interfaith political organizing efforts ever attempted in the state. Moreover, political analysts say, the alliances across religious boundaries could herald new ways of building coalitions around political issues in California.

"Pan-religious, faith-based political action strategies . . . I think we are going to see a lot more of [this] in the future," said Gaston Espinosa, a professor of religious studies at Claremont McKenna College......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDVUPqoowf8&e

I knew they would start off with an anti-Obama question. They started off with a negative editorial from the Weekly Standard. That was followed by one from the Wall Street Journal. This of course brings out the ugly among their audience. The so-called Hillary-Republican operatives are on board this morning as well.

Wall Street bailout aid questioned at Fed event

JACKSON, Wyo. — Do Washington policymakers listen too much to Wall Street? A possible bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, on the heels of similar action involving investment firm Bear Stearns, seems to send a loud signal to financial companies that the government will clean up their messes.

That's the feeling of some analysts and academics here Saturday, the final day of a high-profile economics conference. The Federal Reserve's handling of the worst financial crisis to hit the country in decades spurred much debate.

"The Fed listens to Wall Street," said Willem Buiter, professor of European political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "Throughout the 12 months of the crisis, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the Fed is too close to the financial markets and leading financial institutions, and too responsive to their special pleadings, to make the right decisions for the economy as a whole," he wrote in a paper presented to the conference.

Critics like Buiter worry that the Fed's unprecedented actions — including financial backing for JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s takeover of Bear Stearns Cos. — are putting taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars of potential losses. They also say it encourages "moral hazard," that is, allowing financial companies to gamble more recklessly in the future.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who spoke to the conference on Friday, defended the Fed's actions, saying they were "necessary and justified" to avert a meltdown of the entire financial system, which would have devastated the U.S. economy.

Yet, Bernanke also acknowledged that mitigating moral hazard is one of the critical challenges policymakers face as they weigh steps — including strengthening regulation — to make the financial system better able to withstand shocks down the road.

"If no countervailing actions are taken, what would be perceived as an implicit expansion of the safety net could exacerbate the problem of `too big to fail,' possibly resulting in excessive risk-taking and yet greater systemic risk in the future," Bernanke said.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Wall_Street_bailout_aid_questioned_at_0823...

Global warming sign? Huge Petermann glacier in Arctic is cracking

In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday.

That has led the university professor who spotted the wounds in the massive Petermann glacier to predict disintegration of a major portion of the Northern Hemisphere's largest floating glacier within the year.

The crack is 7 miles long and about half a mile wide. It is about half the width of the 500-square-mile floating part of the glacier. Other smaller fractures can be seen in images of the ice tongue, a long narrow sliver of the glacier.

"The pictures speak for themselves," said Jason Box, a glacier expert at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University who spotted the changes while studying new satellite images.

"This crack is moving, and moving closer and closer to the front. It's just a matter of time till a much larger piece is going to break off."

The chunk that came off the glacier between July 10 and July 24 is about half the size of Manhattan and doesn't worry Box as much as the cracks. The Petermann glacier had a larger breakaway ice chunk in 2000.

"As we see this phenomenon occurring further and further north -- and Petermann is as far north as you can get -- it certainly adds to the concern," said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Center for the Study of Earth From Space at the University of Colorado.

The question that now faces scientists is: Are the fractures part of normal glacier stress or are they the beginning of the effects of global warming?

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Global_warming_sign_Huge_Petermann_glacier...

John McCain's Secretive Plan to "Kill the UN"

Does John McCain have a "hidden agenda" to "kill the UN?" That's what the man who devised McCain's big set-piece foreign policy proposal says -- and he's delighted it is sailing silently through the presidential election campaign towards success.

This story begins with a Republican presidential candidate who, despite the hype, doesn't seem to know much about foreign affairs. McCain recently talked at length about problems on the "Iraq/Pakistan border." The countries are a thousand miles apart. Asked how to deal with Darfur, he mused about his desire to "bring pressure on the government of Somalia." Uh -- it's Sudan, Senator McCain. He keeps expressing his desire to build up US relations with Czechoslovakia, a country that hasn't existed for fifteen years.

But McCain does know one thing: he doesn't like the United Nations. He championed George Bush's appointment of John Bolton as the US Ambassador to the UN -- precisely because Bolton scorns the UN as "irrelevant" and "a twilight zone." He even announced "there is no such thing as the United Nations." It was like appointing Marilyn Manson as Ambassador to the Vatican. This is part of a long seam of thinking on the American right: they opposed the UN's creation by Franklin Roosevelt as an unacceptable fetter on American power, and have never been properly reconciled to it. Republican congresses have refused to authorise US dues to the UN -- so there is now a backlog of $2.8 billion outstanding.

Yet McCain cannot oppose the UN outright -- because the American people support it so passionately. Contrary to the yokel-myth, a typical opinion poll -- by Global Public Opinion -- just found that 64 percent of Americans think the UN is doing a good job, compared to just 28 percent who support George Bush. Some 72 percent of Americans want the UN to play a bigger role in their foreign policy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/john-mccains-secretive-pl_b_12...

Newser) – Gone is the hope that the global economy will stay strong as America's financial fortunes flag. The world’s largest economies are showing signs of a slowdown, the New York Times reports. Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK, even famously fast-growing India and China are all taking a hit. Global growth overall will slow to 4.1% from 5% last year, the International Monetary Fund predicts.

High energy prices and real estate disasters are largely to blame. As global demand for goods diminishes, the American economy is likely to slide further. Some experts say the storm is navigable, but the good days appear to be over for the near future. “We had buoyant world growth for a few years,” said one economist. “It was too hot not to cool down.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/business/24global.html?hp

like i am german?

and why are the sunday talkies not posted yet?

morning yourll........

Thatcher's daughter
writes of mother's dementia

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The daughter of British former prime minister Margaret Thatcher tells how her mother's dementia has left her struggling to remember the simplest facts in book extracts published Sunday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/britainpoliticspeoplethatcherhealth;_ylt=AlP...

May 15, 1999

The Horrors of
Senator John McCain

Excerpt

The top war-monger in Congress has been Senator John McCain, Republican from Arizona, seeker of the Republican presidential nomination. In one rhetorical bombing run after another, McCain has bellowed for "lights out in Belgrade" and for NATO to "cream" the Serbs. At the start of May he began declaiming in the US senate for the NATO forces to use "any means necessary" to destroy Serbia.

Washington Journal: 7:45 am - Lt. Col. John Nagl (Ret.), Center for a New American Security, Senior Fellow & Brian Katulis, Center for American Progress, Senior Fellow. 8:30 am - Josh Rogin, Congressional Quarterly, Defense & Foreign Policy Reporter. 9:00 am - Frances Huntley-Cooper, DNC, Wisconsin Delegate. 9:30 am - Mary Rose Oakar, DNC, Rules Committee Co-Chair. email questions for guests to journal@c-span.org

ABC's This Week: Senator Obama's Chief Strategist David Axelrod discusses the vice presidential pick and previews the week to come. Then, Former New York City Major Rudy [a noun, a verb, and 9-11] Giuliani on his role as keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention and the democratic VP nominee. Roundtable: ABC News' Donna Brazile, Cokie Roberts, George Will, and Mark Halperin. contact George

CBS' Face The Nation: "Govs. Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kansas/co-chair, Democratic National Convention) and Ed Rendell (D-Pa.); Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.); Dan Balz of the Washington Post." information from LA Times [my bold] -- contact Bob Schieffer good luck with that

Chris Matthews: Rick Stengel Time Magazine Managing Editor; Katty Kay BBC Washington Correspondent; Michelle Cottle The New Republic Senior Editor;Ron Allen NBC News Political Correspondent. Topics: Will Obama's new running mate prove to be a winning pick? Are the Clintons doing enough to help ensure Obama wins? [LAME] contact Chris

CNN's Late Edition: Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ), Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC). Terry McAuliffe Clinton Campaign Chairman. special time: 10am eastern. contact Wolf

Fox News Sunday: Govs. Tim Kaine (D-VA) of Virginia and Bill Ritter (D-CO). "How will Barack Obama's new brand of politics play in states previously left for dead by the Democratic Party?" Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs on Obama's VP pick. Plus the Foxy News AllStars. email:fns@foxnews.com

NBC's Meet The Press: Co-chair of Obama's Vice Presidential vetting team Caroline Kennedy on Obama's running mate selection and the tribute to Senator Kennedy that will take place on the opening night of the convention. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Roundtable: Gwen Ifill of PBS, Jon Meacham of Newsweek magazine, Chuck Todd of NBC News. special air times due to the Olympics.

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/24/sunday-talking-heads-august-24-2008/#m...

The FDA Approves Food Irradiation: Food That Makes You Sicker Rather Than Safer
By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D. Saturday August 23, 2008 6:30 pm

The industrial strength radiation used to kill bacteria in our food is so strong it also can break apart large nutrient molecules -- including large vitamin molecules...like Vitamin C. The industrial strength radiation used to kill bacteria in our food is also so stong it creates "free radicals" -- the conga line of pickpockets that each steal an electron from their neighbors.

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/23/nuked-food-or-poop-food-we-deserve-bet...

May 15, 1999
The Horrors of
Senator John McCain

Excerpt

McCain is deeply loved by the press. As Silverman puts it, "As long as he's the noble outsider, McCain can get away with anything it seems - the Keating Five, a drug stealing wife, nasy jokes about Chelsea Clinton - and the pundits will gurgle and coo."

Indeed they will. William Safire, Maureen Dowd, Russell Baker, the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, have all slobbered over McCain in empurpled prose. The culmination was a love poem from Mike Wallace in 60 Minutes, who managed to avoid any inconvenient mention of McCain's close relationship with S & L fraudster Charles Keating, with whom the senator and his kids romped on Bahamian beaches. McCain was similarly spared scrutiny for his astonishing claim that he knew nothing of his wife's scandalous dealings. His vicious temper has escaped rebuke.

McCain's escape from the Keating debacle was nothing short of miraculous, probably the activity for which he most deserves a medal. After all, he took more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from the swindler Keating between 1982 and 1988, while simultaneously log-rolling for Keating on Captitol Hill. In the same period McCain took nine trips to Keating's place in the Bahamas. When the muck began to rise, McCain threw Keating over the side, hastily reimbursed him for the trips and suddenly developed a profound interest in campaign finance reform.

con't
http://www.counterpunch.org/mccain.html

PEACE?
i guess

Yeah, that was the last time the talking head shows were 100% not Republican guests.

Even with that I won't watch 'em cuz the host will ask biased questions.

Oh how I long for the days when Sammy watched 'em for me. [sigh]

___
bluerootsradio

violence is not my scene...too much mentioned above about war and whores...

oo.oo. gotta go....the love of my life has returned....
teehee!!

I'm reposting these excerpts from a 1999 counterpunch article- because it reveals McCain's inability to evolved intellectually. He has never grown from his life experiences. He is the same person 10 years ago. He is the same person 40 years ago. The sycophants that surround him- accommodated by those in the press protect this fake of a hero. Who pays for these disturbed privledged sons of the disturbed priveledge sons. WE DO!

===============

May 15, 1999

Excerpt

The pundits love McCain because of his grandstanding on soft money's baneful role in politics, thus garnering for himself a reputation for willingness to court the enmity of his colleagues.

In fact colleagues in the Senate regard McCain as a mere grandstander. They know that he already has a big war chest left over from his last senatorial campaign, plus torrents of pac money from the corporations that crave his indulgence, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. Communications companies (US West, Bell South, ATT, Bell Atlantic), have been particularly effusive in McCain's treasury, as have banks, military contractors and UPS. They also know he has a rich wife and the certain knowledge that his supposed hopes for an ending to soft money spending will never receive any practical legislative application.

It's hard to watch the bobble heads! Slanted, yes but some think they are being fair providing both sides but the loudest person prevails.

NeoCons court the PUMA vote HARD!

I heard it yesterday on teh teevee (Scarborough, Buchanan).

Now they send out William the Bloody Blogger Kristol to put a fine point on it.

"So Hillary Clinton gets about 18 million votes in 2008, and isn’t even considered for--she apparently isn’t even given the courtesy of being consulted--the vice presidential pick."

"A modest suggestion to my justifiably outraged Democratic friends: Hillary’s name should be placed in nomination not for the presidency (Obama won that more or less fair and square)--but for the vice presidency. It would be an interesting roll call vote."

Expect it this morning...esp. on This Week...Stephanopoulos (gone!) Will, Roberts, Halperin are all going up against Donna Brazille.

via TPM

May 15, 1999

The Horrors of
Senator John McCain

Excerpt

The US Senate is a popularity contest: if you want to get anything done around here, you have to go along and get along. Well, this place is a popularity contest, but it is supposed to be one with the voters, not one's colleagues. Besides, this place doesn't really operate that way. Here, they have contempt for fluffy show pieces. Show them you mean business, and you're someone who has to be dealt with (rather than a talk-only type), and you'll begin to get some results. Get ready for a fight, though, because they are some on the other side who are no push-overs. Obviously, Mr. McCain was not prepared to make that investment." CP

con't
http://www.counterpunch.org/mccain.html

Submitted by 60th Street on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 9:09am.
------

It is up to us to drive these people from our airwaves. Bush & Company could not have mangled this country without the complicity of the media. When the rumors of war with Iran started, they were again fanning the flames. When the Georgian/Russian conflict began, they brought out the same thuggish neocons. As I often post, mainstream media is Public Enemy #1.

Too Much of a Bad Thing
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

My mom did not approve of men who cheated on their wives. She called them “long-tailed rats.”

During the 2000 race, she listened to news reports about John McCain confessing to dalliances that caused his first marriage to fall apart after he came back from his stint as a P.O.W. in Vietnam.

I figured, given her stringent moral standards, that her great affection for McCain would be dimmed.

“So,” I asked her, “what do you think of that?”

“A man who lives in a box for five years can do whatever he wants,” she replied matter-of-factly.

I was startled, but it brought home to me what a powerful get-out-of-jail-free card McCain had earned by not getting out of jail free.

His brutal hiatus in the Hanoi Hilton is one of the most stirring narratives ever told on the presidential trail — a trail full of heroic war stories. It created an enormous credit line of good will with the American people. It also allowed McCain, the errant son of the admiral who was the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific during Vietnam — his jailers dubbed McCain the “Crown Prince” — to give himself some credit.

“He has been preoccupied with escaping the shadow of his father and establishing his own image and identity in the eyes of others,” read a psychiatric evaluation in his medical files. “He feels his experiences and performance as a P.O.W. have finally permitted this to happen.”

The ordeal also gave a more sympathetic cast to his carousing. As Robert Timberg wrote in “John McCain: An American Odyssey,” “What is true is that a number of P.O.W.’s, in those first few years after their release, often acted erratically, their lives pockmarked by drastic mood swings and uncharacteristic behavior before achieving a more mellow equilibrium.” Timberg said Hemingway’s line that people were stronger in the broken places was not always right.

So it’s hard to believe that John McCain is now in danger of exceeding his credit limit on the equivalent of an American Express black card. His campaign is cheapening his greatest strength — and making a mockery of his already dubious claim that he’s reticent to talk about his P.O.W. experience — by flashing the P.O.W. card to rebut any criticism, no matter how unrelated. The captivity is already amply displayed in posters and TV advertisements.

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, the pastor who married Jenna Bush and who is part of a new Christian-based political action committee supporting Obama, recently criticized the joke McCain made at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally encouraging Cindy to enter the topless Miss Buffalo Chip contest. The McCain spokesman Brian Rogers brought out the bottomless excuse, responding with asperity that McCain’s character had been “tested and forged in ways few can fathom.”

When the Obama crowd was miffed to learn that McCain was in a motorcade rather than in a “cone of silence” while Obama was being questioned by Rick Warren, Nicolle Wallace of the McCain camp retorted, “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.”

Read on:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/opinion/24dowd.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slog...

This Week in Scandal Watch
by Alexandra Andrews - August 22, 2008 3:43 pm EDT
Every week, we take stock of how the week unfolded for the stories we're tracking in Scandal Watch (see the right sidebar). Click here for more information on how we do this and to suggest additions.

1. Subprime Mortgages and Ratings Agencies

Homes for sale in Derry N.H. (Credit: Charles Krupa/AP Photo)The FBI has opened an investigation into incentives -- ranging from cars to tuition payments -- that some home builders offered to buyers in order to boost sales. The practice is legal, but if those perks went undisclosed, they could have skewed house valuations and defrauded lenders ($). Meanwhile, the AP reports that the value of houses across the country may have been artificially inflated by home appraisers operating under weak oversight laws in order to boost mortgage brokers' commissions.

The Orange County Register published a two-part story, reminiscent of the Miami Herald's mortgage investigation, about a California scammer who defrauded victims and drove the homes of ten families into foreclosure; he was employed by mortgage lender after lender despite a criminal record and no real estate license.

The FDIC unveiled its plan to bail out ($) IndyMac borrowers this week, after seizing the bank in July. Before its collapse, IndyMac had been one of the ten biggest mortgage lenders in the U.S. The FDIC, meanwhile, faces the challenge of replenishing its fund ($) that insures consumer deposits, which has taken a hit from this year's five bank failures that cost more than $9 billion in total. Usually, the agency would raise the fees it charges banks, but many worry that struggling banks wouldn't be able to bear the additional burden.

The Wall Street Journal reports ($) that the Federal Reserve acted on rumors swirling around Wall Street in July that Credit Suisse was planning to pull its credit to Lehman Brothers. The Fed called Credit Suisse and urged it to maintain ties with Lehman; Credit Suisse denied the rumors. Regulators have stepped up their efforts to stop rumor-mongering on Wall Street after it contributed to the fall of Bear Stearns in March. The SEC has subpoenaed dozens of firms for information regarding the Lehman rumors.

2. Alaska!

Two weeks ago, Sen. Ted Stevens asked that his trial be moved to Alaska to allow for nighttime campaigning. The prosecution balked at this request, and on Wednesday, a judge agreed: the trial will stay in Washington, D.C.

Stevens asked the Senate Ethics Committee to OK a legal defense fund to help cover the cost of the trial. He also took out a little aggression on a radio show on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, ex-VECO CEO Bill Allen is living the high life in Alaska and New Mexico. His company was sold for nearly $365 million last year and a judge has postponed his jail time, estimated at 9 to 11 years, to 2009 in return for his cooperation with investigators.

3. Detainee Treatment

Testimony at the trial of Gitmo detainee Mohammed Jawad last week highlighted the role psychologists play in crafting methods of torture. An agent at the Army Criminal Investigation Division described her findings of abuse at Bagram prison in Afghanistan - hardly a new claim - and the military psychologists known as "biscuit teams" (Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, or BSCTs). These teams develop and refine the abusive interrogation methods used at Gitmo, which includes exploiting the detainees' specific fears and weaknesses to create "individualized blueprints for torture."

At the American Psychological Association's annual meeting this week, the practice was hotly debated. Many denounce the work as inherently unethical, but others claim that psychologists actually protect the detainee from greater harm. The psychologist who helped craft the interrogation of Jawad - who attempted suicide during his detention - was the focus of the debate.

Legal experts are expecting a surge in lawsuits against the government seeking retribution for torture, spurred on by last week's ruling that the case of Maher Arar -the Canadian rendered to Syria and allegedly tortured - could proceed.

The number of suits brought against the government by Gitmo detainees seeking their release, following the Supreme Court's June ruling, is also expected to surge. But a lack of interpreters at Gitmo may create a "legal logjam" and delay many of these cases.

The trial for a former Marine accused of killing four unarmed Iraqi detainees in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 began yesterday. The defendant, Jose Luis Nazario, is the first person to be tried under federal law for war crimes. Two Marines in the squad Nazario led were held in contempt of court today for refusing to testify.

And finally, yesterday a British court found that Gitmo detainee Binyam Mohamed's claims that he was rendered to Morocco by the U.S. and tortured are credible. The U.S. has denied these claims, but it refused to hand over its evidence to Mohamed's lawyers.

4. Military Contractor Abuse

more

http://www.propublica.org/article/this-week4-822/#When:15:43:00Z

Happe Talk

Headlined on 8/23/08:
Eclipsed by the Conventions: Midnight Regulations Reduce Women To "A Uterus With Two Legs"

Bush and the conservative religious right are at it again. In the hushed corridors of the West Wing, K-Street, and Congress, they meet in secret, writing regulations for enactment in the twilight hours of the imperial Bush presidency that would roll back the progress women have made in the 20th century and beyond.

The proposed change at the Department of Health would redefine some kinds of contraception as abortion, even contraception before implantation. Hospitals that offered such contraception would forfeit federal aid. They would also forfeit the aid if they refused to hire health professionals who opposed abortion or birth control. This regulatory change "could also undermine state laws that require hospitals to prove emergency contraception to rape victims," according to womensenews

con't

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Midnight-Regulations-Reduc-by-Amanda-La...

Feminist Daily News Wire
August 21, 2008
Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones Dies, Strong Feminist Supporter

Congresswoman Tubbs Jones, a strong feminist and friend of the Feminist Majority has died of a brain aneurysm. We’re "shocked and saddened over the death of Stephanie Tubbs Jones. She was a strong supporter of the feminist movement, women candidates, and an inspiration for young women aspiring to political leadership positions," said Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority. Tubbs Jones keynoted at the Feminist Majority Foundation's National 2008 Young Women’s Leadership Conference for college activists. A student who attended the conference
remembers that "she was an eloquent and powerful speaker who made me feel empowered to create change as a young woman. She was a leader and it was clear she fought incredibly hard for equality and for humanity. We dubbed her our 'shero'."

http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=11234

Proposed Health and Human Services Regulation Threatens Women's Healthcare Access

8/22/2008- Women's access to contraception and health care would be seriously threatened if draft regulations, released Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services, are enacted.

The new regulations (see PDF) are justified in the draft with the following rationale: "Despite the fact that several conscience statutes protecting health care entities from discrimination have been in existence for decades, the Department is concerned that the public and many health care providers are largely uninformed of the protections afforded to individuals and institutions under these provisions. This lack of knowledge within the health professions can be detrimental to conscience and other rights, particularly for individuals and entities with moral objections to abortion and other medical procedures.

http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswire.asp

Re: MSNBC Shows Obama 48% McCain 39%

I was tying to find this in print but it isn't posted yet.

Submitted by toniD on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 9:43am.

I dont see Biden getting it
Submitted by Bob26003 on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 6:47am.
...Am I wrong?
---------
Jeez. I don't want to be the guy who bursts your bubble.

Google "Joe Biden" and read whatever appears on your monitor.

Laundering indictments against DeLay aides upheld

Source: Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN — An appeals court has upheld money-laundering indictments against two of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's political associates, finding that the Texas law is not unconstitutional vague or overbroad.

"The challenged statutes give constitutionally adequate notice of the conduct prohibited and sufficiently determine guidelines for law enforcement," said Third Court of Appeals Justice Alan Waldrop in a 46-page opinion issued late Friday.

The ruling was handed down exactly two years from the date the case was argued. The three judges on the panel that heard the case are all Republicans.

But the ruling provided a potential defense for James Ellis and John Colyando by finding that personal checks were not covered by the money laundering statute prior to 2005. The two and DeLay are accused of conspiring to funnel $190,000 in corporate cash illegally to seven Texas House candidates in the 2002 elections, when Republicans captured control of the Legislature. All three say the transactions done by a political campaign committee known as Texans for a Republican Majority were completely legal.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5962566.html

Happe Talk

Circle the Waaaaaahhhhhmbulances!
Submitted by 60th Street on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 9:14am.
--------
This is a wonderfully humorous header. You rebound quickly from the depths of ghastly groaners to inspired homophones.

Out-of-Body Image: Women See Themselves Through Eyes of Others
By Caroline Heldman, Ms. Magazine. Posted August 14, 2008.

This sort of self-objectification impairs women's body image, mental health, motor skills and even sex lives.
------

On a typical day, you might see ads featuring a naked woman's body tempting viewers to buy an electronic organizer, partially exposed women's breasts being used to sell fishing line, and a woman's rear -- wearing only a thong -- being used to pitch a new running shoe. Meanwhile, on every newsstand, impossibly slim (and digitally airbrushed) cover "girls" adorn a slew of magazines. With each image, you're hit with a simple, subliminal message: Girls' and women's bodies are objects for others to visually consume.

If such images seem more ubiquitous than ever, it's because U.S. residents are now exposed to 3,000 advertisements a day -- as many per year as those living a half century ago would have seen in a lifetime. The Internet accounts for much of this growth, and young people are particularly exposed to advertising: 70 percent of 15- to 34-year-olds use social networking technologies such as MySpace and Facebook, which allow advertisers to infiltrate previously private communication space.

A steady diet of exploitative, sexually provocative depictions of women feeds a poisonous trend in women's and girl's perceptions of their bodies, one that has recently been recognized by social scientists as self-objectification -- viewing one's body as a sex object to be consumed by the male gaze. Like W.E.B. DuBois' famous description of the experience of black Americans, self-objectification is a state of "double consciousness ... a sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others."

con't
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/89999/out-of-body_image%3A_w...

Lol

Bob lost a Saturday...must have been quite a Friday nite after shopping!

Sunday, August 24, 2008

On Sunday—the day before the Democratic National Convention begins--the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows Barack Obama attracting 46% of the vote while John McCain earns 43%. When "leaners" are included, it’s Obama 48% and McCain 45%. This is the first time Obama has been up by more than two percentage points with leaners since his “Berlin bounce” began to fade on July 28 (see recent daily results). Tracking Polls are released at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time each day.

Yesterday, Obama announced that Joe Biden will be his running mate and the initial reviews are mixed. Polling yesterday found that 39% believe Obama made the right choice while 25% disagreed. Women are less enthusiastic about the choice than men and the McCain campaign was ready with their first ad showing Biden in his own words.

Data from Rasmussen Markets currently gives Obama a 62.1% chance of winning the White House.

McCain is viewed favorably by 57% of the nation’s voters, Obama by 55% (see trends). Biden is now viewed favorably by 48% of voters, up a few points since being selected as Obama’s running mate.

The Rasmussen Reports Balance of Power Calculator currently shows Obama leading in states with 193 Electoral College votes while McCain leads in states with 183 votes. When leaners are included, it’s Obama 264, McCain 247. Only three states remain in the toss-up category—Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada. New polling data has been released for Indiana, California, Tennessee, and Mississippi (see 50-State Summary).

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2...

I am sending it to a friend who drives herself crazy because she is 52 and does not have a 23 year old body.

Happe Talk

Morales sends troops to Bolivia's oil, gas installations
18 minutes ago

President Evo Morales said he has put all of Bolivia's gas and oil installations under military protection, as protesters geared up in three energy-rich provinces against federal encroachment and socialist reforms.

"I've spoken with Armed Forces commander in chief, General Luis Trigo, who has precise instructions to safeguard and defend the Bolivian people," Morales told a meeting of pro-government labor unions in the central city of Cochabamba on Saturday.

"The government will protect the (oil) pipelines and (gas) valves," he added.

The move to put all government-owned energy installations under military guard followed protest plans to throw up major roadblocks in the energy-rich eastern provinces of Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca and Tarija starting Monday.

The demonstrators are against Morales's decision to tax regional revenues from gas fields. Provincial governors are demanding the government return 166 million dollars already raised through the levy, and substantially increase the price of gas exports to neighboring Argentina and Brazil.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080824/wl_afp/boliviapoliticsprotestgasoil

...between ghastly an' humorous in this house

where's "eye roll" when you need her/him/it?

thanks crank

Submitted by mhappenow on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 10:00am.
I am sending it to a friend who drives herself crazy because she is 52 and does not have a 23 year old body.
------
I am older than your friend and I don't have a 23-year-old body.

If there are any 23-year-old bodies who would like me to have them, send your photos to:

C. Bait
Oldbutnotdead Ave.
Sticks, MO

Pakistan's Ruling Coalition On Verge Of Collapse

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan's ruling coalition teetered on the brink of collapse Saturday as the two main partners squabbled over a successor to ousted President Pervez Musharraf.

Former Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif, who heads the junior partner in the coalition, demanded the dominant Pakistan People's Party slash the president's powers before he would support its candidate.

Asif Ali Zardari, head of the PPP and widower of the party's assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto, agreed Saturday to run for the presidency.

Sharif also pushed forward the deadline for restoration of dozens of judges sacked by Musharraf — another key issue dividing the two main parties since they forced the president from power less than a week ago.

Still pressure was building for the two sides to end differences that appeared increasingly irreconcilable.

Presidential elections by parliament were set for Sept. 6 and the political infighting is a distraction from militant violence flaring in the volatile northwest, where 37 insurgents were killed Saturday in retaliation for a string of deadly suicide bombings.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jIE0IUn4WIiaMBpjG8SI_6H5RXzgD92O4UA00

winning.

Polls are goofy. wish they would just post these rather that just the popular vote which just gives the media wood.

Happe Talk

Submitted by mhappenow on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 10:00am.
---

You're welcome M'hap!

Once you subscribed to Madison Avenue's depiction of beauty, you will be chasing a phantom for the rest of your life. It really does distract you from what is important in life-and stifles your true potential.

"Morales sends troops to Bolivia's oil, gas installations 18 minutes ago"

You have a mole in the Bolivian army now? I had no idea you had that much pull!

(CNN) – John McCain’s campaign is making its boldest pitch yet for disaffected supporters of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, releasing a new TV ad Sunday that claims Barack Obama’s discomfort with her honesty cost her a spot on the Democratic ticket.

“She won millions of votes. But isn't on his ticket. Why? For speaking the truth,” says the announcer in 'Passed Over.'

The spot uses primary season footage of the New York senator criticizing Obama’s policy proposals ("You never hear the specifics"), his links to convicted Chicago developer Tony Rezko ("We still don't have a lot of answers about Senator Obama"), and his campaign trail attacks ("Senator Obama's campaign has become increasingly negative").

“The truth hurt,” says the announcer. “And Obama didn't like it.”

The spot was officially released at 3 a.m. — the hour that became a campaign catch-phrase after a Clinton ad asked voters who they’d like answering the phone in the Oval Office if a crisis broke in the middle of the night.

Read the rest of this entry »

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/24/mccain-ad-says-clinton-g...

I find now that I am pushing 60, a real freedom at being "off market". Health is my primary objective. I am getting used to that feeling of my breasts resting on my belly.

Happe Talk

McCain is acting pretty "bitchy" if you ask me.

Happe Talk

she hardly wants any food. this is a really easy one. She was one of my favorites back in the day.

Happe Talk

Jesus, Toni! You're well informed!
new
Submitted by 60th Street on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 10:12am.

That was my news source.

Oh, just so you know, Venezuela is having a cocaine problem.
Also on Yahoo News from the AFP

Just got back from a meditation retreat with Dzongzar Khentze Rinpoche, he's a very funny guy. He made a joke about about in his next life he wants to take rebirth as an American citizen, and run for the Presidency as a Republican. Retreat is a good thing, I got a little emotional on the long ride home thinking about impermanence. Being human. Excuse me for indulging...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Department of Defense will hire an independent engineering company to review allegations that pumps installed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina weren't adequately tested and might fail during a hurricane.
Acting Inspector General Gordon Heddell said he has ordered his staff to begin work immediately on a contract to look at tests done before the Army Corps of Engineers installed the pumps, and at the pumps themselves.

It was not clear how long it would take.

"Based upon my review, and the need for public confidence in New Orleans' flood protection system, I have concluded that an outside opinion is warranted," Heddell wrote in an Aug. 8 letter to Scott Bloch of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. A copy of the letter was sent to The Associated Press on Friday.

The special counsel office handles whistle-blower complaints, including those by Corps engineer Maria Garzino, who cautioned in early 2006 that the pumps would not work properly.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-08-23-katrina_N.htm?csp=34

..I will just have to cut the one I have in half.

G'morning bloggers.

___
bluerootsradio
56/2=Too many years old <--The math don't work ya senile old fart!
Mr. McCain, we've just found your running mate

Sen. Vitter Seeks to Use Campaign Funds to Pay for Legal Bills Over Prostitution Scandal
Published 1, August 23, 2008 Bizarre , Criminal law , Politics , Society 5 Comments

With Sen. Ted Stevens (R. Alaska) and Rep. Don Young (R. Alaska) both asking to create funds to allow contributors to help pay for their legal defenses on corruption charges, Sen. David Vitter (R.La) wants to go one step further — to use actual campaign funds. It doesn’t seem to matter that voters thought that they were giving money to help a senatorial candidate, not a busted john.

http://jonathanturley.org/2008/08/23/sen-vitter-seeks-to-use-campaign-fu...

..helps to bring me back to the here and now vs the was and then.
___
bluerootsradio

Submitted by mhappenow on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 10:13am.
------

You go girl!

that was jes a little ribbin on the "18 minutes ago" part :)

If you are 56

Happe Talk

now thats gettin old!

on msnbc

Happe Talk

Lots going on in South America. My Ex was from Argentina and I still check what is going on there. DOn't know why except that I was so used to checking. And I found it interesting.

Did you notice that they always show the McCain Logo screen behind these people?

Stephanopoulos calls Obama's 49% to McCain's 43% a "slim but steady" (among registered voters) advantage.

...so can someone tell me what the difference is between "registered" and "likely" voters?

What little cred I has just flown out the window.

Soon as I find my cane I'll move over to the chair where I take my Geritol IV. Maybe that will help.

___
bluerootsradio

I would go edit my mistake but I forget how.

some of these people are straight from the Bush administration...I wanna make a list and trace their backgrounds

I don't check as much as I should, but my family(Ecuadorean) sends me things all the time, anyway...South America is really dynamic right now and finally coalescing into an anti-imperialist force. I worry about shadow dictatorships and massive egos betraying the trust of the people they're protecting right now, but, really the damage the U.S. has done there is demonstrable. I am fully behind these revolts and governments socializing oil production/distribution. It's about time! I just hope they think big and impose strict environmental regulations along the way.

Bye

The Right Age for Drinking
Washington Post - 14 hours ago
COLLEGE OFFICIALS who have signed on to the provocative proposition that the legal drinking age of 21 isn't working say that they just want to start a debate...
---------
The following is my submission to the debate.

I'm sorta "libertarian" on the legal drinking age issue. I tend to believe that prohibition breeds violation.

But the drinking age isn't the salient issue in this debate. Just as it did during the Vietnam War draft, the argument "old enough to go to war, old enough to drink" brings cognitive dissonance to the fore.

An 18-year-old is too malleable to make a wise decision to join the military. An 18-year-old is too unstable to subject to an intense brainwashing in boot camp. An 18-year-old is the worst age choice to be determining whether to shoot someone to death or not.

All of this is true if you give a damn about the 18-year-old. If populating an army is your goal, you don't give a damn about an 18-year-old's mental health.

If you want to mentally screw-up a person for his/her lifetime, pick an 18-year-old whose school and job opportunities are limited, train him/her to kill people and toss him/her into a deadly foreign conflict where the bad guys are indistinguishable from the civilians.

Are they old enough to decide to drink booze responsibly? Probably not.

Are they old enough to weigh the effects of being brainwashed? Definitely not.

Are they old enough to train to kill people? Piece of cake.

A strong dose of cognitive dissonance to required to find logic in replacing the bottle in their hands with a weapon.

Sammy's on the move...
Michelle, have you got a link to the audio of you and maron the other nite. I have a friend who needs to hear it!
thanks!

Melina
www.RIPCoco.com
www.BrilliantatBreakfast.blogspot.com
www.SweetJesusIHateChrisMatthews.blogspot.com

new thread not registering comments...but it asks for comments...
hmmm...rejection;
passive agressive thread.

Melina
www.RIPCoco.com
www.BrilliantatBreakfast.blogspot.com
www.SweetJesusIHateChrisMatthews.blogspot.com

Submitted by maggiesboy on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 10:37am.
I would go edit my mistake but I forget how.
--------
Soon you will have four 14-year-old bodies. I suggest that you schedule oodles of masturbation time.

Ive got 2 14 year olds in the house right now...eeekkkkk!
Too much information for my addled mind!

Melina
www.RIPCoco.com
www.BrilliantatBreakfast.blogspot.com
www.SweetJesusIHateChrisMatthews.blogspot.com

good stuff upbloggie.

i've got 30 or so dem groups hustling me for money.

none of them ever responded to my comments or suggestions the last 4 years except move on.

my major suggestion was that they work together.

sure that one got deleted toot sweet.

Concentrate on the actual candidate. The groups are just that...groups...and its unclear to me who is doing what that is concrete....except, as you say, moveon!

stil looking for the link to michelle's show...anyone got it?

Melina
www.RIPCoco.com
www.BrilliantatBreakfast.blogspot.com
www.SweetJesusIHateChrisMatthews.blogspot.com

Thank you!

This is going to take a while to digest. (Maybe because it is such poison in terms of legal detail, as well Cheney et al knew it would be. Imagine being confronted with treasonous acts, and not be able to find a chink in the armor of the body of law with which to make the case. If I were Plame, Wilson and their law person, I'd have a hard time sleeping....)

It's cool. Pretend you're living your last day of life here and this isn't so big...
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