January 18, 2010
Posted by: doubleplusundead at
05:26 PM
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Posted by: doubleplusundead at
04:55 PM
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I don't know how that country can ever recover. It seems almost certain that Haiti as it has been is gone and a new country will have to rise up and take its place.
Posted by: Moron Pundit at
01:15 PM
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Having said all that, what the hell is this company thinking?
If you want the military's business, then you play by the miltary's rules. There are specific rules in place about proselytizing in the Middle East to try to keep that whole pesky Crusade/Holy War thing from gaining credence. It should also be obvious to anyone with an above room temperature IQ that doing this will open huge huge problems with church and state issues. We're not talking about a soldier choosing on his own to put these there. We're talking about a company shipping out the parts with Bible references already on them. From looking at the pictures, you couldn't get this off absent some major filing work.
Look, if the company doesn't like the rules or doesn't like the idea that it can't ship it's product without some Biblical reference, then try to change the rules. You'd have my support on that. Hell, the Scientologists would have my support on that. But don't go doing this and then whine about help help you're being oppressed. It infuriates me that organizations that are trying to keep any reference to God out of the public sphere entirely turn around and get support for their claim that there are those who are specifically trying to make there be state support for religion.
It's not okay for the manufacturer of a weapon being sold to the military to put a Biblical reference on that weapon. Note I'm limiting this to that situation, if a solider wants to write whatever on it, that's different. But, yeah, this is not that situation. The company should have known better. And if the company wanted to do this anyway, then the company bears the costs of doing that. I'm sorry, but I can't get worked up about this the way I can about kids praying in school. This is a company who is getting directly paid by the US government to provide a good. Accepting that contract means accepting all kinds of limitations.
Btw, I really don't believe the guy about the whole Jesus rifles thing. But still.
Posted by: alexthechick at
12:52 PM
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Having said that, I give him credit for this. He was reporting in Haiti when a bunch of doctors left a group of patients. Gupta took off the reporter hat, put on the doctor hat and tried to do the best he could to care for the patients. He's getting kudos for that and both he and his crew should. They did the right thing.
I am trying very very very hard to give the benefit of the doubt to those who left but I'm finding it hard to do so. Yes, Haiti is, basically, in a state of anarchy. Yes, there are very legitimate concerns for safety. But I cannot begin to conceive of walking away and letting other people die if I were responsible for their care. Hell, I'm not a doctor, I don't even play one on the internet, and I can't imagine leaving in that situation.
Good for Gupta. This is one of those situations where objectivity and the like should go flying out the window. Damn it, Jim, he's a doctor, not a reporter and he did the right thing.
Posted by: alexthechick at
10:44 AM
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“There was this expectation that this was going to be like a Hollywood movie. He was a candidate almost fictionalized from day one,’’ Boston-based Democratic political consultant Michael Goldman said of Obama. “Does it make me frustrated? It does. But it’s reality, it’s the world as it really is, not the fantasy.’’No, really? The fantasy hasn't become reality? It's not a Hollywood movie?
You know what? You can eat a fucking dick. YOU FUCKING LOSE. You and your buddies foisted this empty fucking suit whose "present" voting ass should never have come anywhere near a hair's breadth close to the fucking U.S. Senate, much less the presidency, and yet you bit the bait, hook, line, and motherfucking sinker.
And, hey, what do you have to show for it so far? Fucking NOTHING, as far as his campaign promises are concerned. (Thank God!) And a pissed-off populace to boot. I held my nose to vote for John Fucking McCain, and I hated to do it, but even he would have done a better job. Fuck, even Hillary! would have at least probably known better than to fuck up this much.
Reap. The. Fucking. Whirlwind. May Scott Brown be the first nail in his Careter-esque political coffin come Tuesday.
Posted by: Sean M. at
06:11 AM
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The blame for the delay lies fundamentally with a GOP that is still intent on putting power {of which they have none right now-ed} before country, and decided the day Obama took office that he was such a threat to their beleaguered brand that they would oppose everything he proposed, demonize him as much as possible, forgo any cooperation, and then try to blame him for the recession, the wars, the unemployment, and the debt he inherited ... while never actually proposing any serious alternative on any of them {Kinda like the Dems from 2001-08. As if Captain Awesome would listen anyway. Remember the "I won" statement? Or were you busy smoking dope in a campground shithouse while that whole episode went down? And besides, I thought Hope & Change were going to rescue us from the recession. But what do I know? My mind hasn't been herbally seasoned by that awesome cocktail of ganja and guy juice.-ed}.
It is a nihilist, populist, primal scream. And if the Massachusetts result is interpreted as a vindication of that strategy {well, it seems to be working so far. Which means I'll scream as primally as a pair of howler monkeys pleasuring each other at the zoo in front of a 4th Grade Science Class-ed}, we will have thrown away a very rare constructive moment for targeted government action to tackle the deep problems - healthcare access and cost, too much reliance on carbon energy, an empire bogged down in two quagmires, a debt that will soon threaten this country's currency {all of which your dreamboy has fucked up even worse than anything Bush could have ever dreamed of-ed} - in favor of news cycle, tactical Rovian bullshit {versus the Rahmbo "crisistunity" mentality? In favor of The Chicago Way? In favor of Backroom Deals? Perish the thought! And what the fuck is the deal? One minute, Bush and the GOP are at fault, the next, Karl Rove is at fault. Something tells me Andy doesn't really think through his villain assignments for the day-ed}.
The Dems have been incompetent and petty {and retarded. Don't forget that one-ed}; the Republicans have been nihilist {how can stopping Obama be the same thing as believing in nothing? To me, stopping Socialism is indeed an ethos. But what do I know?-ed}. The dawdling of the last few weeks is unforgivable {by whom? Reid/Pelosi? they are trying to buy votes for an unpopular bill. By the GOP? They have no power, and have been defeated 60-40 every time they try to stop things-ed} . But Obama's attempt to produce reform through the center is the best chance we've now got {if his "centrism" is the best we've got, I'll just stick my head in the oven now-ed}. The last time I urged a vote for someone I found as dreadful as a candidate as Coakley was John Kerry. Because the alternative was so much worse {and you lost in a gobsmacking fashion-ed}.
So think of this as 2004. Are you really, really going to give Bush a second term because Kerry is so easily portrayed as an elitist hack {2004=vote for the elitist hack to keep the GOP out of power, 2010=vote for the elitist hack to keep the Democrats in power? Good to know-ed}? C'mon, Massachusetts Independents. Give the president the chance he needs {he's had his chance, and the people are saying, "can I have a refund?"-ed}. I know it sucks {Sully. "It Sucks". Must. Resist. Jokes-ed}. But vote Coakley {ringing endorsement!-ed}.
Wow. But that's not all. Look at the "Buck Stops Here" attitude other Democrats are voicing.
"People are upset because there's so many problems," Rosemary Kverek, 70, a retired Charleston schoolteacher said as tonight's rally wrapped up. "But the problems came from the previous administration. So we're blaming poor Obama, who's working 36 hours a day {and 8 Days A Week-ed} ... to solve these problems that he inherited."
Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), speaking with a gaggle of reporters after the event, said that while state Sen. Scott Brown (R) offers voters a quick fix, in reality, the problems created by "George Bush and his cronies" are not so easily solved {and yet, Obama's "quick fix" is OK, right?-ed}.
"If you think there's magic out there and things can be turned around overnight, then you would vote for someone who could promise you that, like Scott Brown," Kennedy said. "If you don't, if you know that it takes eight years for George Bush and his cronies to put our country into this hole ... then you know we have a lot of digging to do, but some work needs to be done and this president's in the process of doing it and we need to get Marcia Coakley to help him to do that."
(Curiously, Kennedy mentioned Coakley repeatedly during his remarks to reporters, each time referring to her as "Marcia," not "Martha.") {heh. Nice snark there, pal-ed}
More Kennedy: "One thing the Democrats have done wrong? We haven't kept the focus on this disaster on the Republicans who brought it upon us. We've tried too hard to do that right thing, and that's to fix it, as opposed to spend more of our time and energy pointing the finger at who got us [here] in the first place {but that's what you are doing now-ed}."
Eesh. My response?
more...
Posted by: eddiebear at
01:13 AM
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January 17, 2010
Very very very condensed background - I live in the NE PA area. Most of you may only be vaguely area that there's an enormous corruption scandal in Luzerne County right now. So far, three judges have been indicted and removed from office and there have been a whole bunch of other people pleading guilty for kickbacks. There are allegations of case fixing. It's an utter disaster, complete and total disaster. The public, quite rightly, assumes that the "justice" system is anything but.
So. That's the background to explain why I just flailed and gaped over this.
Luzerne County Senior Judge arrested for assault.
This guy was specifically appointed by the PA Supreme Court to come into Luzerne County to hear cases since the Court is so backed up. What does he do? Apparently, choke his wife.
What the fucking hell! Seriously, if Grisham wrote a novel with this stuff in it, his editor would laugh him out of the building.
Posted by: alexthechick at
10:18 PM
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President Obama warned Massachusetts voters Sunday from following Republican Scott Brown's old pickup truck around the state, saying if elected to the U.S. Senate, Brown will drive health care and the rest of the Democratic agenda off track.Um, yeah, that's kind of the whole point, now isn't it?
Obama is personally popular in the state, but his job approval rating is 48 percent. Only 36 percent of Massachusetts voters approve of the health care bill wending its way through Congress.Let's hope that the other 64 percent goes out and votes like crazy on Tuesday. One detail from the article that gives me hope that this might actually happen is that the rally "was not the typical Obama function" with the auditorium "only partly filled." For a contrast, see here for photos of today's Brown rally in Worcester, courtesy of Andy at The H2.
Posted by: Sean M. at
09:04 PM
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New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.I know a lot of people think this will be the death knell for the Times, but will it? The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Economist, all charge for content and seem to be doing OK.
This change probably will have a major effect on news bloggers however. That loss of content will leave a major hole in a lot of blogs content, and if the Times is successful and other papers follow suit that whole will just get bigger.
If that happens what will develop to fill the void? Or will the news blog die?
h/t Althouse via Instapundit
Althouse asks the relevant question, how many page views will the Times lose because of this? How will that affect their advertising rates?
If it was me I would hire some web page design gurus to develop a system that won't allow a blogger to cut and paste unless they accept an ad from one of the Times' paid advertisers to be embedded on the blog. That seems like the best possible solution. They could even develop a profile system so that Pro-life bloggers don't end up with Planned Parenthood. They could also develop an associates program so if you accept more than the minimum ads then you get a cut of the sales. (I know that's capitalist crazy talk)
Posted by: chad98036 at
08:53 PM
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In my Hotmail account.
In between watching Cowboys cry (ahhhhh) and the next game, I figured I'd see if anything was going on.
Apparently someone in NJ is mounting a campaign to recall Menendez, their senator, there's a provision in the NJ Constitution that allows for that.
So what's a good, Democratic Secretary of State (one of the ones supposed to uphold the State Constitution) to do?
...was denied that request, in a letter on January 11th which stated that the US Constitution does not provide for such a proceeding.
No, but the NJ one does. And they didn't get a ruling from a judge, just from the good, Dem apparatchiks who rule their subjects with an iron hand.
In other words, shut up you proles. We'll tell you when to vote and who to vote for.
I always find watching NJ, NY and Mass to be very entertaining.
It amazes me that their rulers can tell them to go screw over and over (Like the Toricelli deal, or Bloomberg and co. repealing term limits Teh Peepul voted for) and yet the still vote them in with ridiculous margins of victory. Michigan is the extreme, where they can totally destroy what was once one of the greatest economic engines the world had ever seen and still have one party rule, but Mass voters demand that the corrupt pols run the state well, Mass Dems have broken that compact.
Mass voters are getting fed up, I wonder if NJ ones will revolt against their political, intellectual and moral betters over this.
Watching the Dems freak out as their subjects revolt is another entertaining thing to do.
We might be absoutely fucked, but the last 4 or 5 years have been by far the most entertaining, news wise, in my 46 years and as it gets worse, it's getting funnier.
So we have that going for us.
Posted by: Veeshir at
04:44 PM
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Send cash in lieu of thanks.
Posted by: chad98036 at
03:56 PM
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If Lexicon is your favorite brand then here's a shocker, the company figured if it isn't broke, then don't fix it and grabbed an Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray player and encased it into a high end chassis and listed it for $3500 -- a $3000 case, wow? We know this type of thing goes on all the time in the world of electronics, but wow, this is just unbelievable. The folks at Audioholics didn't believe it either, so they stripped the two players down and did some bench testing to reveal that indeed both were identical -- other than the case that is.And this is why high end electronics are a scam. This happens way more often than you think. When I first started working in the manufacturing industry it was pointed out to me that there were only 3 factories making VCRs all the boards were the same it was just a change in name plates. Same with most TVs. If you know what you are doing you can actually look at the labels and tell which brands are manufactured by which companies at which factories.
Posted by: chad98036 at
12:11 PM
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Heh.
Joe Lieberman has run against many of his Democratic Counterparts in the Senate over the so called Obamacare Health Care Reform Bill {yeah, but he still sided with the Dems at the end of the day-ed}. Back in December, with the public option dead, Democrats revived an old proposal to expand Medicare, but Lieberman voted no. That plan was considered by a small percentage of liberals as a decent alternative to the public option leaving Lieberman at odds with Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid.
Speculation is such that if Lieberman were to endorse Scott Brown over the coming weekend that would most likely seal the defeat of Martha Coakley for Senate.
Remember: politicians are notorious Bandwagon Types, so if Joementum is joining Brown, this must mean Coakley is down to hoping for vote fraud in Southie to push her across the line.
Posted by: eddiebear at
10:47 AM
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Meanwhile, all money made by the sold-out event will go straight to Tea Party Nation, Inc. while grassroots activists have donated their time to make the event happen.
Tami Killmarx, a nurse, and an original member of the Nashville Tea Party Nation Steering Committee says,†I don’t believe for an instant that this money that Judson Philips is making will go to anyone but him. He doesn’t have a PAC. He’s been promising to form a 527.â€
He has done neither. Killmarx was asked to leave the Tea Party Nation group of volunteers and kicked off the Tea Party Nation social networking site for voicing her concerns. Her husband, Robert, was asked to leave soon after.
That’s not the only financial funny business Phillips is accused of making. Kevin Smith, the website developer who was never compensated for his work on the Tea Party Nation social networking site and who wrote an insider’s account of the Tea Party Nation dealings, says that Phillips called his account a lie, but offered no proof to the contrary. Smith asserted that Philips mishandled Tea Party funds by paying for expenses out of his wife Sherry’s PayPal account. Judson Phillips did not return my request for comment.
Smith says, “Judson has been very slick and deceptive about PayPal. He’s answered the wrong question. He had two different accounts. One was his wife’s account. After August, there was a TPN account.†Smith was paid from Sherry’s account.
In the same NBC article, reporter Domenico Montanaro notes Judson Phillips personal financial problems:
A background check of various public records databases raises questions about how he has handled money in the past. The search shows that during Phillips filed for Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy in 1999 and during the past decade, he has had three federal tax liens against him, totaling more than $22,000.
In an interview with NBC News, Phillips admitted to the financial difficulties. He declined to comment on the bankruptcy, but said the federal tax liens have been paid off.
As angry as I am at the GOP and RfuckingNC, I don't know if I want to be hanging around with this sort of mess.
Ugh.
Posted by: eddiebear at
09:49 AM
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January 16, 2010
Posted by: eddiebear at
10:25 AM
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January 15, 2010
Scott Ritter has been referred to as the new Jane Fonda due to his outspoken criticisms of the Iraq invasion, including releasing statements that seem designed to create more crisis in the Mideast.
I'm thinking this guy's best defense at this time is a brain tumor. And hopefully he ends up a vegetable from the subsequent lobotomy.
Posted by: Alice H at
10:42 PM
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Citing a more "hopeful state of world affairs"..., the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) is moving the minute hand of its famous Doomsday Clock one minute away from midnight. It is now 6 minutes to midnight.
Hmmm, now what could have created this "hopeful state of world affairs", what "changed"?
The statement continues: "A key to the new era of cooperation is a change in the U.S. government's orientation toward international affairs brought about in part by the election of Obama.
Heh.
With a more pragmatic, problem-solving approach,
You know, the approach that sets deadline after deadline that is ignored while issuing threats of sanctions that China will veto.
Let's see exactly how stupid they can get (Hint: Pretty darn stupid).
not only has Obama initiated new arms reduction talks with Russia,
Heh. That good old Tsar Putin I laughed at before telling Obama to go screw. He's too busy preparing for the invasion of Georgia in the spring to worry about arms reduction.
But wait, they go farther.
he has started negotiations with Iran to close its nuclear enrichment program,
Ummmm, no. Those started about 5 years ago with the EU-3 and they have been a farce. My favorite was when the EUnuchs came out waving a piece of paper talking about "Peace in our time" and the Iranians came out and said, "We didn't make a deal." Good times.
Obama did "start" direct American involvement, you know, sending begging letters to the Mad Mullahs that they wiped their left hands on after wiping their butts.
And just in case you didn't realize exactly how stupid the Doomsday Clock people are
and directed the U.S. government to lead a global effort to secure loose fissile material in four years.
Heh, I'm pretty sure that promise has an expiration date of oh, say, about a minute after making it.
He also presided over the U.N. Security Council last September where he supported a fissile material cutoff treaty and encouraged all countries to live up to their disarmament and nonproliferation obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty …"
Yup, that and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th IDs, the Marines, the 4th-7th Fleets, a flock of B-52s and Stealth Bombers, the 82nd and 101st and a shitload of special forces will make North Korea or Iran give up their nukular ambitions.
So since these tools have "hope" for "change", that must mean it's almost over.
I'm looking for armor, a sheild and a bow in case it's Ragnarok and my guns are useless, I'm no good with a sword.
Posted by: Veeshir at
06:01 PM
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Posted by: Alice H at
12:54 PM
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So that there DSCC spot about Brown and supporting Wall Street greed and yadda yadda yadda managed to go full retard.
Nice use of the WTC guys! Way to go!
Believe it or not, there was actually protest by the National Republican Senatorial Committee about it. The DSCC is all "oops sorry about that!" and is yanking the image from the ad.
For fuck's sake, Danny Glover would be smart enough to know not to use that particular imagery. B+ guys, solid B+.
(h/t Politico.)
Posted by: alexthechick at
12:32 PM
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