Please join us this evening for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.
We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00 pm, but a few folks show up earlier for dinner.
Can’t make it tonight? The Tri-Cities chapter of Drinking liberally meets every Tuesday night. Drinking Liberally Tacoma meets this Thursday, 7:00pm at the Hub Restaurant. Also next Monday, the Olympia chapter of Drinking Liberally, the Yakima chapter, and the South Bellevue chapter meets.
With 227 chapters of Living Liberally, including thirteen in Washington state and six more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s one near you.
Stupid AOL. It’s headlines are more like the National Enquirer than a news & information service.
This afternoon’s headline: “Nuclear Emergency at Southern California Plant“.
What it should have read was: “Ammonia leak at So. California Nuclear Plant“.
According to our braindead trolls yd aka the ld(iot) and the Montana friendo (Mr. Cynical) and everyone other troll for that matter, it’s all Obama’s fault.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....70256.html
BREAKING NEWS — FBI Arrests Right Wing Terrorists
“Four Georgia men in their 60s and 70s were arrested Tuesday, accused of being members of a right-wing militia group that plotted to attack federal office buildings and to disperse a deadly biological poison in Atlanta.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45125741/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: You never see liberals doing this shit — it’s always right wing extremists. Remember Timothy McVeigh?
I had a discussion this afternoon with a colleague from Japan. I mentioned that the news was reporting that the Japanese government was going to try to push down the value of the Yen, because it’s rise relative to the Euro and the US Dollar was hurting exports.
Now, I understand why the Yen rose against the dollar starting in 2008. And I also understand the recent rise against the Euro, given the economic and political turmoil there. But why is it continuing to rise against the U.S. Dollar? After all, Japan’s public debt is about twice the GDP, which is over twice as much as the U.S. Dollar. It’s public debt is even higher than any of the Euro countries.
Our only conclusions: (a) Japanese individuals spurn personal debt, even though interest rates are at about 1-1/2% for mortgages and new cars; (b) most of Japanese debt is held by the Japanese themselves, as part of their savings for retirement; (c) Japanese are dilligent savers, typically saving about a half million dollar per person (one million per couple) by time of retirement – in addition to their company pension plan and government pension (similar to social security).
So this lack of personal debt and high level of personal savings makes the Japanese economy more resilient than the U.S. or European economies.
Anyway, that’s the theory we are working on.
3 – I bet we find they attended tea bagger rallies.
Whatever.. What I’d like to know is if the FBI strung out these guys so they’d take the final step and fall into a sting.
I’ve been a little leery of FBI tactics these days.
4 – I’ve wondered that myself.. Sounds as good a theory as any. U.S. household debt is of course off the charts and there’s State debt to consider.
Note to the trolls: Japanese government debt is OVER TWICE their GDP. Got it?
So if the Japanese government owes $80,000 (IIRC) for every man woman and child in Japan and the typical Japanese household is in surplus then that must count for something in the full faith and credit dept. I guess.
Who says catapults are obsolete?
“The Mexican army says soldiers have seized two catapults that were being used by drug smugglers to fling packages of marijuana across the border into Arizona.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45.....-americas/
@1
You mean stupid people that actually stil go to aol…hell, I thoughbt hey bought the farm 10 years ago
Word of advise: don’t trust Jon Corzine with your money.
MF Global is going down. Leveraged 40:1 and 600-700M worth of missing client money. I thought we were done with this kind of nonsense when Bush left office.
Governments lose legitimacy when people are allowed to getaway with this kind of crap. There better be perp walks.
MSNBC reports that Herman Cain has received a fundraising boost from sexual harassment allegations against him. Tells you something about his supporters, doesn’t it?
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....-yesterday
GoodNews!Local business leader, Diamond Jim McNerney, single handedly defeats #OWS with an
insightfuleditorial in the People’s Newspaper, The Wall Street Journal,What Business Wants From Washington
Get that? Those of you in the 99% who don’t earn the money Diamond Jim does breaking immigration laws wants stuff. Give it to him or else!
Also, the reasonable MSM endorsed centrist candidate for Emperor, Mayor I got $20 Billion and you don’t, Michael Bloomberg, pulls off a Halloween miracle and delivers a Zombie Lie on November 1st.
Greek Democracy threatening Bankersters?
AMERICA – Fuck Yeah!
If MF doesn’t come up with their rich clients’ money in those protected accounts, there will be perp walks..
AFAICT this is no “too big to fail” outfit.
We now have a number for how much the restaurant association paid Cain’s alleged victim:
“The National Restaurant Association gave $35,000 — a year’s salary — in severance pay to a female staff member … after an encounter with Herman Cain … made her uncomfortable working there, three people with direct knowledge of the payment said on Tuesday.”
And there’s this:
“[A] lawyer for the second woman called on the restaurant association to release her from a confidentiality agreement signed as part of her settlement, raising the prospect that she could publicly dispute Mr. Cain’s account of what happened. The lawyer said the confidentiality agreement had left her unable to respond to Mr. Cain’s dismissal of the complaints against him as a ‘witch hunt’ or to his denials of any inappropriate behavior toward the women. ‘He’s basically saying: “I never harassed anyone. These claims have no merit,”‘ said the lawyer … who represented the woman …. ‘And I’m sure my client would have a comeback to that.'”
And this:
“The situation with the other woman appeared to be more in keeping with a standard settlement related to harassment allegations …. [A] person familiar with her accusations said [there was] ‘more than one’ alleged incident ….”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45.....ork_times/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: At least one of the woman wants to respond to Cain’s denials in public, and that means Cain is in deep shit, because if he objects to releasing her from the confidentiality agreement it’ll look like a coverup, and if he lets her talk, she’ll trash him. Either way, he loses.
13 – Yep it seems like a no win situation for Cain.
He’s done – as a “contender” for the White House anyway.
He may keep this going for a while. Any celeb can tell you there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
Cain Is A Liar, Part 2
Earlier today MSNBC noted Cain’s “evolving” statements about the sexual harassment allegations against him. Now add this filigree:
First, Cain said “he knew of no severance.”
Yesterday, he said she received “three months of severance.”
Today, he said it was “in the vicinity of three to six months.”
It actually was a year’s salary.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45.....ork_times/
Maybe you can all stop by Costco for a bottle before the next Drinking liberal event. No doubt some of those liquor store clerks will find the real world benefits at Costco
And the calls for Cain to give up his run are just stream in from our friends on the right, right?
Two women and he lied about it. He should quit.
Mrs. Rabbit just made the point that a CEO has to be detail-oriented. You have to know what the revenue is, what the costs are, what the profit margin is, etc. So how come he didn’t know what the settlement was (that he cost his company)? Mrs. R says, “I can’t believe he’s that shoddy of a numbers person, I don’t buy that.” Thank you, Mrs. Rabbit; I don’t either.
When a Fox host calls Cain “Clintonesque” you know somebody important is out to get him.
A funeral director was overheard saying, “If you give Cain an enema, you can bury him in a matchbox.”
This guy looks like a Republican voter.
http://tinyurl.com/3aq3mm9
This is what lower taxes looks like in a Republican town. The police may refuse to respond to 911 calls because they don’t have gas money.
http://tinyurl.com/4ycjul8
Deepest condolences to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the passing of her mother Dorothy Rodham at the age of 92.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11....._LO_MST_FB
Dorothy Rodham’s story is one of perseverance and strength in difficult times.
Uhhhh… Sorry lurking zombie cretin:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/.....d=14857253
You’ve been proved WRONG AGAIN!
So gullible, so credulous, so foolish.
Then obviously the answer is to lower taxes, get rid of regulations, get rid of the minimum wage, stop abortion and birth control and defend straight marriage. That will bring back the tax base.
And people vote for this?
Ok it was completely understandable that his memory is sketchy over the whole thing:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....f=politics
Heh.. Booze was involved. The classic brain cell killer.
The guy who used to sing gospel songs to entertain his staff at Godfathers while he was making them work on Sunday? Drinking and making lecherous comments towards women? Say it ain’t so, Herman!
So here’s the scorecard, at the end of the first two minutes of play:
Palin – decides not to play.
Christie – decides not to play.
Trump – out with a “birther” injury.
Gingrich – limping badly, will be gone after the next play.
Santorum – same as Gingrich.
Ron Paul – will stay in for at least the first half or until he runs out of money, whichever comes first. He’s not going to make any plays, and he doesn’t understand the playbook, but he’s dedicated.
Cain – After one big play, he gets injured badly. Expect him to try to limp along for another three months before taking himself out of the game.
Perry – he’s got lots of cash, but is suffering the death of a thousand cuts.
Bachman – She’s out of the game, she just doesn’t know it yet.
Perry – the one guy who’s remained untouched so far. Lots of cash, and the establishment GOP favorite. He may not do well in the Iowa caucuses, but as others drop out you may see him left as the only one still standing after the first couple of weeks of primaries.
Just got an e-mail from Darcy Burner’s mailing list.
She is running for Congress in 2012, but in the WA 1st CD (Shoreline, Lynnwood, etc.), and not the 8th, against recent speculation:
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/darcyburnerlaunch
The siren’s song of electoral politics post-OWS is too great, I guess. What about the 8th CD? Are we going to be stuck with Reichert forever?
# 29: I’m sure a lot of decisions are being made now based on inside information from the re-districting committee. A re-shaped electoral map makes past election history irrelevant. Darcy may believe that the 8th will move slightly to the south-west, taking in more Republican voters and ensuring Reichart’s seat. That would make any challenge to him – on a third try – extremely problamatic.
I have no idea what’s happening in the 1st.
I’ve always chuckled at some Republican’s insistence that all our immigration and drug issues would be solved by a 10 FT wall between the U.S. and Mexico, supplemented by high-tech (and enourmously expensive) survellance devices. Cain doubled down and wanted a 20 FT or 22 FT fence, with electric wire capable of killing a person.
But as one commentator once said, “I’ve never seen a 10 FT wall that couldn’t be defeated by a 12 FT ladder”.
Well, it looks like Cain’s 22 FT wall isn’t going to work any better. Authorities have seized a catapult, used to send bales of pot over the existing fence into the U.S.
Mexico troops seize catapults used to fling pot
Mexican pot smugglers: “I’ll see your 10 FT fence with multi-billion dollar high-tech systems, and raise you with technology from the first century, B.C.!
In other news, the Arizona Senate today voted to impeach the only Independent on their redistricting commission, claiming “partisonship” and “secrecy”.
Note that Arizona now has eight congressional districts, five Republican and three Democratic. The 2010 census gives Arizona one more district. The proposed re-districting would give Republicans four safe districts, the Democrats two safe districts, and three “competative” districts.
Apparantly the only thing the Arizona Republicans believe to be sufficiently “non-partison” and “independent” is for all nine districts to be safe Republican districts. The one thing they desperately want to avoid is having to compete for seats in the proposed three “competative” districts.
I guess they don’t believe that they can win in a fair election.
Arizona Republicans Impeach Independent Redistricting Chairman
@26 That may explain one of the incidents, but what about the other?
Victim’s Lawyer Calls Cain A Liar
“A lawyer for one of the two women who made complaints of sexual harassment against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has claimed he is not telling the truth about the allegations.”
http://horsesass.org/?p=38388&.....nt-1120656
Cain Would Personally Benefit From ‘9-9-9’ Tax Scheme
Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” tax scheme should be called the “Herman Cain Tax Relief Act,” because that’s what it is.
Cain made over $1 million last year, much of it from “stock sales, dividends, royalties, interest, and capital gains,” and under his “9-9-9” tax scheme he would pay no taxes at all on that income.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....he-numbers
Guns Don’t Kill People Dep’t
We all know guns don’t kill people; they’re inert objects that become harmful only when activated by 10-year-old trick-or-treaters:
“South Carolina officials say a 10-year-old trick-or-treater pulled a 9mm handgun on a woman who joked that she’d steal his Halloween candy. …
“Lt. David Turno … says the gun wasn’t loaded but the boy had a clip of ammunition. …
“Turno said the boy’s brother, who is also 10, told officials he also had a gun and both weapons were recovered by police.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45.....nd_courts/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Gun control? Nah, we don’t need no frikken gun control! All we need is gun safety classes for 10-year-olds.
A 21-year-old Carnegie Mellon University senior visiting New York City to look for a job was arrested by police and held in jail for two nights because she was in a public park without her ID, which she had left in a hotel room. She was cited for trespassing but a judge “proceeded to dismiss the ticket in less than a minute.”
The point of the story? New York needs a new police department.
“News about the Police Department lately could run under the headline of the daily Dismal Development, starting with a judge declaring Tuesday that an officer was guilty of planting drugs on entirely innocent people and continuing back a few days to gun-smuggling, pepper-spraying and ticket-fixing.
“Here, in the pointless arrest of Ms. Zucker, is a crime that is not even on the books: the staggering waste of spirit, the squandering of public resources, the follies disguised as crime-fighting.
“About 40,000 people a year — the vast majority of them young black and Latino men — are fed like widgets onto a conveyor belt of arrest, booking and court, after being told to empty their pockets and thus commit the misdemeanor of ‘open display’ of marijuana.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45.....ork_times/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: The NYPD ultimately reports to Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Wall Street One-Percenter. Here’s an opportunity to see whether Hizzoner is aware of what’s going on in the streets of his city, or is as tone-deaf as the rest of the Billionaire Boys’ Club.
@31 I thought Republicans yearn for the 19th century but I was wrong. Their hearts are in the 13th century.
The New York police department has had serious problems dating back to, well, the 19th century. Various attempts to weed out corruption since the late 1960’s has led to some high profile arrests and prosecutions, then a return to “normal” shortly thereafter.
The problem is an insular society of police which shun outsiders, form a “blue line” to protect their own through any means necessary, and little independent oversight. There is also a feeling that in comparison with the big-shots they see every day who avoid prosecution for serious white-colar crimes, they don’t get paid enough for risking their lives. That leads to a mental justification proces allowing them to take bribes, fix tickets, engage in protection rackets, and in a recent case even gun-running.
Many of the street arrests are shake-downs of small-time drug dealers who haven’t paid for “protection”.
You might do better if you could just replace the entire force and start over, but then you would lose the local knowledge of neighborhoods and contacts with informants which have been cultivated over the decades.
So who writes the UN Climate Reports?
Busted again. Its all about Money and Big Government Control & Power.
# 41: You obviously haven’t been to college. If so, you would know that grad students do most of the research, data collection, and are assigned specific writing tasks which the professor oversees and puts together into the finished project. They also teach undergraduate classes, grade papers, etc.
You are grasping at straws. Still smarting from the fact that a prominent climate change denier recently reversed his view, after making his own studies?
From the Good Riddence Department….
A Pensacola Toyota dealer had tried to destroy his competition by having his staff claim that the Iranian-born owner was sending funds to terrorists, and calling him “Taliban Toyota”.
It seems the jury didn’t think this was fair competition. In a libel trial, they awarded the victim 2.5 million on compensatory damages and 5 million in punative damages.
@41 Busy scientists have graduate assistants help them write papers and articles — that’s a scandal?
“Co-author” is not the right word here. The graduate assistants write drafts. The scientist or professor reviews the draft and makes changes. The assistant retypes the edited draft.
The same thing happens in big law firms. Junior lawyers are assigned research and drafting projects. The senior partner who represents the corporate client reviews the associate’s work and pencils in changes. Support staff type the memorandum or brief in its final form.
Same in publishing houses. Authors submit manuscripts. Editors read them and suggest editing changes. Copyreaders proof the MS for errors.
In any line of work, many people are involved in producing and polishing the final work product.
Only an ignorant uneducated fuck like you could see anything wrong with that. It’s how the world does business.
Third Woman Accuses Cain
Another former Cain employee has come forward saying she was sexually harassed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....72275.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Do we see a pattern of behavior here, yet?
It’s not clear whether this involves one of the three woman, or a fourth woman, but Cain appears headed over a cliff:
“Chris Wilson, a former NRA staffer, told Oklahoma radio station KTOK that he witnessed Cain sexually harassing a woman at Virginia restaurant in the late 90s. Wilson said that while he could not discuss specifics of what happened, ‘If she talks about it, I think it’ll be the end of his campaign.’ Wilson confirmed the incident to Politico. ‘It was very uncomfortable,’ he said.”
And,
“Conservative radio host Steve Deace also told Politico that Cain said ‘awkward’ and ‘inappropriate’ things to his station’s staff.”
Meanwhile, Cain is blaming a Perry campaign staffer for leaking the stories to the press.
(Same link as in #45)
Cain is a habitual sexual harasser, and someone in Republican World has decided to take him out. Doesn’t matter who or why. He’s toast.
It’s almost a given there are more victims and there’ll be additional allegations. That’s what happens when a half-assed businessman gets a swelled head from having a “CEO” title.
Unless Cain pulls a rabbit out of his hat, parts the red sea, or performs some other miracle, he’s done. The discussions on the Sunday talk show will all be about how he sabotaged his own campaign by his poor response to this scandal, and then they will move on to discussing how this impacts the rest of the field.
Most importantly for Cain, any pretensions he might have had that he would be a vice-presidential candidate have blown away in the wind.
Gee, it was just Monday that Cain was blaming the “liberal media” of conducting a “witch hunt”.
Now he’s claiming that a former consultant to his campaign, who switched over to the Perry campaign, leaked the news.
So now he’s admitting that his campaign knew about these allegations months ago????
Okay, this has been fun, watching Cain self-destruct within three days time. But at this point it’s like running up the score – the games already over, everyone’s just waiting for the clock to run out.
That’s pretty much the case for the other remaining candidates, Gingrich, etc. never had a chance. Bachman has been tagged as the “crazy-eyed lady”, and she can’t change that image. Perry is considered the poor debator, unintelligent, and possibly drunk-while-speaking.
I think that Romney has avoided similar attention for far too long – it’s time to give him the type of attention he truely deserves.
But, but…but…Cain is a good Christian man. A godly man. A righteous man. He sings hymns, and hates teh gays.
Oh, yeah, I remember, those are the ones MOST likely to think that they call pull this kind of shit and get away with it.
Would be kinda fun to know which campaign found this stuff and injected it into the MSM.
And, yeah, I like the question about Romney’s background. I suspect though, that he is merely amoral and greedy, and does shit like abusing his dog and kicking workers out of their jobs to make more money for himself – stuff that won’t get you in trouble with a disturbing proportion of the electorate.
Good thing that he is absolutely repellent, personality-wise.
@51 “Would be kinda fun to know which campaign found this stuff and injected it into the MSM.”
Fingers are pointing at Perry’s.
# 51: Yes, in wingnut eyes, Romney’s destruction of businesses and jobs is considered being a “successful businessman”.
Maybe we shouldn’t stick with the generalities, and go with the specifics. Like Stalin said (and I paraphrase), the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of 100,000 is a statistic.
So instead of looking at the forrest, let’s look at the trees. Pick each and every one of his investment firm’s “acquisitions”, and spell out how much money his firm made, at the cost of how many jobs for working families. Hit him with a thousand cuts.
While we are at it, show how much tax money he saved from the Bush era tax cuts, and how much money he saved just from last year’s extension of them. Extrapolate his effective tax rate, and let people compare it to their own. Make clear that Romeny doesn’t just represent the 1%, he IS one of the 1%.
# 52: Cain blamed a consultant who used to work for Cain, but ultimately ended up on the Perry staff. But Perry and the consultant/staffer both deny this.
At this point I still think it’s either the Perry camp, Romney, or “Turd Blossom” acting independently. I wouldn’t believe any claims or denials from any of the campaigns at this point, absent some other corroberating evidence.
In the meantime, Cain cancelled a scheduled news conference this morning. He told a crowd of reporters that he wasn’t going to answer the questions “they wanted to talk about”. As they kept yelling out the obvious questions, security from the hotel and the Cain camp pushed back the reporters, and one of the security guys hit a reporter in the face.
Businessmen Are Bastards Dep’t
Bet you didn’t know that prime cut of beef you paid premium dollars for is actually meat scraps glued together with a substance that’s dangerous to your health.
http://d.yimg.com/nl/australia.....selUI=hide
http://www.greenprophet.com/20.....stein-mea/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Republicans don’t like government regulation. Republicans don’t want federal inspectors interfering with private businesses. The Republican Bush administration tried to privatize meat inspection and use taxpayer dollars to pay meatpacking companies to hire their own meat inspectors. After watching this video, why would you still vote Republican?
@54
From what I’ve seen Cain’s settlements weren’t some dirty secret hiding a closet, this was well know stuff. Could have been anyone.
@53 The whole fucking problem is that politics in America has become a hobby for the rich because no one else can afford to participate. And the rich look out for themselves and their own — and no one else.
This, though, is coming to an end. The 1% have accrued so much wealth and political power, and have used it to their own selfish ends to such a great degree, that we are now verging on riots in the streets. The riots, of course, are only the beginning; riots are merely the predecessor of revolution.
Selfishness and greed have gone too far. The greedy got too greedy. It’s that simple. Now the pendulum is going to swing the other way. It always has throughout history and it will this time, too.
@57 Numerous people knew about it, but the question at hand is who tipped the media.
All modern sophisticated campaigns do oppo research. The stuff I’ve read strongly suggests Cain’s campaign staff knew about this brewing disclosure for weeks — but did little or nothing to prepare for it. Does it really matter who blew the whistle?
But early indications are the tipster was a former Cain staffer who left the Cain campaign to work for Perry.