I’m blogging through Sunday from Netroots Nation in Austin… which probably means I won’t be blogging all that much. Just registered and got my goody bag, the most useful item being the bottle opener/key chain from Act Blue.
Another item that may come in handy is a t-shirt from ONE.org, which I’ll probably put on after I sweat through the half dozen other shirts I brought with me. It is so humid here, I’m sweating like a pig. Indoors. In air conditioning. And it’s only 8:30 AM. Can’t imagine the torment once the temperatures rise into the mid nineties.
Folks like to complain about Seattle’s endless rain, but my sixteen years in its temperate clime have turned me into a weather pussy.
UPDATE:
Sitting in a session, The Pundit Project: How To Outtalk The Talking Heads, my first of the convention, and looking around me it seems that at 45 years old, balding, and with a graying beard, I’m pretty much the median blogger.
Good to hear you’re back in your natural habitat, Goldy.
Goldy spews:
“Folks like to complain about Seattle’s endless rain, but my sixteen years in its temperate clime have turned me into a pussy.”
Actually, being the Commanding Officer of the NW Division of Atheist Progressive Lunatic Moonbat’s has done that!
Goldy when they have the session on out-talking the talking heads, they’ll probably bring up the fact that the average right wing talking head is a felon, a chickenhawk and a hypocrite who regularly employs a WIDE STANCE – just like Puddylick posting as Rick D and convicted sex offender CynCyn.
Also while you’re there ask if anyone is aware that George Bush has gone beyond his usual disdain for anything decent by using Homeland Security to raise money for his Presidential Library – which should have all of two or three books in it – stuff like “See Spot Run.”
“Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) plans to investigate reports that a Homeland Security adviser was soliciting donations to the Bush presidential library fund in exchange for access to high-ranking government officials.”
When I first arrived to Seattle, some 30-odd years ago, I remember well the first summer when the temperature reached some 85 degrees, and everyone was complaining about how hot it was! “Hot???” I remember thinking. “This is just a spring day! It’s not even humid! What are they going to do when it get’s REALLY hot!”
Now I’m fully adjusted to the Pacific Northwest climate, and I’m trying to find an excuse to keep me from having to take a business trip to Tokyo in a couple of weeks. I never seem to take these trips in the spring, during the cherry blossom season, or during the fall. It’s always in the middle of winter, or during the hot, humid season in Japan!
By the way, in Japan when they decide something is a public problem, things actually start to happen. A generation ago they realized that their students needed to learn English better, so they started a system of importing people from Britain and the U.S. to work as high-school teachers in Japan for a year or two. It’s been a very successful program.
A few years ago they also decided that global warming and oil dependency was a problem, so now every office has it’s summer A/C thermastat set higher than normal (my guess is 80 degrees F), and the men who work in offices are allowed to go without wearing ties during the summer months. Normally this would have met a lot of resistance from the older managers, but once the government decided it as a matter of policy, it is considered to be the patriotic thing to do – as well as generally looking out for the common good of the country.
As late as a year ago, Bush was already commenting on how his priority after leaving office would be to “put some money into his bank account”. I assumed he was talking about writing a bio and doing the speaking tour. But perhaps he has other plans as well.
It’s actually more humid in Seattle right now than it is in Austin.
“pussy” is okay to say?
two sides of a coin,
“pussy” is okay to say?
Of course…why do you ask?
“…and looking around me it seems that at 45 years old, balding, and with a graying beard, I’m pretty much the median blogger.”
C’mon! You are even more ‘youthful’ than O’Bama.
Being warm and sweaty does entitle one to the observation that they feel like a pussy.
@1 What’s yours, the recycling bin?
@2 I agree we liberals have been pussies and doormats far too long. It’s time we did some serious ass-kicking. Liberals must arm!
I see in the news that Third-Term McSame opposes replacing any of the 1,700 FBI agents that Bush diverted from domestic crime-fighting. It seems Republicans are against getting caught.
I’m LMAO @ something a couple twenty/thirty something right wingers cooked up:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.c......drum.html
and…
LMAO!! These young right wingers have thrown in the towel and say Republicans should EXCEED the Dems! The “Grand New Party” indeed!
No way will the little Rickie Dumbasses, the PuddyStupids, the poopers, the doofus’ of the world buy this. I hope these young wingers are right, the wingnut crowd rejects this and the progressives take the prize for a generation.
Goldy, now is your chance to lobby to have the next Netroots Nation in Seattle or Portland.
Question. If John McCain had called Obama a nigger, and it was on caught on tape, would anyone here write anything about it? Yes, you would. So why are you remaining silent over Jesse Jackson calling Obama a nigger?
16 – You’re such a loser. Ask PuddySilly that question.
re 16: What’s your theory?
When will SIN dee McCain turn over her tax records? What do she and Rossi have to hide?
And did you know that cunt spends 800k a month on her Amex?
WOW talk about an elitist!
@ 16 – Goldy only covers issues that A) Help Democrats, or B) Demonize Republican’s.
He’s merely a one trick pony that cares less about blogging the truth and more on promoting his neo-marxist agenda. I find it humorous that the Times linked this HA site in the Sutherland story(But only if you searched for it) and some unsuspecting bloke got an education on Goldy’s home for wayward Donkey’s and their hate filled posts.
This is good in the sense that most older folks don’t see where the Demonrat party has gone since the days of FDR. The Castro wing has taken over and some aren’t wise to it yet. Fear not though, they will have their Zel Miller moment and come around at some point. Preferably before November’s election.
In the meantime, let haters like BiBiGoober and his man-date YLB prattle on with their infantile temper tantrums of misguided angst…..Afterall,they single-handedly push Independent voters to the right.
YLB @ 14: I’m always very suspicious when the Republicans decide that they need to embrace principles of the Democratic party. Usually it’s an attempt to co-opt the language, but not change the focus. (A couple of months ago all the surveys said that voters were in favor of “change”, so a lot of Republican candidates started to use the phrase, trying to reverse it’s direction – Rossi is a prime example of that).
Some of the other suggestions – national health insurance, summer enrichment programs, etc. seem to be good ideas. The devil is in the details.
I haven’t parsed these specific proposals, I’m just pointing out that when Republicans get hold of Democratic ideas, they can take off into some pretty predictable Republican territory.
For example, the subsidies or pension credits for parents taking care of their children at home. Remember that the Republicans haven’t exactly embraced the Earned Income Credit provision of the tax code. That program was designed to solve the problem that it made more economic sense for a low-wage worker to quit their job and go on welfare than to work, pay child support & taxes. The Earned Income Credit was an attempt to restore a balance in favor of working families. Sure, the Republicans hate welfare, and the EIC is a smaller amount than the government would have to pay in welfare benefits. But the Republicans always hated that it because it gave tax credits (i.e., rebates) to poor people for more money than they actually paid in taxes. They don’t like such “income re-distribution” plans (unless it is done through their own privitization or corporate welfare programs).
Anyway, one of the arguments they make is that women shouldn’t be working anyway – they need to be home caring for their children (i.e., “barefoot and in the kitchen”). So they argue that “why should working women get a tax credit, when women who stay at home taking care of their children don’t get a similar credit?” Not surprisingly, this is an argument which they use mostly in the red-state “Bible Belt”.
Of course, giving tax credits to people who don’t work in order to offset giving tax credits to people to encourage them to work pretty much defeats the purpose of the whole EIC plan. Depending upon income qualifications in the Republican proposal, it could end up being, in effect, a massive tax cut for families where the women don’t need to work at all. And to the extent it goes to families who home-school their children, it operates as a hidden “school voucher program” for home-schooling.
Likewise, “job subsidies” for entry-level jobs can be good, depending upon how it is set up. During the Carter era, my soon-to-be wife got her first job working as an administrative assistant for a city government in a program which was immediatly abolished by the Reagan administration. But she has continued to work in the same field (sometimes two at a time) for the past 30 + years. The program provided funds which trained a young woman from a VERY poor family in a rewarding field. But such a proposal can also be easily manipulated if you let it – making treasury funds available to subsidize an industry which is already paying wages too low to support a family. Are we ready for federal tax money to support a part of Wal-Mart’s payroll?
@20
Are you are saying that Goldy has become the very thing he set out to lampoon? That he has ironically, and without even knowing it, turned into his blog’s namesake – turned into a horse’s ass himself?
Oh hell, I’m just going to ask him directly, if he’s even reading this thread.
Goldy, why are you remaining silent over Obama being called a nigger by another national political figure?
@ 22 . Yes indeed.
As I said last night on one of these threads here,
This mornings report by the Golden boy that he is
, however, is conflicting with this original hypothesis.
21 – rhp, as always, your suspicions are well founded and convincingly argued. I put no credence in these guys’ proposals. I’m looking forward to the day when this book hits the Amazon remainder bins for a buck fifty. I’ll pick up a copy as a souvenir of a time when the right wing was in full desperation mode.
By the way, you should drop an e-mail to Kevin Drum who wrote that review. I’m sure he’ll find your take quite compelling.
I wonder if he could score an interview with Kinky Friedman?
By the way, I was reminded the other day about one of the hidden ways our current health-care system costs us more money. It came when I was reading about a lawsuit filed against a church, arguing that they didn’t properly supervise activities in which some teenagers were injured and now need care for the rest of their lives. I don’t remember the details of the lawsuit right now, but it’s not real important to this comment.
What struck me was that the family, which had been attending this church for years, was probably not really upset with the church. They just needed to be able to access the church’s liability insurance to pay for the long-term care, because it isn’t covered under their own policy. Even it if was covered, their own insurance company would file a lawsuit against the church anyway, exercising their right of subrogation to recover any money they pay out.
So what you have is insurance companies fighting against each other, with lawyers from both sides taking a substantial cut in the middle.
Years ago, a friend of mine was in a similar situation. She was involved in an auto accident where her mother, a passenger in her car, was injured. The fault for the accident was in dispute between the drivers of the two cars. After the mother’s health insurance paid out on her claim for medical expenses, they turned around and sued the driver of the other car – and the daughter – to recover the medical claims they had paid out.
The mother had become an unwilling litigant in an action against her own daughter, and the daughter became an unwilling litigant against her mother. The daughter was informed by her own auto insurance company that she had a duty to “cooperate” in the defense of the lawsuit, or the insurance company would be relieved of any coverage for the accident. In the mind of the insurance company, “cooperation” included making a claim that the mother had been a cause of the accident for “distracting” the daughter while she was driving (even though the daughter had no intention of making such a claim on her own).
So when the insurance company complains about personal injury lawyers filing “frivilous” lawsuits”, I’m reminded of these types of cases where multiple insurance companies have several sets of lawyers and claims people working on both sides of the case, both prosecuting and defending on the insurance company’s behalf.
Now, if we had national health insurance which collected premiums and paid claims on a no-fault basis, we could eliminate such inefficienct cross-claims between insurance companies, or lawsuits in general where the primary motivation for filing the lawsuit is to provide for the medical care of an injured person.
Similarly, notice that one of the forces driving up the cost of medical-malpractice claims is the increasing cost of long-term care for people who are permanantly injured. This is an essential element of the damages being recovered by the plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases, and is the primary motivation behind the filing of many claims. The non-economic damages – pain and suffering, loss of consortium, etc. – usually simply increase the total claim to the point where, after the costs of litigation are added up, the successful plaintiff can hope to take home enough money to provide the needed long-term care for the victims.
This creates an interesting spiral: increasing medical costs cause more medical-malpractice claims, which results in higher insurance premiums, which in term results in more medical-malpractice claims, etc.
Again, a no-fault national health insurance system would reduce the need for many of such claims, thereby interrupting the “spiral” and reducing liability insurance premiums and medical costs for everyone.
Sure, there will always be lawsuits, and sometimes lawsuits aren’t just about the medical expenses. But I’m pretty convinced that if we had a decent no-fault national insurance plan, then the number of lawsuits AND the cost of medical care would eventually go down.
Barack Obama raising $52 million in June is a actually a sign of how bad things are for him. After all, one would expect that he could beat McCain’s fundraising by much, much more.
Leading in almost every poll? Raising tens of millions more than his opponent? Generating excitement when his opponent generates only yawns? Yes, it’s clear that Obama’s candidacy is over.
8 2SOAC
Yes, as in “John McCain is a big pussy.”
re 23: Goldy is silent on many topics. Why does his silence on this one concern you?
Just answer the question. You are avoiding my question like the coward that you are.
What next? Will Goldy be called upon to condemn every rap song that contains the n-word? It’s not uncommonly used between blacks, in what I have always thought was an attempt to co-opt the word and remove some of its sting.
So yes, if John McCain said it it would be a huge deal. Fucking A.
@23
The Jackson thing is all over the papers and not a Washington State thing. Why should he cover it?
@31
So will you be voting for the nigger in November, or McCain?
Is saying the N-word more important than discussing McCain’s crackpot ideas on foreign relations? Like saying that we should not talk to the Iranians — which the Bush administration did just a few days ago.
Goldy says, “Folks like to complain about Seattle’s endless rain, but my sixteen years in its temperate clime have turned me into a weather pussy.”
Born and raised in Seattle, lived here most of my life and it’s great and all that, but spending five years in Palo Alto really did spoil me when it comes to weather. I admit it. I am now so totally a weather pussy.
re 33: Is that your best effort?
Libby Dole recommended that an AIDS funding bill be named in honor of Jesse Helms. How do you think Jesse would have felt about such an honor?
re 33: The Bush administration is holding talks with the Iranians. I guess that makes Bush a Nazi Appeaser.
“Ya gotta unnerstan’! Appeeeeeeeeeeeesmint don’t work with these here fellers.” G.W.(a tree, a shrub, or, a…)Bush
re 33: He’s half Peckerwood, you know.
HAs clueless idiot@17: Hey pendejo dumb fuck, he doesn’t need to ask me anything. Jackson is a charlatan and he’s proving how ignant he is more and more. I’ve always told you HA Moonbat!s he’s Jesse “Hi-Jack”son. But now Obama has hi-jacked his black leadership role and Jesse “Hi-Jack”son is becoming more irrelevant as I have told you moron everyday.
Go back to your SEIU wife’s bathrobe and get back into the doggie bed at the foot of the her bed!
Absoeffinlutely. You all ask me to comment on mundane things, so he should have to too!
@16
remaining silent over Jesse Jackson
…is the only way to treat anything JJ says.
PS. Blacks are allowed to use that word; those of other races are not (unless they are very stupid, or can run very fast).
39 – LMAO at your silly-assed hatred as always!
Hi, Puddy.
Just so you all can be happy, I’ll post a comment about Rev. Jackson’s comments.
They were tacky and indefensible. Rev. Jackson is becoming increasingly irrelevent, as witnessed by the fact that the only network that seems to feature him (except when he puts his foot in his mouth all the way to the kneecap) is Fox News.
They seem to have noticed that he’s always good for a gaff.
You’re probably far more frustrated than I am about the media annointing “black leaders” and paying some of these folks any mind whatsoever.
So, even though he has done some good things in the past, Rev. Jackson has joined the ranks of “media-appointed-leader”, along with such other “greats” as Pat Robertson, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan. (See? I’ve even tried to be bi-partisan!)
These folks are always good for a sound bite, and getting between any one of them and a news camera is more dangerous than wandering around alone at night in Baghdad wearing an “American Crusade 2003-2103” tee-shirt.
In fact, between the four of them (Jackson, Nader, Buchanan and Robertson) I would say the most dangerous would be Jackson.
But if we could get them all together competing for the same camera, I would pay good money for a pay-per-view of the ruckus, no matter who won.
John Barelli: It has nothing to do with my happiness. I post facts.
Thanks for the great comeback. HAs clueless idiot could learn something, if he could learn.
Anyway you forgot Al Not-So-Sharpton in the group. He’s always a hoot for a comment. But lately he’s woken up to the black politics of destruction where Jess Hi-Jackson has not. This is where I drew the line long ago.
If you remember when I discussed the reaction of Hi-Jackson and other “gangsta” leaders like Russell Simmons, Drooped Dog, Spiked SLeeze, etc. to Bill Cosby’s call to young black men speeches, the same 16%ers reacted the way HAs clueless idiot did above. This is the reason Louis Farraklown has a draw to black women who want to be recognized for their inner beauty not just their ass shimmy on MTV or BET. This is what I have put on HA for a long time the blaxploitation of inner city kids by big media and the Donkey party who really don’t care if we donkoinfanticide ourselves. Believe me your peeps are saying every time someone does the abortion number, one less potential welfare recipient. How do I know this…? Well I am the black sheep of my family, a large family of DOnkey and I hear what happens behind closed doors at DOnkey gatherings. You can’t fool a brotha when he hears it.
Now this may not happen so much in King County but I have a great bud’s wife who worked for another Western WA County and the way they denoted black applicants applications was with the special connotation of 12 Midnight. Hmmm… can you dig it John Barelli.
DOnkey means Democrats Only
@44 “I post facts.”
Too bad there’s not a single fact in your meandering, self-centered post.
44 – LMAO at your silly-assed lies as always!
Have a Shiner Texas Special beer, a plate of BBQ brisket. Austin has some great progressives made tough as boot leather by decades of adversity.
Jackson is a blackmailing thug nigger himself and it amazes me the following. We don’t know
what kind of nigger Obama is cause he keeps
changing his position so he really is for change.
@48 Someone remarked about Puddy recently that he stands with people like you. I can understand that you’re a pathetic piece of shit, but I not quite sure what this makes Puddy. “Really fucking pathetic piece of shit” just doesn’t seem to cut it.
Is this the 2 americas john edwards keep talking about?
So, there are words only black people can use. What are the words only white people can say?
I’ve said that democrats are the real racists of the country and cite the fact they started the kkk and all the other atrocities of racial hatred.
Look at the obama campaign the last week.
If you heard on olberman that someone called obama a nigger and wanted to cut off his nuts your first thought would be it’s a republican. But no, it’s a democrat.
If you heard on olberman that a magazine had put an offensive cartoon of obama on the cover your first thought would have been a right-leaning magazine. Once again you would have been wrong.
And let’s not forget the racism that the clintons introduced.
So far, obama should be more fearful of smears from democrats. You know obama, he’s the African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. Oops, is that racist?
re 50: What are you gibbering about? You sound like some kinda Naked Communist. Did you know that free trade with communist countries has been a communist goal since day one?
Hey Stamm,
Right wing mark @ 48 has been unleashed.
Is he a “Dixiecrat”?
You’re such a silly losing wingnut.