HorsesAss.Org

Open Thread 10/17

by — ,

– Several cities have shifted to smart cards for transit purchases, so adding the ability to use your smart card to pay for parking would be fantastic.

– Every military operation we take on has legitimate criticism. Rush Limbaugh is clearly not the one to provide it though.

– Well, in news that will shock exactly no one, at least one of the images featured on Erickson’s tumblr is fake.

– Some signs from Westlake.

– How many galaxies are in the universe?

Comments

  1. 1

    Any word on if CNN’s firing Erickson? A CNN employee shouldn’t be inventing news like that.

  2. 2

    I thought this was a great description from the “Erickson’s tumblr is fake” link.

    Those 53% people are pathetic. Each and every “53%” sign reads like this to me:

    “I am a good little dog. I obey master well. You are a bad dog. Any day now, master will give me a treat, but not you because you are being a bad dog.”

    That is, after all, the mentality someone has to have in order to view it as a good thing that they’re being taken advantage of; in order to react with reverence for the exploiters and disdain for those who refuse to be willingly exploited alongside them.

    It’s like a slave bragging about how much cotton he picks for his master, and saying that the other slaves only desire freedom out of laziness.

    It’s not laziness, assholes; it’s integrity, and it’s the refusal to be a willing patsy. If you “53%” are fine with being walked on; if your response is to lay down, take it, and beg for more, fine. But don’t pretend that this behavior is an example of toughness or a strong work ethic. It isn’t. It’s cowardice, masochism, and self-loathing. It’s pathetic.

    It also sums up my feeling about our trolls that shill for the 1%.

  3. 3

    Well, this is fun.

    On October 7th, FoxNews.com launched a survey titled “Do ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protesters represent your views about the nation’s economic problems?” Considering the type of coverage Fox has been giving the events in Zuccotti Park, we imagine they were pretty confident that the majority of their readers would answer “No.”

    Unfortunately (for FoxNews.com), this is the Internet, and word of this poll spread quickly. The results started pouring in from OWS-sympathizers. Here’s what we’re currently looking at:

    Out of over 198,000 votes, more than 137,000 voted that Occupy Wall Street protesters represented how they felt about the nation’s economic problems. This isn’t a fluke: Reddit put out a call to arms four days ago, as did The Daily Kos. Combined with all those pro-Occupiers on Twitter and Facebook who kept linking to the poll and getting the word out, the numbers went soaring in favor of OWS.

    The only question now is how Fox keeps the poll up, and how hard they will try to bury this data afterwards. Or perhaps Conservatives will rally on their social networking sites and bring their numbers back up? Hey, all it takes is one link from DrudgeReport.
    http://www.observer.com/2011/1.....backfires/

  4. 4

    I found a new source of P-dud talking points! It’s like archaeology of the sewers – I had to go to the execrable Washington Times for this:

    Liberals tolerate blacks and they endure conservatives. But they cannot abide a successful, independent-minded black who dares to step out of line and reject the enslavement of the Plantation Party.

    There is no class of people more openly loathed around here than black conservatives. Truly, it is the Mark of Cain among the liberal intelligentsia who dominate the press and corridors of power.

    It’s a classic. Victimhood, check. Liberal press, check. Liberals are the real racists, check. Revealing use of the geriatric vernacular “a black”, check.

    Where’s my Hover-Round ™?

    I found the linky at E Pluribus Moron, who had this to add:

    Man is Hurt down with the brothers! Everyone knows African Americans love being called “a black” by a guy who looks like the head of their college’s Young Republicans association.

  5. 5

    OOPS – here’s the link to the Washington Times op-ed. Get the bleach ready for your computer – don’t say I didn’t warn you!

  6. 6

    According to my morning paper kids are “flooding into” Seattle schools. I bring this up because one of the constant themes of righty trolls around around here is that no one with a family lives in a city and that they never will.

    “We are bursting at the seams,” Thornton Creek Elementary parent Cristina McGlynn said. “If you walk through the hallways now, it’s impossible to get from one side to another.”
    The district is now reopening some of the same schools it had closed in 2006 and 2009 amid fierce opposition from parents and community activists.
    By next year, about half of the 12 shuttered schools will be back in operation – after millions of dollars were spent in closing and reopening costs. But the reopened school can’t accommodate all the extra students, and a tight budget prevents any new building construction until at least 2016.

    Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/.....z1b3a5ZdLj

    The article also point to Seattle schools having been fairly poorly run lately. Which is true and something that could and does happen just as easily in the ‘burbs.

  7. 7

    20% of children in the USofA live in poverty.

    Shame. Absolute shame.

    Maybe we should send each and every one of them a Bible, a copy of Atlas Shrugged, and bootstrap (whatever the fuck that is) to pull themselves up with.

    Wouldn’t want them becoming parasites, after all, for the Job Creators to carry on their backs.

  8. 8

    @7
    Hell, if we got rid of the south, the rest of the country’s poverty rate wouldn’t look so bad.

  9. 9

    Interesting news in the airline industry recently.

    American Airlines:
    By way of background, American Airlines has been the “odd-man-out” in the merger wars which have resulted in Delta/Northwest and United/Continental being the largest carriers in North America. Among rumors that American would soon file bankruptcy, a lot of it’s most senior pilots are jumping ship – opting to take retirement and freeze their vested benefits, before they are re-structured in a bankruptcy filing or depleted by being tied to the company’s stock price.

    The company’s response was not to hire new pilots, but to ask the remaining pilots to work through their vacations and holidays, which they understandably refused. So now partially in retaliation, American is closing it’s pilot base in San Francisco, forcing some 300 American pilots to relocate to elsewhere. In the meantime, pilots would have to travel further on dead-head flights just to return to SFO (San Francisco) to crew the American airline jets departing from that location. It is also closing down it’s Tulsa MRO (maintenance, repair, overhall) facility and sending some 230 staffers to DFW – as well as out-sourcing some heavy maintenance to Timco.

    Airbus in Tianin, China:

    In the meantime, Airbus is investing heavily in China as it ramps up negotiations to extend it’s lease on the A320 production facility which would otherwise expire in 2016. Airbus’ goal is to have Airbus dominate the A320/B737 class of airplanes in China. The Tianin faciilty currently outputs about three airfames a month, with plans to ramp up to four aircraft per month in 2013. But Airbus has orders for 284 aircraft from Chinese carriers through 2016, and won’t likely meet it’s demand in China for quite some time.

    In the meantime, it should be noted that Airbus is still producing the aircraft in Tianin at a significantly higher cost than in the heavily-unionized Hamburg and Toulouse production plants in Europe. To help offset this, The European Export Credit Banks have just offered aid for Airbus airplanes being produced in Tianin. This is a rather strange result, because semi-public organizations will be using European taxpayer dollars to subsidize a product being produced in China.

    But remember that China is working hard to develop it’s own aircraft industry, as well, and after 2016 you might see a lot of future orders from Chinese airlines going to COMAC instead of Airbus or Boeing.

  10. 10

    @8
    I’ve often mused about whether Lincoln fucked up with that whole “preserve the Union” thingy.

    However, one wonders what horrors would reside on our border were that to have happened – or what would we be if the South had won.

    How backward, repressive, oligarchal, violent would our culture be? Far far worse I suspect than what we have now, though it’s where our Republican friends would like to take us, methinks.

  11. 11

    20% of children in the USofA live in poverty.
    That’s because according to cain, they are lazy and want to be in poverty.

  12. 12

    http://my.firedoglake.com/mees.....uity-home/

    While Washington Dithers, Labor Brings Jobs and Equity Home

    By: Michelle Chen Sunday October 16, 2011 6:48 am

    Cross-posted from In These Times

    The 2012 campaign trail is already littered with silver bullets and peppy slogans about boosting America out of its unemployment slump. But for the most part, the plans that politicians have trotted out–from Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 mantra to the GOP’s latest corporate welfare formulas, to Obama’s limp blend of free-trade policies and woefully inadequate stimulus–stick faithfully to the path of neoliberalism, paving the way for more outsized corporate profits.

    So does anyone have a plan to steer industry toward the needs of communities? Researchers at Cornell University have located a few novel ideas, well outside the Beltway, that are blazing small trails in economic disaster zones. Their study focuses on project labor agreements that are designed to meet workers’ needs for decent wages and working conditions, while upholding principles of equity in local hiring practices.

    Community workforce provisions in labor agreements have been used in various cities to help low-income and working-class people land solid jobs with opportunities for advancement, while building in corporate accountability, to prevent employers from exploiting local workers or undermining labor rights.

    There’s a lot more in this great article.

    Jobs, Jobs, Jobs…

    …this economy is “bubble-up” NOT trickle down.

    We’re tired of being pissed on.

  13. 13

    @10. Could you elaborate? Methinks Northern culture would be different from Southron Culture would be different than Western Culture. What do you think?

    http://myfivebest.com/alternat.....civil-war/

    I include this for the number of conserative dog whistle phrases in it.

    As a conservative who longs for limited government and the ideals of the Constitution, I am not ashamed to speculate that quite possibly we would have a better world today had the South won the Civil War. Maybe I’m dreaming, but I think limited government, personal freedom, and higher degrees of racial harmony are what we’d be experiencing. In addition, we would have a clear choice between two governments competing for our approbation. Or maybe you’re content with the rapacious, out-or-control, ever-expanding, corrupt federal government that is overwhelming us today!
    http://www.freerepublic.com/fo.....7496/posts

  14. 14

    Fair share means PAY MORE.
    People get the Obama BS gig.
    And they will overwhelmingly reject it.
    College kids want jobs, not blame.
    Any kid who has taken basic economics understands the lunacy of the fleabaggers.

  15. 15

    # 13: As someone who has studied the American Civil War, and who grew up in the South, I found the “alternative history” analysis to be wrong on almost every level.

    On a factual basis, it is wrong when it says that in 1863 Robert E. Lee carried a letter suing for peace with the only condition being recognition of the Confederacy. As late as the January 1865 Peace Conferance at Hampton Roads, the South insisted not only on recognition of the Confederacy, but also on retaining it’s slaves – neither condition being acceptable to the Union at that point. Even then, the discussion was purely hypothetical – Davis had no authority from the Confederate Congress or Constitution to discuss a peace treaty, and the delegates were simply “feeling out” the Union intentions.

    The old canard that slavery was doomed within a few years of the Civil War is wishful thinking. Most of the South’s accumulated wealth was tied to slavery. The planter interests were not interested in making money by more efficient techniques, but were interested in preserving their “way of life”, which was built upon the foundation of slavery. They would have retained slavery long after it had ceased to be economically feasible, perhaps well into the late 20th century.

    Third, because the divided nation was weaker, the author postulates that it would have stayed out of the Spanish-American war, WWI, and WWII. Again, this is wishful thinking. If barred by the Union forces from expanding slavery north or into the far west, the slave states were already looking towards Cuba and Mexico as potential conquests in which to spread slavery (one Confederate “peace proposal” offered the North some benefits if it were to cease hostilities with the South and join them in an attack on Mexico). A far more likely scenario is for the South to be rather constantly at war with it’s southern neighbors, and European interests seeking to play one side against the other in any European war. In WWI, you might even see the South on one side and the north on the other side, with resulting renewed conflict between both of them.

    And don’t think that recognition by Britain of the South in the Civil War would have necessarily turned into an everlasting alliance between the Confederacy and Britain. Despite France’s assistance to the Colonists in the American Revolution, we declared ourselves neutral in the subsequent early Napoleanic wars between France and Britain, and even had a small naval war with France during John Adam’s presidency. Likewise, it’s quite possible the Confederacy saw more similarities with the Nazis in WWII Germany than with the British, given the Nazi “racial superiority” ideology.

    I could go on, but these “what if” things get rather tiresome. They try to take a single event and predict all the consequences and actions over far too long a time-line. For example, if Stonewall Jackson wasn’t killed at Chancellorsville, then could he have one Gettysburg by taking Culp’s Hill on the first day? That might be a fair question, but going forward to extrapolate that the Confederacy would have then won the war is another matter altogether.

  16. 16

    @10, 13

    The south was dependent on the north, they couldn’t even make buttons for their uniforms (a lot of northern companies made bank smuggling good into the south).

    People forget that both Lincoln and Douglas wanted to end slavery. Lincoln, being the first modern Republican, was a holly roller & moralistic hot head spoiling for a fight. Douglas reminds me of Bill Clinton, he wanted to cut deals, hold hands and phase out slavery over time. Had we done it Douglas’s way a lot of lives would have been saved and slavery would have ended in about the same amount of time it took to fight the war.

  17. 17

    14. fleabaggerssuck spews:

    Fair share means PAY MORE.
    People get the Obama BS gig.
    And they will overwhelmingly reject it.
    College kids want jobs, not blame.
    Any kid who has taken basic economics understands the lunacy of the fleabaggers.

    10/17/2011 at 10:55 am

    http://thinkprogress.org/speci.....l-justice/

    PHOTOS: The Global 99 Percent March In Hundreds Of Cities Worldwide For Social And Economic Justice

    By Zaid Jilani on Oct 15, 2011 at 5:10 pm

    Ever since protesters inspired by the Arab Spring took over Zuccotti Park in New York City to protest Wall Street’s greed, people nationwide have been inspired to take part in their own protests and occupations, taking aim at corporate greed and economic injustice. Thus, the 99 Percent Movement was born, aimed at seeking social justice for the bottom 99 percent of Americans and taking aim the greed of the top one percent.

    Today, this movement went global as there were planned demonstrations in in 951 cities in 82 countries. The protests, which were built partly on the foundation of demonstrations in Spain that began on May 15th, included hundreds of thousands of people worldwide taking part in protests and occupations. Although their causes varied — they ranged from everything from protests against European austerity programs to Japanese nuclear power regimes — their demand had one global aim: to seek justice for the vast majority of the world’s population being left out of the dominant global economic and political systems.

    ThinkProgress has assembled a collage of photos from these demonstrations taking place across the world:

    Yeah.

    Rejected.

    Overwhelmingly.

  18. 18

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.....hp?ref=fpa

    New York To Occupy Wall Street: We’ve Got Your Back

    Kyle Leighton | October 17, 2011, 1:38PM 19

    Wall Street has been occupied by protestors for a month now, and the movement is showing no signs of slowing. And New Yorkers are apparently just fine with that.

    A Quinnipiac poll released on Monday found that residents of the financial capital of the world are unfazed by the presence of the protestors, who have been mostly in the financial district’s Zuccotti Park but also made their way to Times Square on Saturday night, and that two thirds of New Yorkers agree with the views of Occupy Wall Street.

    72 percent polled in the city said that if protestors obey the law they should be allowed to stay as long as they want. 24 percent said they should be limited. There was a trend based on income within those findings, but not what you might think: the lower the income group, the more likely a the respondent would say OWS protests should be stopped at some point. Only 16 percent of those who make over $100,000 felt OWS should be halted in the future, while 34 percent of those who make less than $30-thousand thought so. Still, a majority of all groups said it should continue as long as the protesters aren’t breaking the law.

    “It’s a free country. Let them keep on protesting as long as they obey the law, New Yorkers say overwhelmingly,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in a release. “Critics complain that no one can figure out what the protesters are protesting. But seven out of 10 New Yorkers say they understand and most agree with the anti-Wall Street views of the protesters.”

    Yeah.

    Rejected.

    Overwhelmingly.

  19. 19

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05.....grads.html

    Many With New College Degree Find the Job Market Humbling

    By CATHERINE RAMPELL
    Published: May 18, 2011

    “This is exactly what the corporate elite desire – educated, in debt, in no position to ask for anything. The perfect employee. Why stop here? Let’s bring back slavery while we are at it.”
    Chris, Peoria, AZ

    Now evidence is emerging that the damage wrought by the sour economy is more widespread than just a few careers led astray or postponed. Even for college graduates — the people who were most protected from the slings and arrows of recession — the outlook is rather bleak.

    Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years, as have starting salaries for those who can find work. What’s more, only half of the jobs landed by these new graduates even require a college degree, reviving debates about whether higher education is “worth it” after all.

    “I have friends with the same degree as me, from a worse school, but because of who they knew or when they happened to graduate, they’re in much better jobs,” said Kyle Bishop, 23, a 2009 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh who has spent the last two years waiting tables, delivering beer, working at a bookstore and entering data. “It’s more about luck than anything else.”

    The median starting salary for students graduating from four-year colleges in 2009 and 2010 was $27,000, down from $30,000 for those who entered the work force in 2006 to 2008, according to a study released on Wednesday by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. That is a decline of 10 percent, even before taking inflation into account.

    Of course, these are the lucky ones — the graduates who found a job. Among the members of the class of 2010, just 56 percent had held at least one job by this spring, when the survey was conducted. That compares with 90 percent of graduates from the classes of 2006 and 2007. (Some have gone for further education or opted out of the labor force, while many are still pounding the pavement.)

    Even these figures understate the damage done to these workers’ careers. Many have taken jobs that do not make use of their skills; about only half of recent college graduates said that their first job required a college degree.

    Does the clown @14 even know what the issues are?

    Maybe he can tell me what he’s blathering about because he makes no sense at all.

  20. 20

    Look, the whole point of neo-liberal economic thought, which is what, despite the righties claims, even Obama believes in, is that as wealth concentrates in the upper classes they invest that money in various things that could be called “plant” I.E. things and places where the lower classes can find work.

    In 1979 the top 1% took in 10% of the national wealth. In 2006 they took in 23%. But, investment as a percentage of GDP has fallen, not risen, since 1979. By its own metric neo-liberalism has failed.

    Please note that the chart I’m linking to doesn’t break investment down, so we can’t see how much of that is stuff that might employ people and how much is CDO nonsense and the like.

    http://www.tradingeconomics.co.....-data.html

    Is it any wonder that people are in the streets?

  21. 21

    Herman Caine is taking the old GOP trick: (1) making outrageous commments which receive enthusiastic support among the Tea Party base, (2) claiming it was “just a joke” to the national media, and (3) repeating the outrageous comments again later to the Tea Party base again.

    In this weekend’s installment, Cain received very enthusiastic support for his plans to build a 20-foot electrified fence across the entire border with Mexico, topped with razer wire and warning signs that touching the fence would mean instant death. He also said he would consider stationing a substantial military presence on the border with “real guns with real bullets”.

    But when asked about the comments on a national press show, he said it was just a joke. But don’t be surprised if he keeps repeating that “joke” anywhere he thinks it will get cheers and applause.

    Stalag USA

    You have to wonder where Herman Cain thought those tomatoes he used in his pizza sauce came from.

  24. 24

    @21

    He also said he would consider stationing a substantial military presence on the border with “real guns with real bullets”

    The substantial military presence we currently have on the border doesn’t have real guns?

    .

  25. 25

    Here’s another nail in the “liberal media” coffin:

    One man running for president has suffered the most unrelentingly negative treatment of all: Barack Obama. Though covered largely as president rather than a candidate, negative assessments of Obama have outweighed positive by a ratio of almost 4-to-1. The assessments of the president in the media were substantially more negative than positive in every one of the 23 weeks studied. In no week during these five months was more than 10% of the coverage about the President positive in tone

    You can read the full Pew Report here.

  28. 28

    “On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh launched another religion-based smear of President Obama: that he is sending troops to Africa to kill Christians. Limbaugh declared that … the group being targeted, the Lord’s Resistance Army, ‘are Christians.'”

    This is embarrassing. Limbaugh badly needs an editor or at least a fact-checker. LRA, run by a self-appointed witch doctor, is one of the most heinously brutal gangs on the planet — they make Somali pirates look like boy scouts. If these killers, torturers, mutilators, rapists, and kidnappers were operating in the U.S., Limbaugh would be screaming for their summary execution. So would everyone else.

  29. 29

    Wingnut Humor

    Never say wingnuts have no sense of humor. The Koch Kandidate assures us he was joking when he talked about putting up an electric fence on our border with Mexico that would kill anyone who touched it. (Juarez Park, anyone?) My question is, why does wingnut humor always consist of death jokes? Apparently they think killing people is funny and entertaining.

  30. 30

    I didn’t buy into last week’s stock bounce because I thought it was a fool’s rally. Today, the market thinks so too, selling off 243 Dow points. Investors who thought a European debt solution was a done deal were wrong.

    Euro zone banksters are balking at taking writeoffs of Greek debt that will never be paid. Everyone knows it’ll never be paid; but for the banksters, it’s one thing to lose someone else’s money through imprudent lending, quite another to lose their own. Get over it, guys, you’re gonna take a haircut whether you want to or not, so don’t drag the rest of the world down with you by stubbornly insisting on a bankrupt debtor repaying loans he can’t possibly pay. Don’t hold your breath waiting for bankers anywhere to get reasonable. Just brace yourself for another recession.

  31. 31

    Get over it, guys, you’re gonna take a haircut whether you want to or not, so don’t drag the rest of the world down with you

    And it’s much better to take it in the market then by someone throwing a brick though through the drivers side window your wife’s Land Rover, while she’s driving it.

    I’m not advocating throwing bricks. I’m advocating taking care of things so that bricks wont get thrown. If we don’t take care of things bricks being thrown are a historical inevitability. It happens every time.

  33. 33

    @23 Cain says whatever his Koch handlers tell him to say. He doesn’t piss without permission.

  35. 35

    @20 The bootlickers and apologists for the bloodsucking class just can’t stand it that the people they ran into the ground are protesting about being run into the ground.

    I understand that back in slavery days, complaining about being a slave could get a slave into serious trouble.

    Looks like the wingnut crowd yearns for a return to those days.

  36. 36

    Feeral Judge Orders Disclosure Of Ref. 71 Signatures

    “A federal judge on Monday issued a ruling to release the names of 137,500 people who two years ago signed Referendum 71 petitions to bring the state’s domestic-partnership law to a vote. The Secretary of State’s Office said it would release the names immediately.”

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....es18m.html

  38. 38

    # 28: Yes, and Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell criicized the Clinton Administration for not supporting Richard Taylor, the brutal terrorist/war lord of west-central Africa that was responsible for so much death and destruction in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. They supported him because he made a late claim to have converted to Christianity and said he was a Baptist.

    Pat Robertson’s organization even was under investigation for violating U.S. law and U.N. sanctions by using it’s ministry’s aircraft to transport mining equipment into the “blood diamand” areas of Africa, although an indictment was blocked the Virginia Attorney General who was a supporter of Roberston.

    The Bible commands Christians to be as wise as serpants but gental as lambs. But it seems ridiculously easy how some of these guys can allow themselves to be manipulated in this fashion.

  39. 39

    @4 “the enslavement of the Plantation Party”

    Clueless, as is the self-loathing black loon. What they don’t get, or do but lie about it, is that we all live on the plantation now. All 99% of us. Some are in the house, some are in the fields. Someone like CNN’s Erikson, white as he might appear, is what headless called a “house nigger”. Me? I work in the fields.

  40. 40

    @30 I had a bio, ANDS, pop 250% today. Thank God. That was one of the dogs of my portfolio. Sold!

  45. 45

    re 44: God is bald on the New Yorker cover. His official visage on the Sistine Chapel has him with a full head of hair.

    The cover’s a fake — and Jobs was a Buddhist anyway.

  46. 46

    @44
    Nope, it’s on their website, here.

  48. 48

    Check out this greasy fucking loser….GO PORTLAND! WAY TO REPRESENT!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related

    would anybody hire this guy????? fuck, he’s too dirty and stupid to sweep my floors, much less give him a real job.

    hey you dirty freak, cut your fucking hair, shave off that soup-napkin you call a beard, take a shower, and maybe, just maybe, you could get a job.

    go smoke a bowl you piece of shit.

    loser….lazy fucks.

    darwhyle, is this your twin brother?

  49. 49

    What more needs to be said.. Hate is all they’ve got on their side.

    They’ll lose. They can’t find iranian oil their asses with a flashlight.

  52. 52

    50
    My dad voted for Goldwater in ’64. When I visited him this weekend, he enthusiastically handed me an article from Mother Jones addressing the unsustainability of the growing wealth disparity in this country. I’m pretty proud of my dad. I think he’s moved to my left. Truly, wisdom comes with age.

  54. 54

    Hmm…

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c73.....z1b6Py7C3j

    America must manage its decline
    By Gideon Rachman
    Recently I met a retired British diplomat who claimed with some pride that he was the man who had invented the phrase, “the management of decline”, to describe the central task of British foreign policy after 1945. “I got criticised,” he said, “but I think it was an accurate description of our task and I think we did it pretty well.”
    No modern American diplomat – let alone politician – could ever risk making a similar statement. That is a shame. If America were able openly to acknowledge that its global power is in decline, it would be much easier to have a rational debate about what to do about it. Denial is not a strategy.
    More

    President Barack Obama has said that his goal is to ensure that America remains number one. Even so, he has been excoriated by his opponents for “declinism”. Charles Krauthammer, a conservative columnist, has accused the president of embracing American weakness: “Decline is not a condition,” he declared. “Decline is a choice.” The stern rejection of “declinism” is not confined to the rabid right. Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor and doyen of US foreign policy analysts, regards talk of American decline as an intellectual fad – comparable to earlier paranoia about the US being overtaken by Japan. Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, has just published a book that is subtitled, “What went wrong with America – and how it can come back”.
    What is not permissible, in mainstream debate, is to suggest that there may be no “coming back” – and that the decline of American power is neither a fad nor a choice but a fact.

  55. 55

    If part of the purpose of offering people the convenience of using a prepaid transit pass is to encourage the people to ride the bus instead of driving, making it easier for them to park downtown would seem to be working against that goal.

  56. 56

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....16212.html

    Rick Santorum Calls ‘Saturday Night Live’ Sketch Poking Fun At His Anti-Gay Marriage Views ‘Bullying’

    The Huffington Post Paige Lavender
    Posted: 10/17/11 04:21 PM ET

    Santorum — depicted by actor Andy Samberg in the sketch, titled “Yet Another GOP Debate” — suggested that the segment was “bullying” during an interview with New Hampshire radio station WGIR on Sunday. The former Pennsylvania senator said he had been “hammered” by “the left” for his support of conservative principles.

    “The left, unfortunately, participates in bullying more than the right does,” Santorum said. “They say that they’re tolerant, and they’re anything but tolerant of people who disagree with them and support traditional values.”

    Santorum has made a name for himself as a staunch defender of conservative values. He called the repeal of the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy “detrimental” for gay soldiers and said nothing when a gay soldier was booed by audience members at a GOP debate.

    More recently, Santorum bemoaned gay soldiers who “shower with people” during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” He has also claimed that the key to a successful economy is traditional marriage.

    Santorum said on Sunday that he would continue to stand up for the traditional values “that made this country great,” despite being a target of the comedy show.

    “I welcome the criticism, go ahead,” he said.

    …speaking of “pussies”…

  57. 57

    http://thenewcivilrightsmoveme.....0/17/28704

    15-Year Old Suicide Victim’s Father: “Bullying Was Definitely A Factor”

    by David Badash on October 17, 2011

    The father of 15-​year old Ottawa suicide victim Jamie Hubley says that bullying was definitely a factor in his son’s tragic death on Friday. Allan Hubley, a local Ottawa, Canada politician, released a statement that sang the praises of his son’s accomplishments, discussed his son’s depression, and acknowledged the tragic bullying his son, Jamie Hubley, experienced.

    “In Grade 7 he was treated very cruelly simply because he liked figure skating over hockey,” Allan Hubley wrote.

    “Recently, when Jamie tried to start a Rainbow Club at his high school to promote acceptance of others, the posters were torn down and he was called vicious names in the hallways and online. We had meetings with officials at the school and were working with them to bring an end to it but Jamie felt it would never stop.

    We will not say that the bullying was the only reason for James’s decision to take his own life but it was definitely a factor.”

    Jamie Hubley succumbed to suicide Friday, after years of bullying, being called a “fag,” and saying life was too hard and he couldn’t wait three more years for it maybe to get better. Hubley left a note stating how hard it was to be the only out gay student in his school, and made references to the TV show “Glee.”

    Santorun doesn’t know what REAL bullying is…what a corrupt, immoral slime.

  58. 58

    http://motherjones.com/kevin-d.....rack-obama

    Chart of the Day: The Press Hates Barack Obama

    —By Kevin Drum
    | Mon Oct. 17, 2011 10:26 AM PDT.

    You’d hardly know it from listening to the endless complaints about the lamestream media from movement conservatives, but guess which presidential candidate has gotten the worst press coverage over the past five months? The Pew Research Center took a look at all the Republicans running for president, and the answer is: none of them.

    One man running for president has suffered the most unrelentingly negative treatment of all, the study found: Barack Obama. Though covered largely as president rather than a candidate, negative assessments of Obama have outweighed positive by a ratio of almost 4-1. Those assessments of the president have also been substantially more negative than positive every one of the 23 weeks studied. And in no week during these five months was more than 10% of the coverage about the president positive in tone.

    The chart below tells the whole story. Anita Perry may think her husband has been “brutalized” over the past few weeks, but the numbers tell a different story. Rick Perry is actually the media’s golden boy.

    …yeah.

    Left-wing media.

    Sure.

  59. 59

    Cain Taxes Slam Middle Class

    An AOL News analysis shows the Koch Kandidate’s “999” tax scheme would clobber middle class families. Although a median household family would save $2,620 in income taxes, it would pay $4,316 in federal sales taxes, for a net increase in its annual federal tax bill of $1,696 — an increase of 17.7%. The poorer you are, the worse off you would be.

    But perhaps the most pernicious — and overlooked — aspect of the Koch Tax Scheme is that it doesn’t allow corporations to deduct employee salaries and wages. This would create a powerful incentive to eliminate as many jobs as possible and reduce wages of remaining employees. As a side note, this wouldn’t have much impact on capital-intensive, low-labor industries such as energy production and energy pipelines — which happens to be the business the Koch brothers are in.

    Oh, and btw, the Koch Kandidate opposes minimum wage laws.

    http://www.dailyfinance.com/20.....or-your-w/

  61. 61

    Gays may be able to marry and serve openly in the military, but walking down the street not so much.

    Late Friday night a man, Danny Hawkins, was brutally assaulted in Downtown Spokane for what witnesses say was based on his sexuality. A witness also stated that the Spokane Police Department accused Danny of starting the fight. The details of the investigation are unknown to me at this time, however I will update as information becomes available to me.
    http://spovangelist.com/one-st.....teps-back/

  62. 62

    We have a potential new nomination for Jerk of the Year Award.

    Randy Bernard was named CEO of Indy Racing in Feb. 2010. His job was to make it competitive with it’s more profitable cousin, NASCAR. So he made no bones about it when changes were instituted to make it more dangerous – in fact, he bragged about it. He wanted people showing up at races, and tuning in on TV, with the hope of watching some spectacular crashes.

    So he increased the numbers of cars in the field, ensuring more mix-ups as cars jockeyed for position. And he instituted a line-abreast re-start after yellow flags, ensuring that a minimu of five cars would all be vying for the same spot on the track at the first curve after the caution flag is lifted.

    Of course, what he ignored was that Indy Cars are already inherently more dangerous than stock cars. They have exposed wheels and open cockpits. What might must be a “bump” in a Nascar race would turn into both cars being out of control once the exposed wheels touch.

    Yea, racing is a dangerous sport. But it’s a lot more dangerous than it has to be when some idiot is intentionally risking lives in order to make more money.

    Hey, why not have football fields converted into mine fields for teams that would otherwise have low TV ratings? Now THAT would spice up the ratings!

  63. 63

    Yet another lying, cheating DEMOCRAT bastard gets busted!

    An Indiana prosecutor has opened an investigation into claims that hundreds of signatures were faked on petitions for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the state’s 2008 presidential primary, as the chairman of the St. Joseph County Democratic Party resigned amid the scandal.
    Despite calls for a federal investigation, St. Joseph County Prosecuting Attorney Michael Dvorak said in a statement that the U.S. attorney for the region would not investigate claims regarding petition fraud. Dvorak instead has opened a probe of the allegations and issued a request that the Indiana State Police assist in the investigation.

    The announcement comes after the local Democratic party chairman, Butch Morgan, announced his resignation in a statement Monday, saying, “After consulting with the Indiana Democratic State Party, I am stepping down as chairman of the St. Joseph County Democratic Party and as chairman of the Second District Democratic Party, effective today.”

    Lying bastard.
    Just another “fleabagger” in a suit.

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