– Mitt Romney is a terrible person.
– The Stranger’s endorsements.
– You guys, the anti car tabs people are totally grassroots.
– a dangerous, hypersexual, unhealthy, emotional, and enraged mass of unmarried drama.
Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!
The lies flew thicker than at a used car salesmen’s convention in last night’s GOP debate. Not surprisingly, the biggest whopper came from the Koch Brothers’ embedded candidate:
“HERMAN CAIN: ‘It does not raise taxes on those that are making the least.’
“THE FACTS: … The Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank, said Cain’s plan would increase taxes on 84 percent of U.S. households, hitting low- and medium-income households the hardest. The analysis said that households making $10,000 to $20,000 would see whopping tax increases averaging $2,705 — an increase of nearly 950 percent. The rich, however, would get big tax cuts, the analysis said.”
Here’s Mittens’ fudge:
“MITT ROMNEY: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever hired an illegal in my life.’
“THE FACTS: The truth is that Romney … never directly hired an illegal immigrant. But he hired a landscaping company that employed them.”
And Rick Perry managed to outwaffle Mittens:
PERRY: ‘ … I wasn’t for TARP ….’
“THE FACTS: In October 2008, Perry appeared to be both for and against the Troubled Asset Relief Program in the same week.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44.....sion_2012/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: How can you tell a Republican is lying? Easy, his lips are moving.
I just wandered by the zoo – er, Sound Politics – and one of the inmates had this to say:
Seattle Times, leftist mouthpiece?
It is not possible to have a conversation with delusional people.
How did we get here? When did the notion of shared reality die? Where did this nation-wide psychosis afflicting – what? 10-20-30% of the populace – begin? Have they always been nuts and just now have more voice? Was there a latent nuttiness that was stoked and nurtured? How does this sort of thing come about? Is it similar elsewhere?
Carl, I’ve been here longer than you. People look up to me as the leader of the blog. I have gravitas. So I have a word of advice for you. BE YOUR OWN FUCKING MAN! It’s like you are imitating Goldy. You are doing the same kind of pieces that he did. YOU GOT THE JOB! Be creative. Find your own voice. Did Goldy tell you to write in his exact style and cover the pieces he would cover in the exact same way? If he did, that’s pathetic.
Carl, I have a question for you. If at a tea-party protest, one protester raped another, would you post about it here?
I believe the answer is yes, you would.
Well … that actually happened in Cleveland, at an Occupy protest. An Occupy protester raped another in her tent.
Why aren’t you covering it?
http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/.....was-raped/
An early picture of Romney is rather revealing…
Mitt Romney – the early years
@2
Channel 5 is part of Dallas based Belo Corp, who tend to be pretty far right. I don’t have a tele, so I don’t know about their local news, but I have a hard time imagining that it’s part of the left.
Troll @ 3:
Depends. What screen names have you been using previously?
All two of them. And one of them is probably using two screen names.
This is too funny, I’ve got to stop here before I cough up coffee all over my shirt.
Hint: Anyone who has to proclaim that he is popular or has gravitas – isn’t, and doesn’t. That’s something other people proclaim for or about him. The fact that nobody else here is making those claims is self-explanatory.
Just in time for the Wall Street protests:
What does the average guy get after working eight years on a job, only to have the company bought out by another one?
A layoff notice.
What does the CEO get?
A goodbye present worth 95 million dollars.
Douglas Foshee, El Paso CEO, To Get $95 Million Exit Package
troll-
The fleabaggers are also stealing each other stuff. It’s hysterical. They are running around screaming for the government to steal from rich folks…while someone is jacking their I-phone!
They can afford an I-phone! Perhaps the guy who jacked it couldn’t. So he is entitled to take it from the more well-healed fleabagger.
Funny how that works.
@10
What is most revealing to me about all these rapes and thefts and gun-totin’ that’s going on at the Occupy protests is this blog’s silence about it. Goldy&Co day after day decried the tea party protest whenever a gun or angry sign was spotted. Now this blog is silent when the same kinds of stuff is happening at the Occupy protests.
It makes HA lose credibility in my mind. It tells me they are hypocrites. I have no respect for the bloggers here.
@2 I suspect that it’s always had a grip on a significant percentage of the population. Now they’re no longer limited to printing newsletters, or reading old Regnery hate-books. In the last fifteen years or so their ability to find each other has increased exponentially thanks to the internet. They’re easily manipulated and seem to be increasingly used as pawns by some of the elite and powerful. Throw in corporatist-owned media lackeys, and it’s in our face more. It only seems like there must be more of them. They were once in the woodwork where they belonged, dwelling in the backwaters of society, but that’s all changed now.
Fine. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
You seem to be suffering under the misapprehension that anyone here cares what you think.
Let me disabuse you of that hallucination – STFU, asshole.
re 2: While watching a movie about the fall of Nixon, Nixon said to one of his confederates: “A third of the people will believe anything we tell them, but what will we do about the rest?” Then there was some discussion of the term ‘stonewalling’.
troll-
Ummm, you are assuming HA has ever had any credibility to lose. I hope the fleabaggers keep up the bad work. They are turning off working Americans. I suspect we will soon see more detailed stories about the spoiled, elitist backgrounds of many of these fleabag “leaders”. They have their share of mommy & daddy’s corporate wealth, freely use it for education and pleasure..then complain about it without ever connecting their own dots about how they got all the cool stuff they covet.
When a fleabagger opens his/her/it’s mouth on the camera, they are fair game for the media that is always right. You know Andrew Breitbart has people on the inside. Can’t wait to see the video’s and bios of these fleabaggers.
re 3: “I have gravitas.”
Is that the disease where you can’t keep your eyelids open? You know — like Aristotle Onasis?
re 16: “They are turning off working Americans.”
There’s a lot fewer of those since their boy Bush/Cheney worked his magic.
@8
Hint: you’re talking to a troll named Troll, he probably know that.
Which explains why the protests keep growing and spreading.
Overturning Citizen’s United and prosecuting Wall Street folks that broke the law is stealing from the rich? I did not know this.
Support my initiative that will allow 33 1/3% of the voters or the Legislature to pass ANYTHING. I mean, if the minority can legislate negatively, why not positively?
It will be on the ballot in 2012. Getting signatures will be easy since everybody who feels they hold unpopular or “not mainstream” opinions will sign up. When was the last time you talked to somebody who proudly told you they are ‘mainstream’?
Let the fun begin.
They are running around screaming for the government to steal from rich folks
So it’s a crime to steal back what was stolen from you first? Let me think about that one.
Btw, if you’re headed to Ohio you might want to pack a .45-70 or .444 with you.
What are the odds that the Troll and the fleabagger are one and the same?
Hey Troll, you slimy piece of shit, how much does it pay to be a Koch Whore?
Let’s take another look at the El Paso CEO, Douglas Foshee, who will be getting $95 million severence package from the company that’s buying El Paso.
1. Invested at a very modest 3% return on investment, that’s $237,500 per month, or $1,381.00 per hour, for doing absolutely nothing.
2. Compare that with the Wingnut philosophy parroted here that the unemployed don’t deserve the measly benefits they receive, even though they paid the premiums for that insurance. Compare it also to the anti-union rhetoric that union workers are “lazy” and don’t deserve $25.00 per hour or more for their skilled labor.
3. At least this guy isn’t being ousted for fouling up his company. But that’s not necessarily a perogative, as the golden-parachute enriched CEO’s of any number of companies over the past few years have proven. All that’s really necessary is to be “part of the club” consisting of inter-locking members of the board of directors of big companies. They all understand that by being generous with the company’s money to ousted CEO’s, they will get the same treatment if they are ousted by their own boards.
4. Why hasn’t there been more attention paid to the fact that there is an inherent conflict of interest when the CEO of company gets paid a huge bonus by the company which acquires it? The CEO is the principle person behind negotiating the deal, is he not? Isn’t he essentially being bribed to take the deal, and doesn’t that money really belong to the stockholders of the acquired company?
5. Herman Cain says that if people aren’t rich it’s their own fault. Of course, if the average working family (usually two jobs) were to save their entire paycheck, they would need 1,900 years to equal this CEO’s bonus for only eight years of work. And that assumes no inflation.
I’ve seen runny shit out of a cow with bad diarrhea that was more upstanding than the Troll.
@28
Troll’s, a troll aping a troll. It’s all very meta and quite funny that people don’t get it.
I guess being opposed to this:
Is stealing from the rich.
The 9-9-9 plan
Even Bachmann said turn the 9-9-9 plan up side down if you want an accurate picture. (That’s 666 for you fucking ignorant trolls.)
If a 1%er wants to shift the tax burden on to the poor, that is a good thing. If any of the 99%ers object that is class warfare.
Hey, remember when in 2008 the economy collapsed because President Carter signed a law 30 years earlier and Congressman Barney Franks hypnotized the Republican majority with gay voodoo in the House preventing them from stopping the economic collapse? Neither do I!
Now likely Republican presidential nominee, Mittens, tells us
Pure genius!
But wait! What have we here?
Know who the Governor of Massachusetts was in 2006?
It was the guy who said this about #OWS “I think it’s dangerous, this class warfare,”
@2 I wonder if there’s a correlation between their kind of nuttiness and the kind of nuttiness that goes into a beauty salon and shoots not only the ex-wife but also eight others who had nothing to do with the child custody fight.
Doctors and lawyers can be sued for malpractice. So why shouldn’t CEOs be sued for malpractice?
@32 “One is, don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom,”
Does that also apply to fraudulent foreclosures against people who don’t owe a mortgage?
Case #1: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/.....olner.html
Case #2: http://www.tampabay.com/news/b.....or/1072632
Case #3: http://www.consumeraffairs.com.....abird.html
Case #4: http://dallasdirt.dmagazine.co.....reclosure/
Case #5: http://galvestondailynews.com/.....1bebbf31e1
And anyone who believes Bank of Assholes* respects court judgments should read this:
“[A]fter buying the single-story, 2,700-square-foot home from Bank of America for $165,000, the Nyergeses never thought they’d hear from the bank again — let alone to receive a foreclosure notice just one year later, in 2010. …
“Bank of America mistakenly filed a foreclosure claim against the couple despite the absence of a mortgage, prompting the Nyergeses to take the matter to court. …
“A Collier County judge ruled the bank should pay, but the bank never did. On Friday, Maureen Nyerges and the couple’s attorney, along with two sheriff’s deputies and moving company employees, went to a local Bank of America branch to take possession of furniture inside the bank to settle the debt.”
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011.....sure-case/
* Mrs. Rabbit came up with “Bank of Asshole”
Guns Don’t Kill People Dep’t
Picture an upscale suburb of million-dollar homes. Visualize a 4-bedroom blue-gray Colonial where lives a family consisting of a lawyer, a bank vice president, and their two kids, a 10-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy. The veritable image of the American Dream, right?
Now visualize yellow police tape, cops shooing away curious onlookers, and a medical examiner’s truck hauling away four dead bodies.
The couple were getting a divorce. It appears dad shot his family, then himself.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44.....nd_courts/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: We all know guns don’t kill people. They’re inert objects that sit on a closet shelf until some deranged human takes them down, puts bullets in them, and them pulls the trigger. Maybe these deranged humans wouldn’t kill so many people if they didn’t have easy access to guns. But we’ll probably never know because Wisconsin’s GOP legislators think anyone should be able to get a gun without a background check and carrying it anywhere without a permit.
This dipshit won’t answer a simple question.
Typical asshole troll.
Mitt Romney’s recommendation to the American people in 2011Andrew W. Mellon’s advice to President Hoover in 1930.
@39 Sounds eerily similar to “liquidate the Jews” …
Roger Rabbit Quiz
Off the top of your head, most of Steve Jobs’ wealth was his stock in:
[ ] 1. Apple
[ ] 2. Disney
[ ] 3. IBM
[ ] 4. Microsoft
No looking! Hint: At least one of these answers is a throwaway.
Another great Chris Hedges endorsement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj8UlxhfJLw
@27 “All that’s really necessary is to be “part of the club” consisting of inter-locking members of the board of directors of big companies.”
Those corporate boards are more inbred than a teabagger’s family. There was a site that I once had bookmarked that showed the inbreeding between corporate boards and how the CEO of one board was a member of other boards, creating an environment where all these exalted, job-creating Galtian warriors could vote for each other’s high salaries, huge bonuses and lucrative golden parachutes.
@40 Probably Microsoft. Didn’t Microsoft money bail out Apple at one point in the 1980’s? Perhaps Jobs ended up with a lot of MS stock.
Cain’s 9-9-9 Is Stepping Stone To 30% Federal Sales Tax
The Economist, a conservative pro-business (but reasonably objective) U.K.-based news/opinion magazine, deepens our understanding of the Koch-embedded candidate’s tax scheme by adding another layer to it:
“Anyway, the 9-9-9 plan is not what Mr Cain ultimately has in mind for American tax policy. It is but the first step of a two-step process to replace most federal taxes with a 30% national sales tax, a version of the so-called ‘Fair Tax’. Why not go directly to the Fair Tax, then? Why the transitional step? Mr Cain’s statement doesn’t really say, though it does seem to imply that the Fair Tax is at present too unpopular to implement. ‘Amidst a backdrop of the economic renewal created by the 9-9-9 Plan,’ Mr Cain says ‘I will begin the process of educating the American people on the benefits of continuing the next step to the Fair Tax.’
“Mike Huckabee … plumped for the Fair Tax during the 2008 race for the Republican nomination and the plan came in for a lot of abuse by economists and commentators across the ideological continuum. Perhaps Mr Huckabee’s failure to get far with the Fair Tax explains Mr Cain’s choice to campaign on an altogether different tax plan. Perhaps the idea is that he can capture the allegiance of the Fair Tax’s many conservative fans while ducking the criticisms of the Fair Tax by pushing a fresh plan with a catchy name implying super-low rates. But this can only work if (a) the media and Mr Cain’s competition let him get away with advocating the Fair Tax while running on his transitional plan, and (b) the transitional plan stands up to scrutiny better than the Fair Tax has. And this seems unlikely. …
“[T]he fact that Mr Cain apparently believes it is politically feasible to wipe out the entire status-quo federal tax system in order to move to the 9-9-9 scheme, and then wipe out the entire 9-9-9 scheme in order move to a 30% national sales tax seems to me to draw attention to Mr Cain’s policy inexperience and dazzling political naivete. …
“Why would you propose to raise taxes on the poor, making yourself vulnerable to charges of monstrous callousness, when … your ultimate plan would only cut them later? Well, you wouldn’t, if you knew what you were doing. It requires only superficial examination to see that Mr Cain’s 9-9-9/Fair Tax scheme is more an ill-considered, hand-waving improvisation than a serious plan from a serious policymaker. He’s winging it ….”
http://www.economist.com/blogs.....erman-cain
Roger Rabbit Commentary: So there you have it: 9-9-9 is a bridge to the hyper-regressive so-called “Fair Tax” that imposes a 30% federal sales tax on top of existing state and local sales taxes so the rich don’t have to pay any taxes at all on their salaries, commissions, bonuses, stock options, capital gains, dividends, and interest.
@44 Any more takers for the quiz @41?
@40
Disney. Jobs bought Pixar from Lucas Films. Disney bought Pixar from Jobs. Not sure if Jobs was the soul owner of Pixar when Disney bought it.
Hey Rog, check this out. On the surface it looks like an OK deal for folks and like Citigroup’s being held accountable. Am I missing something?
@47 Jobs bought Pixar from George Lucas for $10 million and sold it to Disney for $7.4 billion of stock. I’m waiting for an opportunity to buy Disney shares cheap when Jobs’ massive holding gets dumped on the market. His death also created a job opportunity: His seat on Disney’s board of directors is vacant.
In contrast to his 138 million shares of Disney (worth about $4.63 billion), Jobs owned “only” 5.4 million shares of Apple (worth about $2.6 billion).
A tidy little profit!
Well yay.
Inquiring minds want to know…
Who owns my mortgage? And can they prove it?
More to the point, if they can’t prove it should I be giving them money until they do prove it? Should any of us be giving them money? After all, it may turn out someone else is the true owner of the mortgage and the way the 1%ers are working the system we won’t be getting any credit for having paid the wrong party even though it was in good faith.
Specifically, how about suing those Boeing execs who delayed the 787 for 7 years while they tried to illegally break the unions. That has got to have cost the almighty stock holders a lot of capital gains.
I heard Jobs had a big position in Disney..
Microsoft is the throwaway…
And Jobs sold all his Apple stock soon after he was fired by Sculley and the Apple board back in the eighties.
He may have gotten Apple stock in return for Apple buying Next.. Probably more and more of it as Apple did better and better like any executive in many industries are rewarded these days.
ooops. answered in 48..
@48 Yeah, you’re missing something. Citigroup sold a toxic security to innocent investors. According to the article you quote,
“The derivative securities lost value remarkably fast. After the deal closed on Feb. 28, 2007, more than 80 percent of the portfolio was downgraded by credit-rating agencies in less than nine months. The security declared ‘an event of default’ on Nov. 19, 2007, and investors eventually lost hundreds of millions of dollars, the S.E.C. said.”
If the investors lost “hundreds of millions,” a $285 million settlement won’t make them whole. They’re not been compensated for their full loss. That’s because Citigroup is only being required to disgorge its dishonest profits and pay a penalty. Citigroup is getting out of this litigation without paying anything to the victims of a toxic security for misrepresenting the security as safe.
@52 More lawsuits against banks. If an innocent purchaser of a foreclosed property loses title because the bank didn’t handle the foreclosure properly and misrepresented the validity of the title, not only the rightful owner of the “foreclosed” property but also the buyer has a legal claim against the bank.
@54
So, more of the same old bullshit. How depressing.
@54 “I heard Jobs had a big position in Disney. Microsoft is the throwaway…”
It’s a trick question, of course, so everyone should have guessed Apple is the throwaway. Why would Jobs own IBM or Microsoft? That leaves Disney, even if you know nothing about Pixar.
@57 It could have been worse. If this lawsuit had been brought by a private class-action law firm, the lawyers would get a $100 million fee and the investors would get $10 each.
Stock investing is strictly caveat emptor. If the company turns out to be crooked, there’ll be a class-action lawsuit and the lawyers will make millions, but you’ll only get a token check. If you lose $10,000, you can expect a refund of $10 to $20 several years later. Keep that in mind when you consider buying a stock. There’s no substitute for doing your due diligence. The legal remedies available to shareholders are a joke.
@47:
Yep. 285 million is a rounding error compared to their profits and capitalization.
More importantly, no one went to jail.
Hey Roger, you’re posting too fast. You’re 1 number off. i.e. @54 should be @53. Other than that you’re spot on…
@58: It had nothing to do with stock. This a clear case of fraud: they sold crappy derivatives and bet against them.
Again, they got off with a fine. And no one went to jail.
Actually now that I think about it IBM is way more of a throwaway than Microsoft…
Microsoft who develops some of the biggest selling software for the MacIntosh line of products – well they sell a lot of Macs for Apple. One of the first things Jobs did when returning to Apple was to repair the relationship with Microsoft and Microsoft reciprocated with a 150 million dollar investment in Apple.
Microsoft reaps greater margins on Mac software than any of their PC products if I recall correctly.
@61
Yep. Reading a little more about it (that first article I posted was all I had seen) it sure looks like there should have been a few perp walks going down.
And they wonder why people are in the streets.
That it is.
@50 Yeah, Jobs made most of his fortune from movies, not computers. I wonder how many people know that?
@61 Actually, no. An extra comment popped up somewhere in the queue after I numbered my posts. It appears to have happened again after your comment @61. See, e.g., @44 and @64. Maybe some of the comments are being held up for moderation, I don’t know.
@4 – what do you expect from a Heterosexual!
@36 This sounds like the plot of a recent episode of Castle.
@25 And Pat Robertson stated today that he thinks God let the animals free “so they can hunt homosexuals down and bite them.”
@69
Just when you thought you’d heard it all…
@47 Oh, we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, folks…
It seems that Bank of America has quietly moved its entire portfolio of European derivatives from Merrill Lynch to its “depository arm”. Now, in theory, the approximately $1 trillion deposited in its’ customers’ checking and savings accounts are backing up $79 trillion in junk derivatives connected with the likes of the broke banks in Greece. If a significant amount of this financial offal were to go bust, the losses would far exceed the FDIC’s depositor-protection fund, and the only alternative would be for the Federal Reserve to print money by the barge load and hand it out to the victims–er, I mean the depositors.
Miscellaneous Economic News
There’s a lot of important economic news today, so don’t skip over this comment. Let’s start with this:
Student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44958852
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I actually picked up on this item several days ago; I don’t recall whether I posted a comment about it. Credit card debt is still rising, but student loan debt is rising much faster. Much of that is due to higher tuition bills resulting from defunding public support for higher education. Young people are told they need a degree to access the American Dream, but “the system” is delivering a nightmare: Out of school, deep in debt, and no job.
“It’s going to create a generation of wage slavery,” says Nick Pardini, a Villanova University graduate student in finance who has warned on a blog for investors that student loans are the next credit bubble — with borrowers, rather than lenders, as the losers.
Now you know why students are at the forefront of the Occupy movement; they’re the biggest losers under the cockamamie social and economic policys that have evolved under 30 years of Republican rule. Btw, here’s a secret: Trade apprenticeships are going begging and many of those union jobs pay better wages and benefits than a lot of college graduates now get. I’m a retired state lawyer, and the two retired union guys on my block (one was an Operating Engineer, the other a Boilermaker) have larger pensions and better benefits (i.e., union-paid health insurance; I pay $1,000 a month out of pocket for mine) than I do. I’m not saying all college students have been sold a bill of goods, but there needs to be some rethinking of whether college is the best option for everyone. And Republicans are dead wrong in opposing public investment in higher education; our nation can’t compete in the global economy if we don’t.
QE3 is coming.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44963251
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Quantitative easing props up stock prices (which mainly benefits the rich) but also drives up commodity prices, inflicting food and fuel inflation on consumers (i.e., the rest of us). That sucks. Meanwhile, QE2 did absolutely nothing for employment. I opposed QE2 and QE3 is a bad idea, too. Email the White House and tell them to tell Bernanke to stop this nonsense.
Taxing the rich isn’t just about money.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/P.....y-pay-more
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Under 30 years of Republican rule, the upper classes tore up the old social contract and rewrote it for their sole benefit. That isn’t going to stand much longer. We can either set things straight by negotiation, or by revolution. The choice is theirs.
Our standard of living is dropping like a dead bird.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44962589
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Conspicuous consumption by a few while the masses suffer pisses off the masses. See, e.g., Marie Antoinette and Nicholas II. See also:
“The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: An understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live,” Stiglitz wrote. “Throughout history, that is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44960983
As I’ve been saying for quite a while now, how do 1-percenters think the rest of us can support them in the style to which they’ve become accustomed if they continue outsourcing jobs, cutting wages, and eliminating benefits until everyone else is poor?
Houses are passe.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44960659
Roger Rabbit Commentary: In keeping with the times, the American Dream is being downsized from owning a home to being able to rent an apartment. Need I add that younger generations feel cheated out of their rightful share of the American pie?
There’s a school of thought that argues gloomy consumer sentiment is self-fulfilling and things will get better if we plaster every light pole and kiosk with smiley faces.
A hundred years ago, a similar line of thinking took the form that if you instilled enough spirit in soldiers they can overcome barbed wire and machine guns. The French generals called it “elan.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44955635
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Personally, I hedge my bets by assuming that gravity and mathematics work the same every time, therefore jumping off a cliff or buying into a falling stock market with a smile on your face are fool’s errands. But for those of you who, like Dorothy in Oz, want to click your heels together and believe, this is the money quote:
And for Roosevelt, confidence was rooted in fairness. “Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live,” he said.
Hey, did you guys know that Michelle Bachmann’s a mom?
Hiram Maxim, inventor of the machine gun, died a rich man with three wives and families.
Apparently he had no moral qualms about either trigamy or creating a means of killing millions of people.
@71
Lovely.
Some observations on the Occupy Wall Street movement by Lemony Snicket
Great Cartoon from 1948-
Enjoy
http://nationaljuggernaut.blog.....-1948.html
@72: I was going to add that but the piece of news we were discussing was plenty depressing in a years long stream. It makes me angry and weary…
It isn’t just BoA, and last total I saw was 157 Trillion.
For perspective on just how insane this all is, there’s something like 1.5 QUADrillion (1,500 Trillion) of leveraged paper sloshing around the world.
US GDP is ~15 Trillion, the entire world economy is ~45 Trillion.
Until the banksters are forced to take their losses, nothing will get better. As Roger pointed out, it’s that or revolution. I think fascist police state is right up there too.
Long Live OWS…
HaY evre budY koMe On doun an waiV yous sines aGanst duH evel zEonest JoOoOs aN pOops ond Kop kArs wid uS!
@75 Jesus Christ, those poor kids!
DANA LOESCH: “Any movement that protests for a living wage, regardless of whether or not you’re employed — employed, is the epitome of greed, No. 1.
To protest for a living wage is the epitome of greed?? Where the fuck do they find these people? And how is it that they’re not all in line for the fucking guillotine?
Qaddafi Reported Dead
News reports from Libya indicate ex-dictator Moammar Qaddafi has been captured and killed.
# 84: I’m still waiting on some definitive confirmation. Since 6:00 a.m., I’ve heard that (a) he was captured, (b) that he was killed by Libyan rebel forces, (c) that he was killed by NATO airstrike, (d) that he wasn’t captured or killed at all, (e) that he’s personally being pursued by Hillary Clinton.
Qaddafi IS DEAD!
The blood-soaked corpse pictures are floating about the inter-tubes as I write…
Put down by his own people. Too bad that couldn’t have happened to Saddam..
This country would be over a trillion dollars richer. We could use that money right now. We’ll have to settle for the Libyan oil. (Sorry asshat we don’t import iranian oil).
Certain right wing degenerates tore clumps of their hair out when Obama started lobbing missiles at the bum.. Only their favorite right wing politicians are supposed to do that.
Right now.. they are silent.
@85 If (e), he’s certainly dead by now. I can’t imagine any man being pursued by Hillary Clinton allowing himself to be taken alive.*
* Just kidding! This is a wingnut joke.
@86 Yeah, if the appeasement monkeys on the right had gotten their way, Qaddafi would still be slaughtering defenseless Libyan civilians with jets, helicopters, and tanks.
The latest wingnut appeaser is that sorry-ass drug abuser Lush Flimflam, who told the six people who still listen to him that Obama was attacking Christians by sending special forces to Africa to help finish off the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Apparently Flush didn’t get the memo that LRA goes around cutting off people’s heads.
88 – Roger didn’t you get the memo? 27 percent of this country is freaking batshit insane. Just look at our trolls. As long as that’s the case Flush Limpbone will have way more than just a half dozen listeners.
The right wing likes to draw out their wars into endless wars so the Treasury is looted to the benefit of right wing outfits to the greatest extent possible.
86 – Over a trillion dollars richer and over 4000 American lives greater. Over 100,000 Iraqi lives greater, over who know how many amputated limbs greater and on and on…
We should never forget the catastrophe this country and the world endured due to the insane madness of a dozen or so neo-cons.
Obama Strategy Taking Shape
We’re getting an early look at Obama’s re-election strategy, and for once, it appears Democrats are doing something that’s halfway intelligent.
They’re assuming Romney will be their opponent, and they’re planning to do to him what Bush and Rove did to Kerry. Democrats could do worse than steal from Rove’s playbook — a lot worse. It’s high time they did.
Here’s the backdrop. Back in 1994, Romney tried to unseat Ted Kennedy, and got savaged by Kennedy’s attack ads. The Kennedy people had done their homework and knew Romney is highly vulnerable. Fast-forward to 2012, and that vulnerability not only hasn’t gone away, but is even more formidable, because this election will be about jobs and that’s Romney’s greatest weakness. They’ll nail him for flip-flopping, too, but it’s the jobs issue that’s going to kill Romney’s chances. Here’s why:
“A key feature of the Obama strategy is Romney’s tenure as head of Bain Capital, a private equity firm he co-founded in 1984 that … sliced jobs … through cost-cutting and consolidation. … Sen. Edward Kennedy pulled away from Romney … by airing a series of ads that featured workers from an Indiana paper plant that Bain took over, laying off employees, cutting wages and reducing benefits. ‘Basically, he cut our throats,’ a worker said in one of the ads. …
“‘In his professional life, he was an expert in stripping down companies and leading them to bankruptcy and profiting from … a lot of jobs lost in the process,’ said Obama strategist David Axelrod …. ‘Whenever you’re running for president … and you represent yourself in a certain way … then you need to be able to stand by your record,’ Axelrod added in an interview. ‘It was problematic for him then; it will be problematic for him now.’
Republicans concede that Romney could be vulnerable. … Michael Dennehy, a New Hampshire-based Republican strategist, said he remembers Kennedy’s anti-Romney ads as being ‘just brutal and very, very effective.'”
Although Romney’s business record as a job destroyer and predatory downsizer is his key vulnerability, Democrats will also use the flip-flopper strategy that Bush and Rove deployed against Kerry.
“For now, the Obama camp is focusing on portraying Romney as a finger-to-the-wind politician who changes his convictions to meet the political circumstances. …
“‘I will give him this, he is as vehement and as strong in his convictions when he takes one position as he is when he takes a diametrically opposite view,’ Axelrod said last week. On Wednesday, Axelrod pounced again, declaring on CBS that Romney appeared to have ‘no core to him.'”
These attacks on Romney aren’t manufactured. They don’t have to be. They have substance. Even in the GOP debates, where the candidates have generally tried to avoid destroying each other in order to maintain a solid front against Obama, Romney has been attacked:
“During a debate last week, Huntsman described Romney as ‘somebody who breaks down businesses, destroys jobs as opposed to creating jobs and opportunity, leveraging up, spinning off, enriching shareholders.’
“‘The whole discussion around this campaign is going to be job creation — how can you win that debate given your background?’ Huntsman asked him.”
Indeed.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44973221/ns/politics/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Here’s the big picture. Bachmann is all but knocked out of the race; she has no campaign manager or money. Huntsman, Gingrich, and Santorum were never in the race. Paul is the Harold Stassen moment. Cain is a curio. Perry is remarkably weak and inept as a candidate. Thus, Romney will be the nominee by default, simply because there is no one else.
The 2012 presidential election will be all about the economy and jobs. Romney has to run on his business credentials, but can’t escape the fact he got rich by preying on companies and destroying jobs. He will also be presented to voters as the candidate who is being bankrolled by Wall Street, which is universally despised on both sides of the political divide.
Voters are certain to be extremely disgruntled next year — Republicans loathe Obama and Democrats are fed up with him — but the majority will re-elect him, simply because there is no replacement available. Our party system funnels voters’ options down to a choice of only two candidates, and when one of them is a disliked incumbent and the other is a distrusted waffler, voters will settle for the known evil every time.
And the four years that follow are going to be unpleasant for everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike.
@85
Looks like they captured him and he was taken out and shot. I generally don’t support shooting people who aren’t shooting at you, but I can’t say I blame them for offing the the guy.
And now it looks like he was wounded in a fire fight and died of his wounds after capture. Well, either way he’s dead.
Maybe he’s not dead. Maybe Qaddafi’s alive & well & sharing an apartment in Mexico City with Osama bin Laden & Elvis.
@90 You don’t truly appreciate what it means to die in a war at age 19 or 21 until you’ve lived a full life and thus are able to look back on how much they lost by dying young.
To die in an unnecessary (Iraq) or fruitless (Vietnam) war makes it even worse.
Until now, we’ve punished politicians who make such misjudgments only through “the judgment of history.” I think they care about their “legacy” — who wants to be remembered as a bad president? — but that hasn’t been enough to deter duplicitous (Nixon) and clumsy leaders (LBJ, Dubya).
Then there are those who are simply criminals — dictators, conquerors, colonialists, imperialists, etc. There has been no shortage of these in history, so whatever deterrents exist, they aren’t working.
Hanging Nazi criminals was a step in the right direction. So was killing Mussolini, Ceaușescu, Saddam and his sons, and now Qaddafi, after they fell from power. One hopes Syria’s Assad will be next; that guy not only should be ejected from power, he shouldn’t survive. Milosevicz deserved to die in a concrete prison cell; Hitler deserved the bullet in his head by his own hand. One of the greatest shames of history is that Stalin died in bed of natural causes; no one in all of human history deserved a noose or firing squad (or burning at the stake) more than he. More minor historical tragedies are that justice never caught up with Idi Amin or Pol Pot. A bright spot in history is that Mossad did catch up with Eichman and he stretched a rope in an Israeli jail even though Israel has no death penalty. (Sometimes, you simply improvise.)
I know some of my liberal friends are against the death penalty in all circumstances. There are exceptions to everything. In my view, some people simply deserve to be dead. But beyond that, if the decent elements of humanity make a systematic practice of killing despots and military thugs who employ state power to commit mass murder, maybe we would have less state-sanctioned mass murder in this world. It’ll never stop as long as those who kill to seize power and exploit human populations for personal gain are allowed to retire to luxurious seaside villas amply supplied with liquor and generously staffed with dancing girls. We’ve got to take the profit out of mass murder in order to deter would-be mass murderers from practicing their trade. Killing Qaddafi is a good thing. Now they should drag his dead body through the streets so the whole world can see what happens to guys like him.
Torturing people, whether they’re enemy combatants or not, violates U.S. laws and international treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory.
Anyone who thinks Cheney and Shrub didn’t commit crimes has his head up his heads.
It’s ridiculous that we’re sheltering them from criminal prosecution before international tribunals and civil lawsuits in our domestic courts.
CIA agents who participated in kidnappings, renditions, and torture of innocent people also should be prosecuted, regardless of whether they acted under authorization or orders from above. No one is required to work for the CIA. That’s a voluntary activity. If they were given such orders, they had the option to resign.
@95 Or acting as sperm donors for research purposes on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri.
The latest news from Libya is that Qaddafi was taken alive and then killed, and one of his sons perished with him:
“Moammar Gadhafi … was seen on Arab television pinned against a car, being struck on the head with a pistol while a group of fighters manhandled him.
“Video footage showed Gadhafi, dazed and bloodied but still clearly alive and gesturing … as he was dragged from a truck by jostling government soldiers who hit him and pulled his hair.
“He then appeared to fall to the ground and was enveloped by the crowd. NTC officials later announced Gadhafi had died of his wounds after capture.
One of Gadhafi’s sons, Muatassim, also was killed and had been hiding with his father, Libya’s interim government information minister told Reuters.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44....._n_africa/
NBC says Qaddafi was shot in the stomach in the course of a gunfight with rebels, and there are conflicting reports about whether he was executed or died from his wounds after being captured.
@86 Who the hell would want to look at Qa-Daffy’s corpse? He was ugly enough when he was alive.
“Since May 1, U.S. intelligence and special operations forces, or foreign forces working with U.S. intelligence and special operations forces, have killed the leading terrorists who targeted and killed more Americans than any others in the past 25 years. Not only did the U.S. kill Osama Bin Laden on May 1, but also took out … three of the jihadists they had identified as potential successors to bin Laden …. Also, Somali forces loyal to the U.S. killed the mastermind of al-Qaida’s East Africa embassy bombings … the group’s deadliest attack before 9-11.”
Here’s the Obama administration’s score:
“May 1: Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. Special Forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
“June 3: Ilyas Kashmiri, senior al-Qaida member and one of the five potential successors to al-Qaida leadership, is killed by a drone attack in Ghwakhwa area of South Waziristan, Pakistan.
“June 8: Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, al-Qaida leader in East Africa and the mastermind of the East Africa embassy bombings was shot dead by Somali forces at a checkpoint in the capital. He was identified by a wanted poster provided by the U.S. military.
“August 22: Attiyah Abd al-Rahman, newly minted No. 2 in al-Qaida, is killed by drone attack in North Waziristan. Attiyah was also seen by the CIA as potential successor to bin Laden and had served as bin Laden’s “chief of staff” prior to the May 1 attack.
“September 30: Anwar al-Awlaki, operational leader in al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, is killed by drone attack in Yemen’s al-Jawf province. He, too, had been identified as a potential successor to bin Laden.
“October 20: Moammar Gadhafi, Libya’s leader for 42 years, was killed in a gun fight by Libyan rebels near Sirte.”
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.c.....w-are-dead
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I simply want to gently remind people that the Busheviks had 8 years to get these people, and got none of them. Obama got all of them, and he’s been in office less than 3 years.
The next time a Republican tries to tell you that Obama is weak on defense or coddles terrorists, tell him he’s full of shit.
On the domestic front, Rick Perry is trying to improvise a tax policy. Here’s his latest lash-up:
“It starts with … scrapping the three million words of the current tax code, starting over with something simple: A flat tax.”
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....nomic-plan
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Good luck with that. This proposal only addresses tax rates. It doesn’t even address defining taxable income or deciding who gets what exclusions, exemptions, deductions, or credits.
The rate structure is the least complicated part of the tax code. Compressing the existing rates to a single rate will save the average taxpayer zilch time and effort in preparing his tax return, because variable rates are built into the tax tables everyone looks at when filling in the “enter tax” line of his 1040 form. It’s all the lines that come before and after that one, and the ancillary forms and schedules, that make the 1040 process difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating.
The single-rate flat tax championed by conservatives doesn’t simplify tax filing. It has only one purpose, and that is to cut taxes for the rich.
Cain Calls Social Security Racist and Immoral
Herman Cain, the Koch-embedded candidate, called Social Security “immoral” and “oppressive” and said it racially discriminates against blacks.
That ought to sit real well with senior voters and retired black people living on their Social Security checks.
Here’s the future of Cain’s presidential bid:
“In a February NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, only 22% said it would be acceptable to cut it as a way to reduce the federal budget deficit, while 77% said it would not be acceptable. In the most recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, 64% disagreed with the comparison of the retirement program to a Ponzi Scheme.”
Looks like Cain is determined to knock his poll standings down to Gingrich’s level.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....-fountains
# 105: I read that article earlier today. It seems that Cain’s rationale is that since white women live longer than black men, then black men are subsidizing the retirement for white women, and is therefore racist.
What he forgets, however, is that those same actuarial tables, when combined with economic variables, demonstrate that black men are more likely to rely upon social security for most of their retirement income than white women.
So Cain’s “solution” – elimination or privitization of the safety net provided by Social Security – would disproportiately endanger the retirement income of blacks on a much larger degree than by the fact that white women live longer than black men.
And he ignores completely the much simpler, more beneficial solution – solve the problems which contribute to the lower life expectancy of black men.
Get educated on the environmental disaster in the making that is hydraulic fracturing:
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
Thankfully here in WA State we have no shale basins to be fracked. 34 states do and it’s terrible what’s being done.
@107 I once read in a book that core samples taken in the Pacific Northwest showed our region never had the geologic conditions necessary to the formation of oil and gas. This means there will never be any further exploratory drilling here.
Man I love to watch Republicans eat each other! =:-D<
"If the … debate in Las Vegas was any indication, the coming months on the campaign trail are likely to be nasty between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. …
"While elections often bring out barbs and negative attacks, the animosity is real, observers say.
"'Oh, they don't get along,' said John Avlon, … author and expert on independent voters. 'They don't like each other.'"
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/20/.....?hpt=hp_t2
Anybody else notice how fresh and clean the air is here?
No puddypussy!
So how do our teabaggers stand on this?
Louisiana Makes It Illegal To Use Cash To Buy Used Goods
http://www.outsidethebeltway.c.....sed-goods/
Police state? Way to tax all transactions?
If you are not doing anything illegal, you don’t need cash?
# 110: Since the federal government mandates that it’s federal reserve notes are legal tender for all debts, public and private, this seems to go against that whole idea.
And you have to wonder how someone holding a yard sale is going to react when told they can only take checks, credit cards, or money orders.
No the air is very fetid. The dumb brick cinder block farted a few times.
I have been very busy lately rujax working on some very large projects. You know work; making money; capitalistic system.
Gotta Love Steve Jobs.
Yes he tells it like it is!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....22786.html
I knew it was too good to last.
Sigh.
puddypussy wants a medal…
Well, when Obama mentioned having a longer school year you righties flipped your wigs.
You point this stuff out as if we like Obama, when really he’s just the least objectionable option.
114 – Nice while it lasted.
The Montana “friendo” pastes the latest right wing bullshit talking points in ….
10..9..8..7..
Yes ButtPutty, we know.
When you show up, the air turns fetid.
When you leave, the air becomes fresh and clean again.
Ekim@119,
How would you know with your head up your goat’s ASS?
Notice it doesn’t matter Barack ObamAA+’s biggest cheerleader tells him almost on his deathbed that Barack ObamAA+ is screwing up to the HA moronic class.
Blind and guaranteed to stay that way!
Oh moronic rujax,
Some people work hard while others are hardly working. You are the latter moron!
Apache man! Can you dig it sucka?
@112 “I have been very busy lately rujax working on some very large projects.”
They gave you an intern? The intern must have pissed off one of the bosses.
@120 The goat meme belongs to us. Get your own fucking meme! If you can’t think of one, hire a consultant to help you.
@122 I don’t work at all. Why should I? What’s good about working? I’m a capitalist. I get paid for pushing electronic blips around in meaningless endless circles.
According the the conservative meme, the system is not rigged or broken and in need of reform, the people of the south are just the most lazy and need to try harder. The people in the south just want to be in poverty.
http://images1.dailykos.com/i/.....ty_map.jpg
So which Koch cock are you sucking?
Do you get paid extra to call it a large project?
“Oh, David, It’s so big!”
So ButtPutty, what do you enjoy more?
Koch or goat cock?
You know how the wingnuts here complain bitterly about how Washington State has an anti-business environment? We’ve already proven, by multiple studies published in business-oriented publications (Forbes, et al) that it’s all nonsense.
But the clearest sign of who wants to turn Washington into an anti-business state is when both Boeing management and it’s workers unions join forces to urge the rejection of Tim Eyman’s latest anti-transit, anti-road, anti-progress initiative.
Boeing has always complained that one of it’s biggest problems in this state is the difficulty in moving parts from one location to another in a reasonable amount of time. Eyman’s initiatives would pretty much make that a permanant problem, guaranteed only to get much worse. At a time when the State of Washington and several of it’s counties are working hard to prove that the new 737-MAX will be built here, it’s the equivilent of shooting oneself in the foot.
I get a kick out of the fleabagger wannabe’s wanting to give Obama and failing to acknowledge the over $1.1 Billion we spent chasing & killing him as well as failing to address what is next? Could it be even worse? Time will tell.
The Boeing Co. and the International Aerospace Machinists union, frequently at loggerheads, have come together in a new radio ad denouncing Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1125.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seat.....ose-eyman/
http://slog.thestranger.com/sl.....a-bad-idea
From a comment
Still, I posted this a while back, with my comments.
I get a kick out of MORONS like this who forget that Bush started an immoral an ILLEGAL war that will end up costing the US THREE TRILION DOLLARS.
This clown @131 is exactly as stupid as he sounds.
Not sucking any cock! You on the other hand must be drinking the male juice!
Why are you discussing someone’s buttocks? Wait… I get it! You are looking for the hershey highway!
Pfffffffft……. You don’t use it correctly. So I improve upon it!
That’s why White Tea Party People like Herman Cain. They know morons like you are idiots!