HorsesAss.Org

Open Thread 10/5

by — ,

– I’ve been riveted to the #occupyseattle thread. Looks like no arrests last night.

– People who point out that it’s bad to use racist language to name places are the real racists.

– Wow, Politico needs to get out more.

– Conservatives frequently claim that casual sex is bad for young women, but this study makes a persuasive case that what’s actually bad is the judgment of casual sex. Women may enjoy hooking up just as much as dudes — and college students understand this. But the stigma against women’s sexuality means having casual sex with someone you later date can cause power imbalances down the line.

– One of you must have stepped on a butterfly or something.

Comments

  2. 2

    RealClearPolitics shows Obama at -8.3%. All the polls listed have Obama between -7 and -13…except CBS has it a tie. I guess you can Hope CBS’s poll won’t change.
    Anyway, here it is http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....-1044.html

    Oh and Obama’s Strong Approval is at 19% and Strong Disapproval is at 43%. And Obama & his regime members like Samuel Jackson, Morgan Freeman are out screaming racism charges against Allen West, Herman Cain and other Black Tea Partiers. And Class Warfare drums are being thumped. I’m sure this will help Obama appeal to Independents..NOT!

  3. 3

    YLB–
    The Huffpo post is ludicrous. Nowhere does it say the government should be the arbiter of wealth redistribution. It’s up to each of us.
    Since you are dependent on your wife to feed you and your family, you may need to ask her to increase your allowance so you can personally give more. The Great Commission YLB. Good for you. Spread the Gospel.

  4. 4

    3 – zzzzzZZZzzzzzz.. Is that all you got KLOWN “friendo”????

    Wait a sec – I thought Government is people (by the people for the people) just like the hapless nitwit Romney said corporations are people. What’s the diff?

    And tell that BULLSHIT to your tea bagger friendos who want the “socialists” to keep their grubby mitts off their social security and medicare.

    I’m going to be here Nov 2012 – count on it.

    How’s that Obamacare doing killing jobs in North Dakota?

    Or socialist Vermont who wants to be like Canada for that matter – unemployment LOWER than “Gawd’s Country – MONTANA”???

    Gee how’s single payer healthcare killing jobs in socialist Sodom and Gomorrah North – Canada?? Last I looked their unemployment was much lower than here.

    Face it friendo – your views stink and they don’t hold up to reason. That’s my standard. Your standard is batshit insane and many countries have been known to go that path in their history. Yes, it can happen here.

    And fools like you are trying with every fiber of their being to make it happen.

    Fine. Have at it. You’ve got only one life and you’ve made your choices.

  5. 5

    Hey friendo the KLOWN,

    You’re a peacenik it seems.

    Here every day in the comment threads you wage “class peace”..

    i.e. your agenda is more tax cuts for the “job creators”…

    And these poor sacks…

    http://patrioticmillionaires.org/

    Well those are “self-loathing” job creators right?? Kind of like those jewish folks like Max Blumenthal who have the temerity to criticize the policies of the government of Israel.

  6. 6

    http://2012.talkingpointsmemo......hp?ref=fpb

    TPM2012
    Fox News Boss: I Hired Palin Because She Was ‘Hot And Got Ratings’

    Josh Petri- October 5, 2011, 11:11 AM 385242

    In a rare interview with a non-Fox reporter, Roger Ailes made a shocking declaration while defending himself from accusations that his Fox News network was anything but “fair and balanced.”

    Speaking to The Associated Press, Ailes argued that he hired Sarah Palin not to promote a political agenda, but “because she was hot and got ratings.”

    The interview was intended to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the controversial news network, which Ailes founded with the intention of challenging CNN back in 1996.

    Wait…It wasn’t for her “smarts”???

  7. 7

    I just read that 10 THOUSAND baby boomers turn 65 each day now.

    Heh. 10k new “socialists” who gladly draw on Social Security and Medicare benefits to help them survive from day to day after a lifetime of struggle.

    Some of them of course are tea baggers who scream at the “socialists” to keep their grubby mitts off their social security and medicare.

    They’ll be stuggling with their mind-killing fear, hate and ignorance for the rest of their stunted lives. Oh yes miracles can happen, some will see the light but for the majority of them, the course is set.

  8. 8

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....via=blog_1

    Wed Oct 05, 2011 at 09:31 AM PDT.

    Rep. Steve King misses the days when only property owners could vote

    by Joan McCarter .

    Rep. Steve King (Crazy-IA) dares to speak what most Republicans fear to even whisper out loud, as usual. This time it’s about how much better it was back in the day when only property owners could vote.

    KING: As I roll this thing back and I think of American history, there was a time in American history when you had to be a male property owner in order to vote. The reason for that was, because they wanted the people who voted—that set the public policy, that decided on the taxes and the spending—to have some skin in the game.

    Now we have data out there that shows that 47 percent of American households don’t pay taxes, 51 percent of American wage-earners don’t have an income tax liability. And it’s pretty clear that there are a lot of people who are not in the workforce at all. In fact, of our unemployment numbers—that run in the 13 or 14 million category—when you go to the Department of Labor Statistics and you look at that data, you can add up those that are simply not in the workforce of different age groups, but of working age, but of working age, add that number to the number of those who are on unemployment and you come up with a number that was just a few months ago 80 million Americans. Just over a month ago that number went over 100 million Americans that aren’t working.

    Now I don’t think they’re paying taxes. But many of them are voting. And when they vote, they vote for more government benefits.

    Nearly half of Americans don’t pay taxes? We’ve heard that one a few thousand times before, and it’s been well debunked. To wit:

    Some 86 percent of working households pay more in payroll taxes than in federal income taxes. In fact, low- and moderate-income people pay a much larger share of their incomes in federal payroll taxes than high-income people do: taxpayers in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale paid an average of 8.8 percent of their incomes in payroll taxes in 2007, compared to just 1.6 percent for taxpayers in the top 1 percent of the income distribution. …

    Low-income families also pay substantial state and local taxes. Most state and local taxes are regressive, meaning that low-income families pay a larger share of their incomes in these taxes than wealthier households do. The bottom fifth of taxpayers paid 12.3 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes in 2010, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) model. That was well above the 7.9 percent average rate that the top 1 percent of households paid.

    And as for the property owners as the only people with “skin in the game,” how do you even answer that? All of those people, like the wives and children and slaves who made the owning of property even possible, didn’t have skin in the game? Sigh.

    Of ALL the rethugliclown assholes in Congress this prick has GOT to be the biggest.

  9. 9

    http://thinkprogress.org/econo.....-yourself/

    Herman Cain On Occupy Wall Street: ‘If You Don’t Have A Job And You’re Not Rich, Blame Yourself’!

    By Alex Seitz-Wald on Oct 5, 2011 at 10:10 am

    Asked about the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that posted today, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain said he suspected that they were “orchestrated” to help President Obama. Cain went on to blame the unemployed for their woes, saying, “if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!”:

    CAIN: I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration. Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself! […] It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed.

    Cain’s conspiracy theory that the protests are a plot to help the White House is pretty far fetched, especially considering that there seems to be no love lost between the protesters and Obama.

    But Cain’s claim about the unemployed is especially heartless and uninformed. There are simply not enough jobs to go around, with 4.32 unemployed people for every job opening in the country. So even someone looking hard for a job will have a difficult time finding one. Moreover, Cain fails to understand the astronomical income inequality in the U.S. and the negative effect it has on economic growth.

    Blaming unemployment on the unemployed is a common trend among conservative politicians, but it’s a as wrong as it is offensive to the millions of Americans looking for a job.

  12. 12

    “Mr. Romney,” I said, after he had fielded several other questions, “I want to ask you something about history. You know, when Herbert Hoover had to face a financial crisis and then unemployment, his strategy was to balance the budget and cut spending, and that made things worse. When Roosevelt came in, unemployment was twenty-five and went to fourteen percent by 1937. With deficits. Aren’t you repeating the Hoover mistake?” Romney’s grin turned quizzical. “Do you really think so?” he asked me. “I do think so, but you go ahead,” I replied.

    That’s from John B. Judis, TNR, this week.

    Every schoolboy except Judis remembers that Herbert Hoover was a big-government progressive big spender who tried Keynes before Keynes was cool. The bloated HCH budget was so unhinged with public works, corp welfare for banks, and end-stage federal relief for the poor that Hoover’s 1932 opponent ran to Hoover’s right.

    FDR demanded austerity and budget rectitude. FDR as pres pushed to the front of the line an Economy Act to slash government by 25%.

    Big govt bureaucrat jobs? Whacked. Federal spending on shovel-ready jobs? Whacked. But only after the mean old men in long black dresses on the Supreme Court killed the rest of FDR’s wacky Hundred Days did we get the recovery that Judis writes about and that twisted sister YLB knows about.

    Yep, by 1937 we finally got some recovery. Down to only 14% unemployment. Almost a full-frontal boom. Almost as good as Obama said we’d have if we only spent $1 trillion of Obama stimulus on solar energy scams.

    So FDR demanded that progressive Hoover be slashed by 25%, then FDR demanded deficits for NIRA and AAA, then FDR got some recovery after NIRA and AAA were invalidated by the Supreme Court, then FDR ran more deficts and got, by late 1937, 20% unemployment. Another full-frontal liberal boom.

    Liberals say FDR’s 1937 depression happened because FDR didn’t spend enough. Not enough Hoover-style deficits. Liberals always say liberal failure happens because we didn’t spend enough.

    I say FDR’s depression happened despite FDR’s deficits and because of the new taxes FDR sucked out of our booming economy for always-sustainable social security.

  13. 13

    So, it turns out that all the Obama folks were doing with Fast and Furious was doing exactly with the Bush folks did. Which makes sense seeing that the 90% of the AFT folks under Obama were AFT folks under Bush.

    http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap.....17448.html
    AP sources: Bush-era probe involved guns ‘walking’
    By PETE YOST , 10.05.11, 08:09 AM EDT

    WASHINGTON — The federal government under the Bush administration ran an operation that allowed hundreds of guns to be transferred to suspected arms traffickers – the same tactic that congressional Republicans have criticized President Barack Obama’s administration for using, two federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

    I agree with Chuck Grassley here:

    In a statement, Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that “whether it’s Operation Fast and Furious, Operation Wide Receiver, or both, it’s clear that guns were walked, and people high in the Justice Department knew about it. There’s no excuse for walking guns, and if there are more operations like this, Congress and the American people need to know.”

    But, it is a little ridiculous to be all up in arms about it now. End the practice and move on.

  14. 14

    Nevermind eating ******toes with Democrat Rick Perry at ******head Ranch (that’s the “racist” story that Carl sends us to), the real story is linked to the story Carl sent us to:

    The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Coordinated Expectations Of A Slow-Growth, Low-Spending Equilibrium

    Needless to say, I can hardly wait for the movie. Hell, I can hardly wait for the bumper sticker.

  15. 15

    # 9: from Herman Cain: “… I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe ….”

    That pretty much summarizes the Republican party these days. They start with a conclusion which justifies their prejudices, and then go looking for the odd story or statistic which they can cherry-pick or contort to claim it supports their pre-conceived notions.

  16. 16

    # 12: Did you get this view from home-schooling? It’s the most jumbled attempt to re-write history I’ve seen in a long time. Or were you being sarcastic, and I just missed the tone of your voice?

  17. 17

    YLB, if you ever got a job and helped financially support your family like a real man, perhaps someone would take you seriously. You lack credibility from your couch. And Michael, Fast & Furious was not exactly what the Bush folks were doing. The Left is trying to connect the dots, but it’s not the same at all. Even if it was, 2 wrongs don’t make a right. Keep trying though.
    Same thing with Solyndra.
    Obama is his own worst enemy.
    He has no regrets about Solyndra.
    He fails to investigate Holder and Fast & Furious.
    Obama admits publicly Americans are not better off than 4 years ago….and has only offered more of the same Borrow-and Piss Away policy that has already failed. What a great campaign ad though for his opponent. Also the one of Biden saying Obama is responsible for the economy at this point.
    Are you sure Obama wants to get re-elected?
    I think you kooks want it more than he does.

  18. 18

    Among the things Hoover strongly believed (supported by Republicans who still controlled the Senate until 1932) was that the federal government had no business in interfering with banks. He insisted that they were state-chartered institutions, and it was up to the states to regulate them – even though banks were collapsing in ever-increasing numbers, threatening the entire financial system of the U.S.

    But with the wave of bank failures in 1932 and early 1933, the first thing FDR did upon taking office (March 4, 1933) was declare a “Bank Holiday”, closing banks until emergency legistlation could be adopted. This was done on March 9, 1933, and within three days 3/4 of the banks which were members of the Federal Reserve system were re-opened.

    Later that year the FDIC system was adopted.

    FDR’s actions stopped the run on the banks, in which mere rumor could cause a bank to collapse in a matter of hours as crowds of depositors demanded the immediate withdrawal of their money. But at the time, Republicans wailed that FDR’s actions were unconstitutional, and lacking statory authority (which wasn’t granted until later).

  19. 19

    @13 That’s the point: The folks who put together “Fast and Furious” were the same people who were doing similar stuff under Bush, and many of them were likely to have been appointed under Bush’s watch. God knows what the motivation was for what they did in the last decade, but now they’re working as loyal little GOP soldiers, timing and staging their escapades to cause the Obama administration the greatest possible embarrassment. The really sorry part of all this is there’s no indication whatsoever that Obama, Holder or any of the administration’s senior staff have even a clue, or that they even care.

  20. 20

    # 17: De Boner wants to rejoice in the fact that the Republicans have been somewhat successful in blocking the economic recovery the President has been fighting for. He, and his Republican handlers, are counting on American voters having very short memories (and lack of attention to the details) to realize it is the Republicans who are consciously trying to destroy America during the Obama administration, just so the Bush administration doesn’t look quite so bad in comparison.

    I find such conduct unpatriotic and despicable, a callous disregard for the pain inflicted upon hundreds of thousands of American families, all for personal or partison profit.

  21. 21

    Hmmm.. I seem to remember that a old conservative stink tank is named after Hoover. Hardly a bastion of latter day progressivism.

    I also recall that Hoover’s hand was finally forced to do some spending after the Republicans were walloped in the mid-term elections – first time in 12 years the Congress had seen Dem majorities.

    Hoover’s big taxing move was put into place only 6 months before he was shown Dodge City’s back door. By that point the country was already at 25 percent unemployment. So good luck blaming that on that.

    As for FDR being a big spending cutter, well there was a double dip in 37 iirc..

    And oh my did we spend in wartime – biggest public works project of this country’s history. And oh were those patriotic heart strings played during those war bond drives. Couldn’t be floated by Japan, Saudi Arabia and China in those days.

    Good to see you again HNMT.. You’ve been kind of quiet of late.

  22. 22

    @18 The approach taken this time around was certainly different, and questionable as it was, pouring money into the big institutions to prevent their collapse probably staved off a far greater catastrophe. Quite simply, otherwise so many banks would have failed within weeks that the FDIC wouldn’t have been able to cover more than a fraction of insured deposits.

    The downsides to the “bailout” approach were that (1.) it cost a hell of a lot; and (2.) it rewarded management of the financial giants for bad behavior, when they richly deserved to be punished. The big banks’ actions since then (arbitrary foreclosures, bullshit fees, etc.) demonstrate the continuing arrogance that is the sorry result.

  23. 23

    17 –

    They’ll be stuggling with their mind-killing fear, hate and ignorance for the rest of their stunted lives. Oh yes miracles can happen, some will see the light but for the majority of them, the course is set.

    Looks pretty good doesn’t it?

  25. 25

    IRS Ruling Targets Medical Marijuana Dispensaries

    “In a potentially crushing blow to the burgeoning medical marijuana industry, the IRS has ruled that dispensaries cannot deduct standard business expenses such as payroll, security or rent.

    “The IRS ruling is based on an obscure portion of the tax code … targeted at drug kingpins and cartels ….

    “Keith Stroup, legal counsel and founder of … the nation’s largest marijuana advocacy group, says the IRS ruling is likely to stifle the … industry and force people back onto the black market. … Stroup believes the move also could make it more difficult for the medical marijuana industry to capture significant capital investment.

    http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.co.....a-industry

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Our friend Lee will be interested in this. The larger question is, why is the Obama administration pursuing policies you’d expect from a sanctimonious rightwinger like Bachmann?

  26. 26

    @17 “Are you sure Obama wants to get re-elected? I think you kooks want it more than he does.”

    Oh man, are you ever ass-backwards! Half of us want him to quit so we can run a real Democrat against whichever flip-flopping goofball you loons decide to put up.

  27. 27

    http://videocafe.crooksandliar.....cusal-just

    October 05, 2011 11:00 AM

    Rep. Slaughter Calls for ‘Retroactive Recusal’ of Justice Thomas to Overturn Citizens United

    By David

    Rep. Louis Slaughter (D-NY) told Current TV’s Keith Olbermann Tuesday that a “retroactive recusal” of Justice Clarence Thomas could result in overturning the Citizens United case.

    Earlier this year, the liberal group Common Cause argued that both Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia should have recused themselves from the Citizens United case because they attended events organized billionaire Charles Koch.

    In addition, Thomas’ wife, Virginia Thomas, may have received financial benefit from the Citizens United ruling, something that was never disclosed by the justice.

    Twenty House Democrats Thursday called on the U.S. Judicial Conference to formally request that the U.S. Department of Justice investigate Justice Clarence Thomas’s non-compliance with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.

    Justice Thomas indicated on his annual financial disclosure forms that his wife had received no income since he joined the bench in 1991, despite the fact that his wife had in fact earned nearly $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation from 2003 to 2007.

    “What I’m very interested here is the votes that he has cast that may be in conflict,” Slaughter explained to Olbermann. “Of course, his wife can work. But the fact is there are only nine justice on that Supreme Court and it certainly should be a given that a family member of any of those people lucky enough to be a Supreme Court justice should not in any way involve themselves in matters that will go before that court. Now, we all know that she worked very hard for the Citizens United case, which I think is one of the most egregious things that have ever happened in the United States Supreme Court.”

    She added: “There is such a thing as a retroactive recusal. We’re looking into that. That case, if you remember, was decided 5-4. If we could take away his vote, we could wipe that out. It would lose. How ’bout that?”

    “That’s only the future of the democracy there, isn’t it?” Olbermann asked.

    “Yes, indeed. And we are — you know, the judiciary is the last place for all of us to go. We’re only as good — all of us — as the courts are, only as safe as the courts are good. Their interpretations are really what give us the freedoms when you come down to it. They have enormous power.”

    This could help, eh?

  28. 28

    Guns Don’t Kill People Dep’t

    “Authorities are searching door to door with guns drawn in a neighborhood about 5 miles from the Northern California quarry where a gunman killed two and wounded six at a morning meeting.

    ” … [A]uthorities sought 45-year-old Shareef Allman, who they say opened fire around 4 a.m. Allman also is suspected of wounding a woman in an attempted carjacking … more than two hours later. …

    “Sheriff’s Lt. Rick Sung said Allman was at the routine safety meeting, became disgruntled and left … then returned and started shooting people.”

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44.....nd_courts/

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: C’mon people! Guns don’t hurt people! People hurt people! If this deranged homicidal maniac didn’t have easy access to guns he probably would have knifed those people or strangled them with his bare hands! So everyone should be able to buy a gun without a background check and carry it into workplaces and on freeways without a permit.*

    * Just kidding! That’s a Wisconsin GOP legislators’ joke. As for me, I think we need some sort of program to keep guns away from deranged homicidal maniacs, or we’re going to have more incidents like this one. The Republican theory, on the other hand, is that if everyone is armed a deranged homicidal maniac like this guy will be shot by his co-workers or the motorist he tries to hijack so you’ll lose only two or three innocent people before he’s taken out. In other words, let’s create a nation of deranged homicidal maniacs in order to keep deranged homicidal maniacs under control. Frankly, that reasoning seems a little circular to me. In any case, it didn’t work today, and I can’t remember a time when it ever did.

  29. 29

    @27 Why does it surprise anyone that a partisan Republican SCOTUS justice with a reputation for being a sexual harasser has turned out to be a corrupt lying toady for a pair of corrupt lying billionaires?

  30. 30

    @20 Wouldn’t working to collapse the economy and disrupt government operations while the nation is actively engaged in two (Congressionally-authorized) wars constitute at the very least “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”? In that case, the entire Republican party is already guilty of high treason.

  31. 31

    @12, @21 The segment of Ken Burns’ Prohibition that ran last night pointed out the strong added impetus to repeal the 18th Amendment as things rapidly fell apart following the 1929 crash: the government was already sorely missing liquor taxes as a major source of revenue.

  32. 32

    Wow…its only noon and it looks like another EPIC posting day by our favorite jobless poster, ylb.

    Who says unemployment can’t be fun?

  33. 33

    @28 – The other day I a saw a car with two bumper stickers, one read “Life begins at Conception, Abortion begins with Deception” and the other read “Guns – saved 2.4 Million lives”, what a warped sense of reality.

  34. 34

    The larger question is, why is the Obama administration pursuing policies you’d expect from a sanctimonious rightwinger like Bachmann?

    A natural substance like mj that can’t be patented is probably stiff competition in a few areas to man-made drugs.

    So even though the Obama administration may be complicit, you got to wonder who forces whose hands.

    The fact that hemp isn’t grown in this country is too silly for words. Hemp is an excellent fiber that can be used in clothing or paper. Oh yeah, cotton or forest producers might not cotton to that. So let China be the largest producer of hemp fiber. Canada is no slouch either.

  35. 35

    32 – Is there an argument there? Doesn’t look like it..

    An asshat –

    all…his….life…long…

    epic asshatery indeed.

  36. 36

    @17
    He should get a job as a Republican CEO. That way he can spend a year tanking a company, get fired, and still walk away with an 11 million dollar payout!

    Total compensation for the guy that got fired from HP was around $23M for a years worth of failing miserably and he’d failed miserably at the job he held prior to working at HP!

    And people can’t figure out why people are protesting on Wall Street…

  37. 37

    31 – I caught a bit of the first ep and LMAO when it said that at one point the federal government collected 70 PERCENT of its revenues from alcohol sales..

    The prohibitionists LOVED THE INCOME TAX. No longer was the federal government dependent on taxing beer, wine and booze.

    The prohibitionists were xenophobes and racists – there was always a taint among them of looking down their noses at immigrants whose consumption of alcoholic beverages were firmly ingrained in their culture.

    This continues today with the “Real American” bullshit you see among the right and even here in the comment threads. Does a ‘real american’ light up a joint? Even if it’s once a damn year at a music festival? Not according to some right wing dopes.

  38. 38

    @32 Please don’t use other people’s screen names here. That’s a no-no. There aren’t many rules on HA, but that’s one of the few rules the site owner does enforce. It’ll get you banned.

  39. 39

    @33 So the premise of the second bumper sticker is that if people didn’t have guns an additional 2.4 million people would be killed by the guns people don’t have.

    Actually, the NRA has floated this argument for a long time (and an NRA merchandise shop is probably where that bumper sticker came from). The argument, as I understand it, goes something like this: An armed citizenry deters crime. To support this, they usually trot out anecdotal evidence. There may be some statistical studies out there that, for example, compare crime statistics between communities that have restrictive and non-restrictive gun laws, although it seems to be it would be awfully hard to control the other variables that influence crime rates (such as policing, poverty rates, demographics, etc.). I doubt very much that there’s anything definitive and reliable in the way of empirical evidence, one way or the other. So, what it boils down to is, the argument (and bumper sticker) are polemics, that’s all.

  42. 42

    Heh..

    From the start, Ailes has steadfastly denied any such political bias or agenda on the part of his network. Politics, schmolitics: “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings,” he declares.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....95691.html

    If you don’t like a sexist right wing slob like Roger Ailes, well, don’t watch his propaganda operation – I don’t.

  43. 43

    @25,

    “The larger question is, why is the Obama administration pursuing policies you’d expect from a sanctimonious rightwinger like Bachmann?”

    That is a VERY good question: why is Obama acting like an uptight Prohibitionist Republican on the cannabis issue? Isn’t it about time we stop the pretense? Some people enjoy using cannabis. They should also enjoy the right to do so given the natural rights inherent for simply being a human and the rights annunciated in our Constitution. If you prefer not to use cannabis, then don’t. That’s your right just the same as it’s the right of those who choose to enjoy the substance to do so.

  44. 44

    “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings,” he declares.

    I’m sure this statement was about as shocking to people as when Melissa Etheridge announced that she was gay.

    On a related note checkout todays Doonsbury:
    http://www.doonesbury.com/strip

  45. 45

    Back to FDR:

    Robert Whaples, a Professor of Economics at Wake Forest University, sent out anonymous questionnaires to members of the Economic History Association. Members were asked whether “Taken as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression.” 94% of economic historians disagreed with that assessment, as did 73% of those who worked in the economics departments.

    FDR detractors have tried to pin their arguments on articles written by two economists from UCLA, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian (and their followers), who claim that New Deal policies are an important contributing factor to the persistence of the Great Depression.” They claim that the New Deal policies “…are a key factor behind the weak recovery”, and that “abandonment of these policies coincided with the strong economic recovery of the 1940s”.

    But this argument is deeply flawed, ignoring completely the jobs created by the FDR public works programs and the advent of WWII. In other words, they confuse cause and effect – the recovery in 1940 wasn’t cause by the abandonment of the New Deal programs, it was just that the New Deal programs were no longer necessary as the economy recovered, especially with the impetus of WWII and the resulting labor shortages.

  46. 46

    YLB is very sensitive about his chronic, self-imposed unemployment. He enjoys screaming that rich folks pay more…so he can be more comfortable sitting on his ass, living off them.
    It would be different if were trying to be a productive member of society, but ylb is so shameless, it doesn’t bother him. He’s a posterboy of the typical Obama supporter.
    A lazy mooch.

  47. 47

    Let’s remember a few of FDR’s words:

    “…Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth… I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people. This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms…”

    from FDR’s speach accepting the Democratic nomination in 1932.

  48. 48

    @45 Also depends on what you define as “recovery”: getting people back to work, or new highs for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and rich people getting richer at an even faster pace.

  49. 49

    46 – In another era, De Boner would have been a prohibitionist, looking down his snoot at the immigrant catholic family enjoying wine with their meal.

    In a place like Chicago, a melting pot of different ethnicities, where Barack Obama made his political bones, De Boner would flee in horror at the increasing lack of homogeneity to places like “gawd’s last place on earth”, the remote back-country of Montana to join those of his rage-filled tribe.

    In his declining years, De Boner the KLOWN comforts himself with a smorgasbord of right wing bullshit delivered over the internet from a multitude of right wing outlets funded by well-heeled xenophobes and greedheads like himself. And all that time he drives himself into a frenzy fretting over the coming day that he will end up paying the same taxes that were paid in Bill Clinton’s day not to mention Richard Nixon’s.

    This above all fires his rage, at the urban African-american leader like Barack Obama, the social security and medicare recipient, the severely disabled person living in a group home, the working poor family receiving food stamps and eitc but no, no, not the bankster recklessly gambling away a too big to fail investment bank confident he’ll be bailed out, not the neo-con or military bureaucrat waging wars of choice or the military contractor shaking down that bureaucracy for every cent it can – all of that’s ok with De Boner – just as long as he doesn’t pay for any of it.

    again about those of De Boner’s ilk:

    They’ll be stuggling with their mind-killing fear, hate and ignorance for the rest of their stunted lives. Oh yes miracles can happen, some will see the light, but for the majority of them, the course is set.

    Keep pasting your talking points over the remainder of the election cycle De Boner – we’ll do our best to debunk them for that’s what they are – bunk.

    As transparent a fraud as you.

  52. 52

    re 46: The fingers look like straw in your little word-portrait.

    You, however, are a sad, frightened and confused individual who has memorized about a half-dozen right wing bromides and nostrums and another half-dozen leaden ‘witticisms’with which to ‘debate’ the GREAT SATAN of Liberalism.

    I’ll bet Dennis Miller is regretting his decision to throw in with the Righties. The only Milleresque references that you understand are about guys like Yul Brynner and Broderick Crawford. Brnaby Jones references are too current for you guys.

    Do you think Barnaby ever nailed Lee Merriweather?

  53. 53

    De Boner the KLOWN must reserve especially intense man-love for Paul Ryan who delivered the coup de grace of right wing deception – dividing one generation of Medicare recipients against their own kids while preserving and delivering more tax breaks to the wealthy.

    The act was so brazenly despicable it galvanized almost the entire Republican caucus in the House behind it.

    Not even Dumbya, the conqueror of Iraq, could accomplish this when he tried the same thing with Social Security.

    Now these degenerates have the nerve to claim they’re “saving” these programs so that they’ll be there when future recipients need them.

  54. 54

    # 51: At this point, it’s hardly a surprise. Palin quit as governor to avoid the ethics investigations, and knowing that her official conduct would thereafter be watched closely. She’s grown fond of the money from Fox News and book publishing deals, and the adulation she gets from her (diminishing) supporters, and running for office risks all of that.

    On a practical level, she’s already way too late to jump in. She is behind in fund-raising, and the “Tea Party” field is already overcrowded with the likes of Ron Paul, Michele Backman, and Perry. Her joining in would just divide the same number of votes by an increasingly larger number, and pretty much ensure a Romney victory.

    But as her statement indicated, she expects to be a major part of the campaign. I doubt that. Her day in the sun is over, and the current candidates will not want to share the limelight with someone who can’t stop herself from trying to absorbe all the media attention. Her political instincts and experience would hardly make her a credible campaign strategist in a national election.

  55. 55

    So, to recap the “major players” in the GOP race for the nomination:

    Donald Trump – OUT
    Chris Christie – OUT
    Jeb Bush – OUT
    Huckabee – OUT
    Gulianni – OUT
    Bloomberg – OUT
    Sarah Palin – OUT

    Still In:
    Romney, the heir apparant.

    Rick Perry, the “flash in the pan” who may already be on the wane, except that he represents the GOP base better than anyone else.

    Michele Bachman, who’s poll numbers dropped in direct correlation to Perry’s entrance into the campaign.

    A host of “single digit” others, who haven’t got a prayer at this point.

  56. 56

    I remember Limbaugh at one time back in ’08 throwing in with Romney. Well that was before “Obamacare”..

    Does anyone see Limbaugh supporting Romney again? Yes, this is one of the few moments in a month that thoughts about that obese gasbag Limbaugh come to mind.

  60. 60

    # 57: I just read a brief summary from a secondary source, which cited the original survey as follows:

    Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions

    Robert Whaples
    The Journal of Economic History
    Vol. 55, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 139-154
    (article consists of 16 pages)

    Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association

    Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2123771

    But access to the full article seems to require membership in a participating library or publishing institution, or purchasing the article through a publisher.

  61. 61

    Fast And Furious, The Prequel

    WOOOO-HOOOO! The GOPers have their own gun-running scandal!

    “The federal government under the Bush administration ran an operation that allowed hundreds of guns to be transferred to suspected arms traffickers — the same tactic that congressional Republicans have criticized President Barack Obama’s administration for using, two federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday. …

    “When Bush, a Republican, was president, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Tucson, Ariz., used a similar enforcement tactic in a program it called Operation Wide Receiver. The fact that there were two such ATF investigations years apart in separate administrations raises the possibility that agents in still other cases may have allowed guns to ‘walk.’ …

    “After Obama took office, the Justice Department reviewed Wide Receiver and discovered that ATF had permitted guns to be transferred to suspected gun traffickers, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the practice is under investigation by Congress and the Justice Department inspector general’s office.”

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44....._politics/

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Memorize this phrase: Operation Wide Receiver. You’re going to be hearing a lot more about it.

  62. 62

    Republican Screwup #011-79285531-010

    “Alabama’s strict new immigration law was touted as a job creation bill, a way to force illegal workers out of jobs and open them up for legal residents. Early indications are the plan is backfiring.

    “The law is driving away many construction workers, roofers and field hands who do backbreaking jobs Americans generally won’t. So far, few legal residents have stepped in to fill any of the vacancies, creating an absence that will surely deal a blow to the state’s economy and could slow the rebuilding of Tuscaloosa and other tornado-damaged cities.”

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44.....news-life/

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: If you want a job screwed up, hire a Republican to do it.

  63. 63

    Holy Cow,

    The arschloch has been posting and posting and posting while I’ve been busy doing a mass user migration. Lib Scientist visit the other thread.

  64. 64

    Perry Plunges In Polls

    New Quinnipiac and Washington Post/ABC polls show Romney is once again the GOP frontrunner at 22%, Herman Cain in second place at 17%, and Perry way back at 14%.

    A couple days ago I said Perry will be out of the race before January. In fact, the next debate is probably make-or-break for him, because with polls like these, he has to get back into the race very quickly or the money and party support won’t be there. I say he won’t do it, because … well, because he’s incurably stupid and no amount of pre-debate coaching can give him the brains that God didn’t.

  65. 65

    3 – zzzzzZZZzzzzzz.. Is that all you got KLOWN “friendo”????

    Better than the material deposited here from your arschloch!

    ROTFLRHMBBAO!

  66. 66

    Steve Jobs dead!

  67. 67

    It’s interesting to me that the right-wing has a way of taking questionable “academic” sources and using it to support their arguments for broad social and governmental revisionism. Let’s review a few:

    (1) “Most jobs are created by the wealthy, so giving the wealthy tax breaks creates jobs for the rest of us.”

    This first appeared in the 1980’s as a justification for the Reagan “trickle down” theory (or in another incarnation, “a rising tide floats all boats”). It’s pretty much been discredited now as the 1990’s and 2000’s have proven that on the whole, tax cuts to the wealthy do not result in job creation – at least not here in the U.S. Funny how it takes a quarter-century or more to prove these ideas wrong, but you can be sure that this same mantra will be repeated by GOP leadership every few years, and they will act surprised when anybody doubts it’s virtue.

    (2) “FDR’s New Deal actually prolonged the Depression, and only WWII kept the U.S. economy from sliding backwards”.

    As mentioned above, this has been pretty much discredited. Although a minority school of some right-wing economists still cling to this (notably at UCLA and at Milton Friedman’s Chicago gang), those in the field of “historical economics” who actually studied the time-line and effect of the New Deal programs know better. More importantly, the detractors of FDR argue that after four years of worsening depression under four years of Hoover’s policies, suddenly the economy would make a record-setting growth spurt in the next two years of following the same policies. They also assume that the only thing standing in the way of such growth were government work programs, Social Security, wage and hour laws, etc. – which were hugely popular at the time.

    (3) “Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts presided over the greatist economic growth in U.S. History”.

    This, also, is nonsense. The 1970’s were a period of economic stagnation going back to Nixon’s era, caused in part by (a) U.S. reliance in cheap oil and the distortion caused by the oil embargo and much higher oil prices; (b) the rise of serious trade competition from Japan and Europe; and (c) monetary policies by the Fed which tended to encourage inflation in order to put off the inevitable rescession (arguably until a Democrat was in office). After the rescession of 1980-1983, some economic improvement was inevitable – but only after Reagan began the process of raising taxes which had previously been cut.

    More to the point, the Reagan years weren’t that great in comparison to the Clinton years. But you won’t hear the right-wing pointing that out.

    If you want to hear more right-wing historical revisionism, especially as it relates to FDR, you can sample the web sites which claim FDR was in league with the Japanese to allow them to attack Pearl Harbor so we could go to war against – Germany. They forget that Germany waited some time to declare war on us first – if it was a consipiracy theory, then it strangly depended upon the cooperation of the Germans to succeed!

  68. 68

    Some People Never Learn Anything Dep’t

    Meanwhile, in Europe, the same kind of Hooverism being peddled here by Republicans is producing the same results it did in 1930:

    The medicine being used to cure the financial contagion spreading throughout Europe is killing the patient.

    For nearly two years, the richer countries of the region have pressed harder for spending cuts and tax hikes from poorer countries like Greece, already struggling under a crushing debt accumulated when the global economy was booming.

    “Now, after years of debate and multiple failed efforts, the downward spiral may be impossible to break. By not acting quickly, Europe may have missed its chance to cure the disease, according to Mohamed A. El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO, one of the world’s largest bond funds. ‘You have an infection,’ he said. ‘You leave it alone. You don’t treat it. You diagnose it badly. Guess what? Even the strongest parts of the body will get infected. That’s what’s happening in Europe today.'”

    http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.co.....ard-spiral

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Their teaparty politicians are just as dumb as ours. Maybe dumber, if that’s possible. So much for the notion that free markets will fix everything if you just leave them alone. So much for the idiocy of trying to balance a budget that has run deficits for years in the middle of a recession. We’ve known for a long time that round wheels work better than square ones. Unfortunately, some people not only insist on reinventing the wheel, but on throwing themselves under the bus and taking everyone else with them.

  69. 69

    Continuation of # 55: I forgot about Cain. But I still think he’s a long-shot, and straw polls are notoriously unreliable. If he’s a serious candidate, why is he suspending his personal campaign efforts to do a book tour?

  73. 73

    More to the point, the Reagan years weren’t that great in comparison to the Clinton years. But you won’t hear the right-wing pointing that out

    Nuthin much happened. Joseph Stiglitz, a passing hero of the arschloch thought this

    Stiglitz’s most important contribution in this period was helping define a new economic philosophy, a “third way”, which postulated the important, but limited, role of government, that unfettered markets often did not work well, but that government was not always able to correct the limitations of markets – WikiPedia

    After the Republican Tax Cut and the Welfare reform the “Clinton Economy” took off. But you won’t here much of that from rhp6033.

    You read from the Clintonista web site

    The economy has created more than 22.5 million jobs in less than eight years—the most jobs ever created under a single administration, and more than were created in the previous 12 years. Of the total new jobs, 20.7 million, or 92 percent, are in the private sector.

    Yet Puddy already delivered this from The Atlantic which Puddy said was in the crazed HA databaze of the HA arschloch…

    From 1992 to 1998 the unemployment rate dropped by more than a third, yet the real hourly compensation of American workers remained virtually unchanged.

    Yet from the bible of some HA leftists, you can read more. Clinton loved Wall Street and tried to make it just as cozy as possible. You’ll never read that from libtardos. When I put the real deal from Progressive Historians, y’all went nuts over Schumer and Dodd leading the charge for Glass Stegall repeal!

  74. 74

    Steve Jobs RIP…

    Never forget the time I first played with an Apple II – little, slow 6502 processor in a molded plastic box with a 9 inch sony tube monitor – 40 column screen and a floppy drive with the apple symbol on it.. You could play a little pong game and fire up a BASIC interpreter.. Funny this Apple II was sitting right next to a sprawling HP3000 system in the computer lab I worked in.

    The HP system was by contrast baroque and somewhat alienating and that even was a clear step down from the IBM Mainframe we could access through remote job entry.

    It was sweet that Apple II. Computing at your fingertips in a approachable consumer-friendly package. You could dream of taking one home for yourself if you could scrape up the cash.

    Steve JOBS changed the world – way more than Bill Gates imho..

  75. 75

    For nearly two years, the richer countries of the region have pressed harder for spending cuts and tax hikes from poorer countries like Greece, already struggling under a crushing debt accumulated when the global economy was booming.

    And the DOPEY Rabbit misses the point again> I really think it’s purposeful as senility is striking him hard. Greece has endemic problems you can read about from low retirement age to lots of government workers to profligate spending in the early 2000s to the $15 Billion spent on the 2004 Olympics.

  76. 76

    @67 “After the rescession of 1980-1983, some economic improvement was inevitable – but only after Reagan began the process of raising taxes which had previously been cut.”

    Not to mention the orgy of damn-the-deficits-full-speed-ahead military pork-barrel spending under the banner of “Star Wars” and a few ham-fisted earthly adventures like Grenada and the dispatching of the USS Arizona and a contingent of Marines to Lebanon. (At least the ship made it back, unlike a couple hundred of the Marines.) Oh, yeah…there was also that business going on in Nicaragua, which we may or may not have been stuck with the bill for.

  77. 77

    @74 Hey, don’t knock HP too hard. Bill and Dave had a pretty damn good run, and provided the model by which most successful high-technology companies have operated ever since. A lot of that had to do with respecting employees and giving them a fair shake. Those guys really were “job creators”.

  78. 78

    @76

    The USS Arizona was sunk at Pearl Harbor, and is still there.

    You are refering to the battleship USS New Jersey in Lebanon.

    how the fuck anyone can confuse the two, and who isnt familiar with the Arizona in Pearl Harbor is beyond me.

  79. 79

    Oh Roger DOPEY Rabbit… Operation Wide Receiver will die real fast. We discussed it last week DOPEY one!

    This difference is and this is the absolute difference: Bush’s administration did not allow guns to go back into Mexico without interdiction or arrests. Even WikiPedia can’t pin that tail on Bush. Under Barack ObamAA+ 2000+ guns were allowed to go back into Mexico without interdiction or arrests and 1400+ guns are still mising. Thats FACT! Operation Fast and Furious under Barack ObamAA+ and Eric Golly Well I Guess I Did Know Something After All Holder is a unmitigated disaster.

    And as always DOPEY Rabbit jumps on the first thing delivered by the morons at MSNBC as gospel.

  80. 80

    Mookie @78

    FartyArt read about the USS Arizona at Grenada on DUmmies (DUMMOCRAPTIC UNDERGROUND) The same folks who think the fat one Michael Moore is a national treasure for saying he went into the booth to vote for a black man and all he got was a white one.

  81. 81

    Hey, don’t knock HP too hard.

    Oh I’m not. Yes, the founders of HP created tankerloads of value..

    I liked that HP3000 system. Minicomputers like that made by DEC and HP were on the cutting edge in those days but they were lorded over by authoritarian managers and we up and coming whippersnappers were cut off from them at every turn.

    Personal computing was an end-run around the tyranny of IT depts and student computing labs and the Apple II series and the Mac soared above them all. Remember that the Apple wasn’t the only personal computer being marketed in those days before the IBM PC. Apple just did the best job at designing their products so they’d really appeal to people. I snapped one up as soon as I was able.

  82. 82

    Just in case you missed it, almost half of the Clinton era jobs created were under $10/hr!

  84. 84

    I suspect Solyndra may be a bigger problem for President Obama than Fast & Furious. Perhaps both will be nightmares about incompetence or worse yet, criminal actions. At any rate, most hard-working, taxpaying people are angry how flippant the President has been about Solyndra. I’m glad the House is digging deeper and deeper.

    The GOP-led House committee probing Solyndra, a solar company that filed for bankruptcy last month after receiving a $528 million loan, is expanding its investigation to include all communications between the White House and Solyndra.
    The committee stepped up its investigation after newly released emails showed administration officials had been concerned about the company’s finances.
    Reps. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., chairman of the Energy committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, are requesting all documents dating back to when President Obama took office in January 2009.

    Several emails have shown that in addition to White House officials expressing concern about Solyndra’s financial situation, a Democratic donor also warned the White House to be careful.
    “Nearly eight months into our investigation, documents provided to the committee last Friday confirm those closest to the president – top advisers like Valerie Jarrett, Larry Summers and Ron Klain – had direct involvement in the Solyndra mess,” Stearns said.
    “In addition to the cast of West Wing characters with access to the Oval Office, documents reveal a startlingly cozy relationship between wealthy donors and the president’s confidantes, especially in matters related to Solyndra,” Stearns said.
    “While the president claims ‘hindsight is always 20/20’ and the loan went ‘through the regular review process,’ the facts tell a much different story with some of the loudest alarm bells on Solyndra’s viability coming from within his very own administration.”

  85. 85

    82. Puddybud, identifies Ekim AKA Turd For Brains, Another Cass Sunstein Malleable Homer Simpson idiot spews:

    Just in case you missed it, almost half of the Clinton era jobs created were under $10/hr!

    10/05/2011 at 6:44 pm

    Fucking liar.

  86. 86

    Y’all know Silly Sarah has taken herself out of the 2012 running right?

    Anyone believe that?

    Shit, if there’s a dollar in it for her from her diminishing sheep followers, she’ll jump right in only to jump out while the jumpin’s good.

  87. 87

    Ylb. I agree. Just like Al Gore and Global Warming. And Michael Moore and how the rich plunder the poor as he uses non-union labor, lives in a mansion on a beautiful lake in Michigan and lies about growing up poor to suck in you suckers.

  88. 88

    87 – Heh. We a got a true believer folks.. Roger Ailes hired Sarah ‘cuz she’s a hottie and gets lemmings like our new hater throwin’ off smoke like a right to be a jerk state beater.

  89. 89

    84 – LMAO!!!

    FastNFurious..Solyndra..FastNFurious..Solyndra..Rinse..Repeat..

    DARRYL ISSA…Swwwwwoooooonnnn….

  90. 90

    Oh it’s too funny! The “friendo” is now retreating on the FastNFurious front now that “Wide Receiver” is in the news..

    Solyndra..Solyndra..Solyndra..Solyndra…

    Darryl Issa..Swoooooooooooonnnn..

  91. 91

    Our President is “laying the wood” to Congresional Republicans and the “Oligarchs” in a presser right now.

    About fucking time.

  92. 92

    The resident assholes may want to note (sadly, for them) that our President is directly addressing the “Fast and Furious” and the (manufactured-by-Faux-News) “Solyndra” situations.

    HAH!

    Not like the previous administration, whose titular figurehead once famously proclaimed that he “could not really think of any mistakes by his administration.”

  96. 96

    Anyone remember birther news daily? We used to call it wing nut daily – that kooky, islamo-phobic, rabidly batshit-insane right wing ding website where so many trolls over the years got their information..

    Any fake credibility it had was lost in the birther debacle..

    Desperately trying to remain relevant by publishing the memoirs of…

    Jack Abramoff??? The right wing flim-flam man that the Dumbya White House couldn’t lie about his frequent visits enough??

    http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi.....hp?ref=fpb

  99. 99

    Things are getting worse and worse for Holder on this Fast and Furious. It’s looking more & more like a lie…or gross negligence. And Obama unnecessarily brings it onto himself by putting 12 Year-old Jay Carney in front of the camera to nervously say the President has total confidence in Holder. Now, today,

    Top congressional Republicans said Thursday that Attorney General Eric Holder received at least five weekly memos starting in July 2010 about the controversial gunrunning probe known as Operation Fast and Furious, though he claimed this past May he only learned of the operation a few weeks prior.
    Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., released a series of heavily redacted memos apparently sent to Holder from Michael Walther, the director of the National Drug Intelligence Center. They appear to describe an operation involving the straw purchase of hundreds of firearms that went to Mexican drug cartels.

    “With the fairly detailed information that the attorney general read, it seems the logical question for the attorney general after reading in the memo would be ‘why haven’t we stopped them?'” Grassley said in a statement.
    Issa claimed Holder “has failed to give Congress and the American people an honest account of what he and other.”

    The typical left strategy of deny, deny, deny was stupid in this case. Holder should immediately have come forward and corrected his testimony. To do it now smacks of desperation. Apologizing and telling the truth is always the best strategy in the long-run. Now Holder is the posterboy for President Obama’s incompetent regime.

  100. 100

    From Obama news conference:

    On the Solyndra/F&F question, Obama expressed “complete confidence” in AG Holder. On Solyndra, he points out that it came out of a loan guarantee program that began before he took office. “If we are going to compete the 21st century, we’ve got to dominate cutting edge technologies” including clean energy. “The loan guarantee program is designed to meet a particular need in the marketplace, he says, especially with China and Europe providing massive subsidies, to keep jobs and technology here in the U.S. He says that inherent in the program is that there is risk: some companies will fail, and Solyndra was one of those companies, but he has “confidence” that the decisions were made completely on the merits.

    8:40 AM PT: Next question is whether Obama thinks the U.S. government has the right to dictate how much profits American companies can make. The simple answer: no. How does he plan to stop banks from levying monthly debit card fees? He says we need a consumer financial protection bureau to require completely transparency so consumers know exactly what they are dealing with and are protected from hidden fees.

    8:45 AM PT: More on Solyndra. Obama defends the idea that American companies should get some support from the government when it comes to clean energy, given what European counties and China are doing. Sometimes companies are going to fail, he says, but that is by design. It’s just the way the program works, he says.

    Confronting idiot scandal-fishing head-on.

    As ylb says,
    Solyndra!…Fast-n-Furious!…Issa!…Solyndra!…
    Maybe the Zombie lies will die…though someone is about to bring up the Tides Foundation, or Frances Fox Piven.
    Ugh.

  101. 101

    Operation… wha??? can’t hear ya..

    wide receiver..

    wha??? that??? ehh you’re fading out..

    WIIIDE reciver..

    caannt hear… gotta my hearing piece…. again?

    WIIIDE REEECEEEEIIIVER

    CAN”T HEAR YOU! BYE!!!!

  102. 102

    Issa is pathetic..

    He said he had the goods on Obama and so far all he’s ginned up is a an investment in a failed alternative energy venture in a extremely volatile market place trying to hold its own against legacy fossil fuels which have right wing approved massive subsidies of their own.

    And an ATF gun-walking fuckup that had its roots in the Dumbya days..

    Pathetic.. Hardly worth paying attention. But we’ll hear about them ad nauseum from the Montana “friendo” caught in up swoons of man-love for Darryl Issa when he isn’t flying high in the big-sky country clouds in man-love over Paul Ryan.

  103. 103

    Yeah, President Obama is addressing the scandals head-on…weeks and weeks after he should have.
    Needs those MIT grads to write his answers and time to memorize.
    Head-on means TIMELY.
    President Obama seems to have a sick love for allowing these scandals to blow up…and then trying to save the day.

    Solyndra is all about Influence peddling.
    Fast & Furious is about incompetence and lying.

  104. 104

    103. Westy spews:

    Yeah, President Obama is addressing the scandals head-on…weeks and weeks after he should have.
    Needs those MIT grads to write his answers and time to memorize.
    Head-on means TIMELY.
    President Obama seems to have a sick love for allowing these scandals to blow up…and then trying to save the day.

    Solyndra is all about Influence peddling.
    Fast & Furious is about incompetence and lying.

    10/06/2011 at 12:58 pm

    Gee…maybe this fuck can tell the class when (snicker) Bush EVER addressed any one of the myriad of scandals his crooked Administration caused?

    C’mon big boi…throw down!

  105. 105

    @104
    yes, indeed

    you can, unfortunately, smell the desperation on westy’s part, furiously trying to say scandal enough times to somehow make it real.

    Fast-n-furious was a fuck up, from the sound of it – but presidential malfeasance – no way.
    Solyndra I’ve already made a detailed response to, as have others – essentially, when backing new technology and potential, it’s win some, lose some. And it’s a fraction of the boatloads of cash lost to fossil fuel interests.

  106. 106

    105. Liberal Scientist wonders when Republicans will be done with the charade and finally just start using the Hitler Salute spews:

    @104
    yes, indeed

    you can, unfortunately, smell the desperation on westy’s part, furiously trying to say scandal enough times to somehow make it real.

    10/06/2011 at 1:13 pm

    Poor fuck…that shit’s not going to have legs here.

  107. 107

    Wow, it’s incredible that a right-wing troll would be horrified at – “influence peddling!”

    Need we start to recount the hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into Haliburton and it’s subsidiaries for the Afganistan and Iraq wars, and the Katrina cleanup? And who was head of Haliburton before he became VP, and still held extensive stock interests in the company while VP (albeit as part of a “blind trust”)?

    Or how about the “energy summit” between Chenny and the oil companies which decided U.S. energy policy over the next decade, but which produced no list of attendees, no minutes of the meeting, no press release at the conclusion?

    Or how about the award of vital government positions, like the head of FEMA, to completely unqualified supporters as political payback?

    Seriously, the Democrates don’t even know how to play enfluence-peddling on anything like the scale it’s done by the Republicans. Comparing influence-peddling by those two parties is like comparing a little-league team with the New York Yankees.

  109. 109

    Over at dailykos, quoting Lindsey ‘Huckleberry’ Graham:

    “Rick Perry is not a racist,” Graham said, saying the Texas governor is the victim of an “intimidation” campaign. “You know if you’re a southern white guy, this is part of your life,” Graham complained.

    Leave the poor, abused southern white men alooooooooooooone!!!

  110. 110

    Making Rich People Richer Doesn’t Make the Rest of Us richer’ and 22 other Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism
    Recorded on 4 October 2011 in Old Theatre, Old Building.

    Three years on since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, the world economy is struggling, with huge downward pressures on many people’s living standards and sense of security. The predominant opinion is that, in order to get out of this mess, we have to cut taxes, cut welfare spending, and deregulate – so that the wealth creators can start investing and generating wealth again. But why should we so much trust in those very people, who, despite taking ever-larger share of national outputs in the last three decades, have so spectacularly failed to generate more wealth than before? If we are to overcome this crisis and build a better world, we need to part with this myth – that making rich people richer will make all of us richer – and 22 others on how we measure living standards, how we create wealth, how we pay people, how we ensure fairness, and ultimately how we cope with changes and change our future.
    http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndM.....px?id=1159

    But hey, what would some guy giving a guest lecture at the London School Economics know.

  111. 111

    Run Johnny Run.
    The scapegoat for Solyndra is bailing. So this must be the end of the investigation, right? Wrong. It’s only the beginning.

    The director of the controversial loan program that cleared the way for a $535 million taxpayer guarantee to bankrupt solar firm Solyndra is stepping down, the Energy Department confirmed Thursday.
    Jonathan Silver, head of the Loan Programs Office, plans to join the organization Third Way as a “distinguished visiting fellow.” The career change comes in the middle of heavy scrutiny from Congress over the department’s handling of the Solyndra agreement. Documents that have emerged over the past month show officials were warned about potential problems with the company as it sought government help.

    Wait until they get this guy under oath.

  113. 113

    The recent death of Steve Jobs got me thinking about how Apple started. Steve Wozniak, Apple’s OTHER co-founder, was the techno-geek of the partnership. He was working for Hewlitt-Packard at the time they developed the Apple I.

    Unfortunately for Wozniak, his employment agreement included a provision (common in technology fields) that any inventions produced by the employee belonged to the employer. The only way out was if Hewlett-Packard was given the option of taking over the invention, and refused. Wozniak took a confusing tangle of wires, a circuit board, and circuits for them to review, and they rejected, saying he was free to do with it what he wished. And from that, the Apple Computer was born.

    As everyone knows, Apple Computer operated out of a garage in Silicon Valley, making and selling computers, until they received start-up funding. This was during the Carter administration, so it was BEFORE the Reagan tax cuts.

    So tax cuts for the rich had nothing to do with Apple’s success. If anything, it would have given more money to Hewlitt-Packard, which still would have rejected Wozniak’s design. But tax cuts to the little guys, who are using their own funds (Wozniak sold his calculator to raise funds) to create new technologies out of their garages, would be much more helpful.

  114. 114

    I had to laugh at this press release, which just came over the wires:

    “WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Nigeria’s Arik Air today announced a deal for two 747-8 Intercontinental airplanes. The order is valued at $635 million at list prices and was previously attributed to an unidentified customer on Boeing’s website.”

    What got me laughing was the thought of some Boeing Regional Sales Director getting excited at this deal – all he has to do is agree to assist the family of the jailed oil minister to transfer the money into the U.S., which will require him to give the representative’s Boeing’s bank account and routing number first, after which Boeing will get a substantial commission for it’s efforts :-)

  115. 115

    93. Rujax! spews:
    This guy (our President) seems to like to “play from behind”.

    I think youre projecting…you seem to have a fascination from getting played with from behind.

  116. 116

    @111

    another “green” scam…just like algore’s bullshit scam….

    how much money has he made peddling that bullshit now? carbon credits? LMFAO – ya, thats gonna save TEH POLUR BEERZ!

  117. 117

    @116

    Not “scam,” but not a wise investment either. Solyndra came up with a cool technology, but one who’s production costs couldn’t be brought down far enough to make it marketable. It happens.

  118. 118

    115. Mookie Blaylock spews:

    93. Rujax! spews:
    This guy (our President) seems to like to “play from behind”.

    I think youre projecting…you seem to have a fascination from getting played with from behind.

    10/06/2011 at 6:41 pm

    Oh cool…here’s emperor max-minidick and his six figure income and his union busting connections again.

    Yay.

  119. 119

    @118

    I’d laugh my ass off if someone could find evidence that the real Mookie is a liberal.

  121. 121

    @118

    and speaking of losers, here comes Lee Rujax, right on time. HA’s resident top dawg idiot, doing what the puppet master max orders.

    Just watch as I start moving Lee Rujax’s puppet strings….

    why arent you down in seattle with a sign?

    FYI – jealousy is so unbecoming.

  123. 123

    http://crooksandliars.com/john.....says-his-f

    October 06, 2011 05:00 PM
    Vintage Right-Wing Whine: Hank Jr. Says His First Amendment Rights Were Violated By ESPN

    69 commentsBy John Amato

    After Hank Williams’ disastrous Fox & Friends appearance where he compared President Obama to Hitler and called him the “enemy” — which was so egregious that even Gretchen disavowed his comments — I told you he’d use the ‘Laura Defense,’ or the ludicrous “First Amendment'” victimhood defense, which conservatives and tea-party activists love to trot out whenever they say things so far out of bounds that even a company that caters to many right-wing viewers like ESPN does had to sever ties with him.

    The dumbest of dumb-fuck Tea-Baggers. Even Ted Nugent is smart enough (barely) not to shit where he eats.

    Guess he’ll have to cook his own ‘shine or start a series of “Drunk Aide” concert appearances.

  124. 124

    Among the things Hoover strongly believed (supported by Republicans who still controlled the Senate until 1932) was that the federal government had no business in interfering with banks.

    Tennessee Ernie rhp and Politico need to get out more.

    If rhp learns to read, he’ll soon read that Hoover and his Treasury dept (Mills and Ballantine) designed the mechanism to salvage banks that FDR used in March 1933. In fact, FDR kept Hoover holdovers at Treasury to administer the salvage operation because FDR had no plan and no competent administrators of his own.

    The reason HCH didn’t implement his own plan before FDR’s coronation on March 4 is that HCH had a do-nothing Democrat Congress. Twisted little sister YLB mentions it way up this thread, so it must be true.

  125. 125

    117. Michael spews:

    Not “scam,” but not a wise investment either. Solyndra came up with a cool technology, but one who’s production costs couldn’t be brought down far enough to make it marketable. It happens.

    It happens??
    A month or 2 after getting $532 Million.
    Come on Michael. Hardly. This one will not go away until the Public knows who knew what when and who influenced this loan when Bush Admin said NO and their were Red Flags everywhere.
    Now they want to see Obama’s Blackberry.
    Good. It’s a public record. Let’s get the whole truth, hold those responsible accountable and move on.

  127. 127

    HCH had a do-nothing Democrat Congress.

    LMAO!!! You said above he was a “progressive” big spender.. How could the 1932 Relief and Construction Act happen with a do-nothing Congress?

    Also it’s easy to overlook that one of Hoover solutions to unemployment was to load Mexicans on cattle cars and ship them South – 500,000 of them!

    Shit, that’s one of the most frenzied Tea Bagger fantasies!

  128. 128

    “hold those responsible accountable”

    Fuck you, Klown. We never heard that out of you when the wrong country was invaded by Bush. We never heard that when billions in cash disappeared in Iraq. We never heard that when a CIA agent was outed. We never once heard those words out of you for the entire Bush administration. Instead, this is what we got from you,

    56. Mr. Cynical spews:
    And remember this:
    GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT! GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!
    Oh, I forgot…you idiots where born so uptight it would take a tractor to pull a pin outta yer asses!
    GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT!
    04/12/2006 at 7:24 pm

    You can go to fucking hell.

  129. 129

    YLB: Already mentioned big-spender Hoover’s public works, which is what the 1932 Relief and Construction Act was all about. It does show that his do-nothing Democrat Congress did something.

    The problem was after election day 1932. Hoover’s repudiation was so, like, total that Congress had no incentive to do anything a lame duck dead duck Republican wanted. FDR, too, refused to cooperate with Hoover on anything as the recovery of 1932 slid into the bank crisis of early 1933.

    To be fair and balanced, FDR seems to have believed that Hoover was trying to tie pres-elect FDR to defeated policies. So Hoover was stonewalled by Congress and FDR in January and February 1933 while our financial system collapsed and while rich white boy FDR sailed away on fat cat Vincent Astor’s yacht.

    Interesting that you mention shipping illegal immigrants south so poor Americans could have a chance at getting low-pay jobs. It’s said that some people legally in the US got deported by mistake, and FDR continued the deportation policy until 1937.

    1937. That’s when what you call the double dip began. Interesting phrase for 20+% unemployment, for crashing stats that were worse than 1929.

    1937: That’s the year FDR put a KKK racist on the Supreme Court. A racist who approved FDR’s executive order that sent 80,000 American citizens to concentration camps.

  130. 130

    Steve, my brother, which makes you little twisted sister’s big brother’s bigger brother: wake up shithead rhp so I can kick his ass.

  131. 131

    @130 No problemo, my twisted little sister. I’ll throw a rock his way and see if I can wake him up for you while not causing too much damage.

  132. 132

    Hoover’s repudiation was so, like, total that Congress had no incentive to do anything a lame duck dead duck Republican wanted

    Oh the “do-nothing” Congress also raised taxes?? As I said above 6 months before Hoover was shown the back door.

    Why would Hoover of Hoover Institute fame do such a thing? After all “yep and nope” Coolidge thought a top rate of 25 percent was a damn fine rate indeed. Well, back in those days it was common sense that if you spent, you raised money to keep pace with the spending..

    Shocking idear to a latter day Bushie who has no compunction about cutting taxes on rich folks and corps and charging 2 wars and new entitlement spending on the credit card – not to mention bankster bailouts.

    Interesting that you mention shipping illegal immigrants south so poor Americans could have a chance at getting low-pay jobs. It’s said that some people legally in the US got deported by mistake, and FDR continued the deportation policy until 1937.

    LMAO!!! Yeah those cheap labor conservatives back then liked that cheap south of the border labor like they do now but again when their country was in trouble, well dagnabit, they’d settle for a jalopy ridin’ Okie to harvest their fields. Shit the laws of supply and demand still applied and served the bosses just fine in the wage dept. Ever read Grapes of Wrath or In Dubious Battle?

    And were Dems a bit racist and xenophobic then?? Oh pishaw HNMT! Like Spike Lee said, racism is as American as apple pie. Look at any Ken Burns documentary epic for the confirmation.

    And that relates to today’s Dems how? I can point to dozens of ways it relates to today’s right wingers for damn sure!

  134. 134

    # 130: You still posting here? this thread is two days old. Keep up. Or are you one of those who post on old threads so you can claim that nobody would respond to you? You change posting names every day or so – are you hoping to avoid responsibility for what you say, from one day to the next?

    And you couldn’t whup me under any conceivable circumstances or manner.

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