– Remember how Bush kept us safe.
– The City Council will support the SoDo arena.
– The second picture has been linked to by both conservatives and liberals I know as proof of something, something Joe Biden.
– It’ll surely be in the next poll analysis, but Obama is up by 16 in Washington.
– As I said at the outset of the GOP convention, I think the conventions are still worthwhile. But there’s still room for improvement in the coverage.
And, also from the first link…
I guess the question is, would Romney be an improvement over Bush in terms of foreign policy?
I’ve got to say this:
I’m old enough to remember the end of the Vietnam war under Nixon (the damn communist REPUBLICAN president who instituted WAGE & PRICE CONTROL after a visit with Mao),
the hostage crisis under Carter,
Reagan invading Grenada
AND running like hell out of Lebanon with his tail between his legs,
Bush I’s Iraq war … wherein we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,
& of course 9/11 & it’s aftermath.
I have felt my whole life like America was Gulliver on the world stage … a giant bound hand & foot by tiny people.
Obama has changed that.
He is the most competent foreign policy President
I have ever seen in my life.
It matters … a lot.
They get it in the UK and it’s caught on here:
@ 1
I guess the question is, would Romney be an improvement over Bush in terms of foreign policy?
That would be an irrelevant question.
The relevant question would be to compare Romney to Obama.
You DO understand that Bush isn’t running for president this year, don’t you, Lib Despair?
Five more people have been charged in the US Army FEAR Militia case from Ft. Stewart Georgia.
http://www.thecoastalsource.co.....L-ztw.cspx
@ 1
No, he’d need a 9/11 to get re-elected too. The Bush administration let it happen. They knew damn well that, like his daddy, Bush would only be able to serve a single term unless something radical happened. Bear in mind that Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were considered so incompetent they were never included in the Reagan Administration and held no positions during his presidency.
Dick Cheney was already hiding in his bunker on 9/11. They knew, probably weeks in advance.
@4
Wrong again, bob.
Romeny has surrounded himself with retread Bush administration foreign policy advisers…
or
or…
So, perhaps I should rephrase…
Would a Romney foreign policy be any different from GWB’s?
Seems unlikely.
You DO understand that you’re losing, don’t you, bub?
That would explain the shrillness.
@ 8
I DO understand that the polls currently have Romney trailing, overall. That must be what you mean. I look at the D/R/I splits and the LV vs RV composition of the polls for the tea leaves. You should, too.
I could bring up the historic poll data – there were times in Septemberish when McCain led Obama. Dukakis was up 16 or so over GHWB41 right around this point. At one point in July Reagan trailed Mondale. Carter was up over Reagan going in to the last weekend.
My reply is that the election will be very close, I will have to endure this drubbing for possibly the entire next two months, and it likely won’t be known, except internally to the winner and loser, what the outcome will be until Election Day.
I have made peace with that, Lib Despair. Fire away.
Tom Clancy and Video games helped recruiting for the FEAR Militia Murder Gang in Georgia. http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/.....to-murder/
@9 Intrade has President Obama with 60% to 39% for Mitt. When real money is involved in the free market Mitt is losing big.
http://www.oddschecker.com/spe.....ion/winner
There’s been such a huge move already…there may be some near-term profit taking on the shares
—Shaw Wu, Sterne Agee,
commenting on how Apple shares may perform
The above from marketwatch.com.
I read today that T-mobile is buying used iPhone 4s models to re-sell as T-mobile devices. They apparently offer pretty good 4G and unlimited data plans for heavy users, for less dough than AT&T and Verizon.
I suspect there will be a huge secondary market for them when the iPhone 5 is released due to all of those just-purchased prior models that will look so inadequate. I have the Samsung Galaxy SII skyrocket, my wife has the iPhone 4s. It’s not even close – hers doesn’t perform nearly as well as mine.
Will be a lotta limpdick iPhone 4s owners in about 24 hours.
As for the street harassment thing, I witnessed an incident in Pioneer Square about 15-16 years ago. We were coming out of the Central Saloon and were standing around on the sidewalk in front waiting for someone. Sidewalk was pretty crowded as usual at the Central at 1 in the morning. Five or six guys in the their late 20s or early 30s, walking abreast and elbowing people out of the way, shoving folks into the street and up against the cars parked along the side there. Tough guys. Pushing their weight around like they were something other than a small group of thugs just being super dickheads for the night.
A bunch of pretty girls came out of the dance club next door, obviously a Bachelorette thing, as one of them was dressed in the lacy headscarf and a super slinky short skirt with fishnet stockings. Maybe about 15 or so of them in the bunch. One of the tough guys walked right up to her and grabbed her in the crotch and said something. She screamed and punched him in the chest and he hauled off and cold cocked her right in the mouth, knocked her out cold. His friends all surrounded her and were leaning over her, laughing and jeering at her and making nasty comments and such, poking at her with their shoes. So her friends were all yelling at these guys and everybody on the sidewalk was standing around trying to figure out what we’d just seen, one of the tough guys was yelling at the ladies with his fist up, “you want some too BITCH?” That kinda shit.
Someone yelled for a Cop, and the guys took off running up Washington St. I don’t know if any of them were caught. But they were laughing their asses off at the girl their buddy just knocked out. The cops showed up within a minute after the dudes had run across the street.
There had to be 200 people who saw this that night, and nobody could say a damn thing.
Tough guys. Real nice way to impress the ladies there assholes.
Reagan, McCain, GHWB41
One of Romney’s problems, Bob, and there are many, is that he isn’t half the man that any of those men were or are. And compared to them, Paul Ryan is no man at all. God forbid that Romney wins and something ever happens to him. Romney is bad enough, but what a disaster for America that lying bastard Ryan would be.
Obama Administration and Holder ripped in report for turning a blind eye to balancing public safety with lame-brained idea.
http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....-agencies/
How will Obama attempt to deflect from this?
With some 9-11 stories about Bush??
This was on Obama’s watch.
The buck stops with Obama.
“There had to be 200 people who saw this that night, and nobody could say a damn thing.”
And they did nothing? They did nothing at all?? There are times when a man has to take a stand, no matter the consequences.
“Real nice way to impress the ladies there assholes.”
I wonder how impressed they were with the men who stood around watching and who did nothing.
@ 14
Thats called “impeachment insurance”. As Dan Quayle was to bush 41 and Cheney was to Bush 43. NOBODY wanted those people to ever become President. They knew that those men were either far too incompetent or psychologically unstable to ever be allowed in the office.
Thats what Ryan is. Like Romney, he is a sociopath and a pathological liar. Unlike Romney, he’s a fanatic who is itching to get his hands on “The Button” to fulfill his religions dream of Armageddon and bringing Jayzuz back to tell him what a wonderful Christian he is.
You’ve been forewarned.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....obama.html
Come to think of it, ‘Lean Forward’ is just another way of saying ‘Bend Over’, MSNBC.
@ 17
Not exactly impeachment insurance, but if Barack Obama is assassinated, Secret Service is under orders to shoot Biden.
“With some 9-11 stories about Bush??”
I was just reading this morning how your guy Bush really fucked that up. Thanks for the reminder, Klown. And counciled by the same neocons who now council Romney, he then invaded the wrong fucking country. It’d be funny, even hilarious, but thousands of people seem to die whenever you assholes fuck something up, and that’s not funny at all. And you, you piece of dogshit, were a goddamned cheerleader for that fiasco.
You deserve an royal asskicking for that post alone, Klown.
Steve @ 14
What, specifically, in addition to the marathon story (ended up sounding like a lie to me, no argument), are Ryan’s lies?
Tuesday Morning News Dump
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signaled this morning the DoD will take action to “punish” ex-SEAL author Matt Bissonette for violating his non-disclosure contract.
The IRS will pay a $104 million whistleblower reward to an ex-banker who blew open the secret Swiss bank accounts of tax-dodging American richsters, resulting in $5 billion of tax collections and 36,000 amnesty deals.
Moody’s threatened to downgrade USA’s credit rating as House Speaker Boehner said “no deal” to avoiding the fiscal cliff.
@ 22
If the president does it, it’s not illegal.
O’Donnell then asked Panetta a direct question: What’s the difference between what the SEAL did and the leaks that have come from the administration to journalists and filmmakers? Panetta spun: “There’s a fundamental difference. The people that presented some of the details of the operations were authorized to do that by the president of the United States, who has that authority to do that, and inform the American people as to what happened. In this case, that was not the case. And that’s the difference.”
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012.....s-it-okay/
I see that health insurance oremiums for a family rose only 4% versus 8% the year before. I don’t credit Obama, but seeing as how you wingnuts blamed him for the 9% increase, I think you ought to man up and credit him for the 4%. That is, unless you’re hypocrites. But then, you are hypcrites, aren’t you?
@ 22
So Moody’s is a year late to the party. What’s your point?
Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. last year, though the event did not have a big impact. Interest rates remain very low and the government continues to borrow huge sums to finance annual deficits that have topped $1 trillion for four straight years.
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/e.....e-avoided/
Guns Don’t Kill People Dep’t
“A 57-year-old New Orleans man was … fatally injured by his wife who mistook him for an intruder, police said Monday … the man’s 53-year-old wife was not arrested.”
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....ruder?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: We all know a gun is an inert object that can’t hurt anyone until a wife with an itchy trigger finger gets ahold of it. I wonder if he had a big insurance policy?
@ 16
It was only about a minute from the time we first noticed the Tough Guys coming down the sidewalk to the point where they were running across the street. Yeah, plenty of people were yelling at them, myself included. There were a few dudes stepping up and headed over to them, it was looking like a riot was going to start, really. The cowards split through the crowd before anything else could happen. They knew they were in a bad spot, and I’d be willing to bet at least a few of them were packing.
Dunno whatever came from it, never saw anything in the paper about it. But it was obvious the Police were unwilling to get too involved other than to call the paramedics for the young lady and push back on the crowd while yelling at us to go home, which we did.
See, nobody trusts the Police. Not for anything. The Police are there for crowd control and little else. Seattle Cops look too much like the Cops in Baltimore or St. Louis or New York City. 15 years ago they weren’t much better. 15 years ago, they stood around with their thumbs up their asses while the perps ran away.
@23 Apparently that applies to outing undercover CIA agents, too.
@ 24
Steve, I think the rise was less than four percent two years in a row, if I recall Clinton’s speech correctly.
However, the deceleration in cost increases is felt to be due to a deceleration in the economy in general and is linked to the economy and not to any policy changes.
An analogy would be praising the low inflation rate as being Obama’s doing. It’s really because the economy stinks – every time bad news comes out, bond prices spike and the yields drop.
@21 Have you been asleep for three weeks? Wouldn’t it be easier to list what he hasn’t lied about? Have at it, Bob. Tell us what he’s said that isn’t a lie. When done, we’ll just assume every word of Ryan’s that you fail to document as truth is a goddamned lie.
@ 30
Steve, I thought there would be something specific and not a literal accusation of the ‘How can you tell if a Republican is lying?’ joke.
Sorry I asked – I assumed he said something specific that bothered you.
@29 So what? The point is, and which you understandably fail to address, that this didn’t keep Republicans from going on and on about how the 9% increase was all Obama’s fault.
Once again, House Speaker John Boehner is putting party and ideology above the good of the country, as he exploits the looming “fiscal cliff” to grandstand:
” … Boehner said Tuesday that he is ‘not confident at all’ that Congress can reach a deal with President Barack Obama to avoid the … ‘fiscal cliff’ before January. …
“‘The House has done its job on both the sequester and the looming tax hikes that [will] cost our economy some 700,000 jobs,’ the Republican speaker continued. ‘The Senate at some point has to act. On both of these where’s the president? Where’s the leadership? Absent without leave.’ …
“House Republicans have passed legislation to avoid the mandatory defense cuts by slashing spending from social programs ….”
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_.....oided?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: In other words, if Rethugs don’t get their way, they’ll sink the country and economy. I say go for it! You want deficit reduction, you’ll get it! Boehner realizes now the GOPers made a super-bad deal last summer — the Democrats will get defense cuts and tax increases without any action by Congress and they can blame it all on the Republicans. If Boehner had any brains he’d be crawling to Obama begging for anything he can get. He deserves to get nothing.
Just Google “Ryan Fact Check”, which I did before I posted the comment. The Ryan lies and misrepresentations have been well documented. Take something like what Factcheck.org has come up with and start disputing what has been documented, Bob. You can do that, can’t you?
@ 32
The current slowdown in health care spending doesn’t necessarily mean that future health care costs will decelerate as well. In fact, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services predicts that, as the economy rebounds, Americans will begin spending more on health care costs, as they have after previous recessions. This chart comes from CMS’ health spending projections this past summer. They expect the growth in health care costs to spike in 2014, as the health reform law expands Medicaid, and then return to a relatively average rate of six percent a year.
Source: Center for Medicare and Med
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....ml#photo=7
Steve, you can also go to this chart:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....ml#photo=2
which will show that health care spending slowed significantly in the GWB43 administration, so what’s happening under Obama is a continuation of a trend, not something new and different that Obama started. The biggest reason for slowing growth? Decreasing utilization of services. Which may be good or bad, depending on the reason it’s happening.
“Sorry I asked – I assumed he said something specific that bothered you.”
His very existence bothers me. Although I do get a kick watching him being castrated by the Romney campaign. The man with a plan no longer has a plan he can talk about. All those specifics and he can’t even talk about them anymore. Castrated.
@ 36
Although I do get a kick watching him being castrated by the Romney campaign.
Same thing happened to Joe Lieberman in 2000. He had to tack way left from where he had stood his entire career.
Good day, all.
@35 Is that a joke? Do you even know what we’re talking about? You posted links to charts of health care spending. Irrelevant and a half. Try posting a chart of the history of the increase of insurance premiums, Bob. You won’t because you’ll be shooting yourself in your own foot.
Rove,Adelson,Murdoch,Koch Brothers Billionaires for Mitt & job creating with a $22 billion bet on Spain!
http://latimesblogs.latimes.co.....vegas.html
Well lookee here, the contest for Senate control is swinging the Dems’ way:
“The fight for the Senate has shifted significantly over the past weeks, with fierce races breaking out in states where they were not expected and other contests dimming that were once ablaze with competition.
“With less than two months until Election Day, the Senate landscape is both broader and more fluid than it has been in years … the net result is that Democrats appear to be in less danger of losing the Senate, while Republicans have a more difficult path to gaining the majority.
“Democrats are now strongly competitive in races for the Republican-held seats in Indiana and North Dakota, where the Republican candidates … were expected to walk away with those races ….
“In Maine, Senator Olympia J. Snowe’s surprise retirement this year almost certainly removed a seat from the Republicans’ column. … Todd Akin’s comments about ‘legitimate rape’ may … have robbed Republicans of a Missouri Senate seat they had counted as theirs ….
“Broader political forces have conspired to seemingly move some seats out of the Republicans’ reach. With … Heather Wilson, the Republicans in New Mexico got the moderate veteran candidate they wanted. But Ms. Wilson appears to be getting no help from Mitt Romney… [and] this month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee quietly canceled advertising there ….”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48986033
Roger Rabbit Commentary: If Republicans can’t win Senate control this year, it’ll only get tougher in the years ahead. GOPers have a strategic advantage this year, in that they have to defend only 11 seats versus 23 Democrat-held seats up for election. If they fall short, they’ll face a reverse situation in the next presidential election: In 2016, Republicans have to defend 24 Senate seats versus 10 Democrats. And it doesn’t help the GOPers that their candidates keep getting crazier and crazier.
A GOP Senate in 2013 was never a gimmee, but it was a strong possibility. That chance now appears to be fading because of assorted GOP foulups. In addition, there appears to be no Romney coattail to help struggling GOP senatorial candidates. And with the White House slipping further from their grasp, GOP strategists inevitably will be tempted to throw more of the available money at that race instead of bolstering their Senate efforts.
At some point, they may decide to conserve cash by cutting corners. So if Todd Akin turns up dead, the cops know who to go looking for. If Karl Rove suddenly takes a foreign vacation, they should look for him in countries that don’t have extradition treaties with the U.S.
@35 “health care spending slowed significantly in the GWB43 administration”
So did all other consumer spending. That’s what usually happens in a depression when people lose their jobs and health insurance, Bob.
“Same thing happened to Joe Lieberman in 2000. He had to tack way left from where he had stood his entire career.”
It’s quite understandable that you wouldn’t want to talk about current events, Bob. At least you agree that Ryan has been castrated by the Romney campaign, even if you won’t discuss why that is.
@13 and 16
Typical metrosexual seattleites…stand around and do nothing.
@43 Yeah, Ryan’s “vision” is so toxic Romney has to duct-tape his running mate’s mouth closed to stand any chance.
@17
Oh noes! Ryan’s gonna press “the button” and do a nukleur warz!
Lol..paranoid much? You and rhpee should date each other…
Well we have the story teller Fraggy… seems he did nuthin Steve…
Sez a lot about da “man”!
The Koch Brothers go all in for deregulation & dirty water.
http://www.arktimes.com/Arkans.....arles-koch
Thanks for that clarification… Now we know these leaks to the NY Slimes and movie makers were approved by Obummer per Defense Secretary Panetta… From your El Presidente Obummer
Somehow this doesn’t jibe there Steve! Or where Puddy comes from we call dat “Jive Talking”!
So Puddy thanks you Steve. You proved Obummer makes it up on the fly and the slobbering librard msm press doesn’t follow- up!
46, 47 – Would you rather someone get killed? A nightclub crowd is supposed to deal with a roaming pack of skinheads? Maybe the lesson here is girls who go out clubbing should stuff a shiv in their stockings. No, wait, make that a gun — a city ordinance makes knives illegal but the city can’t regulate guns.
http://www.nydailynews.com/blo.....competence
So this is the cure to the ODS sufferer’s pain?
@49 Two words: Valerie Plame.
Who said they were skinheads Roger SENILE Wabbit?
Projecting again? Psych 101!
The victims of the Great Bush Recession are “moochers”.
http://crooksandliars.com/john.....ips-calls-
Dallas Tea Party leader Dennis Phillips: I think it is a bad thing is they let those cuts expire, we’re in the middle of a deep, deep recession … Now is not the time to increase taxes to the dwindling producers in our country when we have a president who is trying to give more money away to the moochers and welfare. We need people working, not sitting back receiving food stamps and unemployment. It’s laughable.
I know some moochers. The engineering firm they worked for went out of business while the owner, the Italian cruise ship captain of Seattle’s engineering firms, saved himself in a “deal” with another firm that also allowed him to save face.
There are very few engineering jobs of that type out there, so his former employees are now “moochers”, collecting unemployment insurance and are barely hanging on. It’d make teabaggers happy if they passed on the insurance that they all paid for and just killed themselves.
@53 “Who said they were skinheads”
I did. Educated guess.
Met by Five More Words: Outed by DUMMOCRAPT Richard Armitage!
See ya SENILE Wabbit!
Downtown Seattle? Yeah right SENILE Wabbit.
Fraggy what were they?
Adelson & Netanyahu unite to play the WMD card and bomb Iran for higher Oil Prices Now!
http://www.voanews.com/content.....05778.html
“So Puddy thanks you Steve.”
I’m sure that I’m always deserving of your gratitude, Puddy, but I’m not quite sure what it is that you’re thanking me for this time.
@54 You and I both know who’ll cut to the head of the application line if Mr. Phillips loses his job.
http://www.motherjones.com/pol.....-donations
So much for the cash whoring trolls.
Damn! Over a million voters opening their wallets to help re-elect Barack Obama.. They must really be scared of a future with Dullard (R-Money) and his lying Randroid Robot sidekick in the White House!
I know I am!
@56 “DUMMOCRAPT Richard Armitage”
That’s news to me. When did he switch? Are Bush and Cheney Democrats now, too?
http://www.politico.com/news/s.....ml?hp=t1_3
LMAO!!! “He looks French!”
Of course Adelson wants Romney to be the next president, even if it costs him a hundred million or two. Just look at the tax breaks he’d get.
Courtesy of Huffpo,
You know we liberal-leaning commenters have been a little hard on crazy Michelle Bachmann and Alan West..
Michelle’s muslim baiting and West’s commie baiting have a calculated purpose.. Campaign fund-raising.. This is well-documented.
They just want to keep their jobs representing their constituents – deluded, bat guano crazy right wingers..
Too bad the momentum’s not with them.
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/1.....in_danger/
Let’s start with this:
“In 1978, he … started working as an aide to Republican Senator Bob Dole. In late 1980, Armitage became a foreign policy advisor to President-elect Ronald Reagan. Following that role, he was made a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, a high-ranking post in the Pentagon … from 1981 to 1983. In June 1983, he was promoted to Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy … Armitage left that post in 1989 to serve as a special negotiator for the President on military bases in the Philippines …. In 1991, he was appointed a special emissary to … Jordan. Following that, he was sent to Europe with the title of ambassador … until 1993, at which point he entered the private sector. In 1998, Armitage signed ‘The Project for the New American Century’ letter (PNAC Letter) …. During the 2000 Presidential election campaign, he served as a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush as part of a group led by Condoleezza Rice …. The United States Senate confirmed him as Deputy Secretary of State on March 23, 2001; he was sworn in three days later. A close associate of Secretary of State Colin Powell … within the presidential administration of George W. Bush. … He left the post on February 22, 2005 …. There was some media speculation that President Bush would appoint him to a key security position such as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Director of National Intelligence or Defense Secretary.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.....olitician)
Now. How on earth can anyone in their right mind call Richard Armitage a Democrat (or, as puddy likes to put it, a ‘DUMMOCRAPT’)? Anyone who does, has to be one of two things, either too fucking lazy to spend 15 seconds looking it up, or a total loon.
I’m actually slightly relieved to hear the new information about 9/11 and Iraq.
That the admin believed that bin Laden and Saddam were in league shows that theirs was an ideological and interpretive mistake, rather than a collective psychosis, a twisted oedipal complex played out with the lives of millions, or just tragically gross incompetence.
It doesn’t make the Iraq War less wrong, less irresponsible, or less tragic, but at least it explains what really happened, that reasonable people who cling fanatically to unreasonable ideas can make terrible decisions.
However costly, that’s at least a mistake we can learn from.
There’s bullshit, and then there’s BULLSHIT, and then there’s PUDDY BULLSHIT, which is in a (low) class all by itself. Puddy just called Richard Armitage, one of the most prominent (as in “sore thumb”) neocons of this century, a “DUMMOCRAPT.” Either this is a new slang term for “Republican neocon extremist” that puddy just coined, or he’s ignorant beyond belief, or he knee-jerked his comment, or he’s a fucking liar. It doesn’t really matter, because any way you slice it, puddy just blew his credibility all to hell — this is some kind of new low, even for him. Not that he ever had any cred to start with, but geez, c’mon, blaming the Valeria Blame outing on Democrats by calling Cheney’s plumber, Richard Armitage, a Democrat? That’s lame even by puddy’s nonexistent standards. It’s so lame, in fact, that I think it’s time to get an involuntary commitment order for public safety. Puddy has finally, and irretrievably, totally lost it.
@66 If I recall correctly, Richard Armitage is in the Alan Greenspan wing of the Democratic Party, not to be confused with the Timothy McVeigh wing of the party.
@69 I don’t recall, and don’t want to be reminded, of what puddy posted about Armitage at the time this scandal blew into the open.
There’s just no crime Rethugs won’t commit, and no hypocrisy their apologists like the loon won’t stoop to, that’s it in a nutshell.
@67 The problem is some people are unteachable, like those who continue to cling to birtherism or the notion that Obama is a madrassa-trained Islamic terrorist and a communist all rolled into one, or who believe MacArthur would have defeated Mao if only Truman had allowed him to invade China.
@41 And the GOP Senate takeover plans. Hawaii GOP candidate Pro Choice Linda Lingle has been running away from the GOP platform and Paul Ryan’s budget as fast as she can. As Governor Linda had a Super-ferry that went nowhere the people all seem to remember.
http://hawaii.news.blogs.civil.....n-takeover
@50
The rabbit really is a stupid fuck..and now a self admitted pussy too. Seems the rabbit is the kind of “man” who would watch his wife getting the crap kicked out of her, and do nothing.
Nice.
Wealth of U.S. Households, 1983 – 2010
1983
Average household: $73,000
Top 1% household: $9,599,000
2010
Average household: $57,000
Top 1% household: $16,439,000
http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/1.....?hpt=hp_t3
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Sure looks like a zero-sum game to me.
@55
Lol..ya, cuz skinheads hang out in downtown seattle nightclubs…lol
Moron.
@73 I didn’t see you wading into that crowd of thugs. Why do chest-pounding hamsters like you always delegate these jobs to someone else?
@71: Early in the Bush admin, I thought back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think there was a movie out about it at the time.
They said that the reason Kennedy didn’t start a nuclear war was that he didn’t listen to his advisors, and I remember thinking about Bush’s gut-based, advisor-driven decider mentality.
Maybe it’s too obvious a lesson, learned at too high a price.
But it’s one to carry into the upcoming election.
The puddypusypissypants is clearly the stupidest motherfucker on the planet.
We know how badly he craves being the “top dog”, the “number one man”.
So the puddypussypissypants is there. Erect a statue. Yay. The smelliest turd in the toilet bowl!
@76
I wasn’t there, you limp dicked retared, but why don’t you ask your buddy froggy……..
But I tell you what, I sent some misbehaving progressives home with busted up faces during wto for roughing up women.
Where were you?
@62 & 66
Remember, in Puddyworld the explosion of the deficit resulting from Reaganomics was Tip O’Neil’s fault. Bush the Dumbers tax cuts, 2 new wars and a prescription drug packages intentionally designed to cost the government the maximum is Harry Reid’s fault.
Shorter Puddyworld, if it was irresponsible it MUST be a Democrat. Everyone kniws that. (Rove and Novak, never heard of them-Puddles)
Yeah. The faaaaaabulous emperor max-minidick aka kaiser bun the first, fucking rat-bastard scab and serial liar.
Booo-Yah!
Looks like a Democrat is finally picking a fight with a teachers union. Or, more accurately, the union is picking a fight with him — and he’s standing up to them.
“[T]he latest elected official to do battle with a public-sector union isn’t the Republican governor of Wisconsin. It’s Rahm Emanuel, the Democrat mayor of Chicago and President Obama’s former chief of staff. The struggle is significant because it challenges the orthodox narrative. It isn’t just tea party Republicans who are tangling with unions. Democrats are getting pulled into war with their old allies, too. …
“For decades, the city machine has bought off unions with sweetheart deals. Emanuel tried to do something different. He wanted to introduce merit pay and an extended school day, and there was every sign that he’d get both because the local teachers’ union required the support of 75% of its members to authorize a strike. But … 90% voted to walk off the job.
“The union sees itself as part of a wider struggle … against … the quislings of big business. Not only is it harder to make that argument against a Democratic mayor, but there’s also evidence that Chicagoans are not getting value for their money from the public school system. According to figures from the U.S. Census, the average resident makes about $47,000 a year, while the average teacher gets paid $76,000 a year. (Union sources place the figure at around $71,000, which is still the second highest in the country.)
“Given how well they get paid, you might imagine that Chicago’s schools are international centers of excellence. Sadly, according to a report from the Washington Post, ‘Fourth-graders in Chicago performed an average of nine points worse than the big city average and 16 points worse than the national average on the math section of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the national gold standard for measuring learning.’
“So is Emanuel … the real champion of middle-class tax payers? Yes and no. To buy the strikers off, he offered them a 16% pay increase over the next four years, even though Chicago’s school system faces a … deficit …. The union turned the offer down ….
“The headline teaching union battles have mostly been with Republicans …. But some Democrats are taking up the cause of education reform, too, to the frustration of labor activists. … One result has been that in some races, teaching unions have backed friendly Republicans over reform-minded Democrats. …
“It’s unlikely that either Republican or Democratic politicians really want these bitter fights with teachers …. But America’s sluggish economy has forced both parties to take bold, unpalatable decisions … and the most imaginative officials have tried to use budget cutting as an opportunity to improve test scores and retire bad teachers. For that, they deserve the praise of the tax payer. … These days, austerity … [is] an inescapable necessity.”
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/11/.....?hpt=hp_t3
Roger Rabbit Commentary: First of all, I wouldn’t call teacher salaries averaging $76,000 (or $71,000, depending on who you believe) “austerity.” The bankers and mortgage brokers who wrecked our economy got paid way more, but $70-plus-K is a decent living and looks mighty good to most non-bankster working folks. I wouldn’t call teachers grossly overpaid given that teaching is a demanding profession and most veteran teachers have advanced degrees, and given that the job they do is vital to our nation’s and economy’s future.
Still. In the places where teachers are best-paid, they have become piratical, always demanding more and backing up their demands with extortionate strike tactics that hold parents and kids hostage until public officials cave in.
My frustration with teacher unions (and the public officials who kowtow to them) here in Washington state goes back decades. Throughout my long state career, our spineless state legislators repeatedly met striking teachers’ demands by taking money away from state employees and giving it to teachers. What this did was reward teachers for striking and punish state workers for not striking. Eventually state workers got so fed up they staged an illegal strike and legislators acted like they were shocked.
The teacher unions use a standard tactic. They walk out just before classes are to start in the fall. The teachers know most families need two working parents to make ends meet, and schools function as day cares, and if the schools don’t open what often happens is one of the parents has to stay home from her job to supervise the kids because they aren’t in school. The teachers know most families can’t stand this for very long and hence will put unbearable pressure on elected officials to settle the strike at any cost. So these strikes often settle quickly on the teachers’ terms. And then the following year the teacher unions do it all over again.
Rahm Emmanuel offered Chicago’s teachers a 16% pay raise over four years at a time when most workers’ wages are stagnant or falling, even though the school system is already running a deficit. Not good enough; the teachers. who are already the second-best-paid teachers in the country, rejected it and walked out.
I think the teachers in this case reached for a bridge too far. This isn’t the same thing as poorly-paid beginning teachers making $22,000 a year in rural Texas or Arkansas asking for more money. And this money doesn’t come from rich bankers or greedy corporations; most of Chicago’s school taxes are paid by struggling working families.
It’s hard to defend the teachers on principle. They’re not striking for newer textbooks or more computers. They come across as just plain greedy. And the fact they’re willing to do business with Republicans if they can’t get what they want from Democrats tells you they have no loyalty but are merely mercenaries who will sell themselves to the highest bidder.
Yes, yes, I know teacher unions are major allies of the Democratic Party. That’s all very nice, as far as it goes, but there’s gotta be limits. And if Republicans feel like taking the teacher unions off our hands, if they really want to adopt this problem and make it their own, I say let ’em have the teacher unions. You have to be a Republican to be crazy enough to want them.
@77 What we know now is Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General at the time, was the voice of reason in the Cabinet Room who saved the world from conflagration. The generals wanted to bomb the Cuban missile sites. Their intel at the time led them to believe the nuclear warheads weren’t installed yet. We know now they were, and the Kremlin had delegated launch authority to their field commanders in Cuba. If the U.S. had bombed, those missiles would have flown. U.S. casualties would have been somewhere on the order of 20 million. And the U.S. then would have launched a full-scale strike against the Soviet Union, and they would have replied. The world came within a heartbeat of Armageddon in October 1962.
@79 “I wasn’t there”
Neither was I. But let’s talk about what is the realistic and responsible thing to do if either of us ever finds ourselves in such a situation. The basic principle is, “call the cops and let the professionals handle it.” Given the ubiquity of cellphones and the proximity of downtown Seattle to police resources, dialing 9-1-1 on your cellphone is the obvious thing to do. It’s tempting to believe a crowd of 200 people could stop an assault by half a dozen or so punks. The problem is, if you initiate that action, you don’t know if anyone else will help you. Instead of 200-against-6, it may be 6-against-1. And you don’t know if the attackers are armed or how far they’ll go. We’ve had several incidents in downtown Seattle where roving gangs of young troublemakers have killed people. It’s easy to talk big on an anonymous blog and tell other people they should be brave. But that doesn’t mean anything out on the street.
@79 “But I tell you what, I sent some misbehaving progressives home with busted up faces during wto for roughing up women.”
Really? How come we didn’t read about that in the papers? Because
it didn’t happen.
@78 “The puddypusypissypants is clearly the stupidest motherfucker on the planet.”
Or the biggest liar. Maybe I should say “one of the biggest” because it’s awfully hard to top any number of wingnut bullshitters.
I left out the skin color of the perpetrators on purpose. They were well dressed, were wearing some rather expensive looking jewelry, and if it wasn’t for them shoving people out of the way as they walked along the sidewalk in front of the Central, nobody would have even paid particular notice of them.
They were all black guys, the girl the one guy punched was white, and the girls they attacked were a mixed bag of white, black and one or two Asian.
When the punch was thrown, everyone was “What the fuck?” The girls in the bachelorette party all screamed and everyone crowded around ready to kick some ass. When someone said something about calling the cops the dudes split. It happened quite quickly, and was over before anyone could really take a mind to do anything. We didn’t stand around and do nothing, the Police were there within a minute, and the dudes had already gone up the hill. The cops didn’t want to listen to anyone about who had done it or where they’d run off to. All the cops were concerned with was getting the sidewalk cleared and the crowd dispersed. Fact is, the Tough Guys were lucky the usual gang of bikers weren’t there that night. Even Freight Train (the doorman/bouncer at the Central) was flabbergasted, and he doesn’t take shit from anyone.
The point of this was to point out the fact that not everyone can react as quickly as they would like in a street assault situation, and the cops that had to be within a half a block had already shown up just as folks were getting around to wanting to jump on those guys.
@84, 87
You also have to consider that all those people who were just standing around weren’t being threatened and the assault was over in one punch. You can get yourself in trouble wading into a situation that isn’t yours and is already over. Call the cops, offer what first-aid you can, and leave it at that.
And Obummer had since January to start fund raising… Romney since April? Not a bad haul so far to combat the most negative DUMMOCRAPT attack ever!
These facts are always lost on HA’s ylbuttspigot.
Butt Roger SENILE and STOOOOOPID Wabbit surmised they were skin heads.
So the cops didn’t wanna get involved? Typical Seattle!
Very dumb wabbit!
On another note…
DUMMOCRAPTS vote then vote again! Now didn’t the DUMMOCRAPT party tell her otherwise?
@90
200 agitated folks on a sidewalk and a handful of people that had already run off and you had a low probability of finding. Sounds like the cops made the right call in dealing with the problem that was present when they got there.
Proud Republican & Murder Inc. FEAR Gang of 10 at Ft. Stewart Ga.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....ory_1.html
@89 Big Money is gravitating to the candidate promising billionaire tax cuts — who wudda thunk?
@90 They probably were Democrats, too. After all, they were black. Oh wait, I’ve met at least one black Republican …
When facts confuse rujax, his amoeba brain loses control!
@91 Yep, and it was Democratic Party officials who turned her in — and pushed her off the ballot even though she was a symbolic candidate running in a district the D’s are sure to lose. Unlike Republicans, we don’t sweep our miscreants under the rug.
The Maryland GOP issued the kind of idiotic statement we’ve come to expect from Republicans: “It is a sad state of affairs that Democrat voters considered Wendy Rosen to be their model citizen for the First District and represent them on November’s ballot.”
How the fuck were voters supposed to know she had committed voting fraud? Does the imbecile who speaks for Maryland’s GOP think they’re clairvoyant or something?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....#pagebreak
Roger Rabbit Commentary: It should be noted this is not a case of voter impersonation and GOP voter ID laws wouldn’t have prevented this individual from simultaneously voting in two difference states. Preventing that is a matter of keeping voter registration rolls up to date, which in turn is a matter of money, and Republicans usually go deathly silent when you ask them to pay more taxes to support improvements in election administration.
So checksez forgets the “deal” Tip O’Neill made?
While every other major TV station has a moment of silence to honor 9/11 victims, ObamaTV (aka NBC) plays an interview of the Kardashians Mom.
Outrageous and telling. Watch them run for cover.
http://www.foxnews.com/enterta.....ictims-11/
@92 Can we expect anything but STOOPID from puddypantz?
@99 Call the whaaaaaaaambulance!!
@96 Whether it does or not, I personally think he nailed it when he called you “the stupidest motherfucker on the planet.”
Looks like the Obummer bounce ended after the jobs report came out on Friday and peeps had to think about it over the weekend.
Butt look at the last question and you’ll see where the results come from. Very telling!
Hey Stupid HA Leftists… an assault is an assault. What happened if the girl hit her head on the sidewalk and went into convulsions? Or died? Puddy realizes idiots like y’all forgets incidences like this. Puddy doesn’t forget. What happened if the force of his knockout punch forced her head upon a wall? Morons!
Y’all are some really stupid peeps!
Hey Roger SENILE Wabbit, when you provide dead on arrival arguments… ie EPIC FAYLE from rujax, all he has left is name calling and caterwauling.
See ya SENILE one!
Crapola SENILE one… DUMMOCRAPTS believe in vote early vote often vote in multiple states. Anyone with a clue knows you get one vote only! Well being a DUMMOCRAPT means you don’t have a clue. Maybe she should have bought one?
And they probably voted for Obummer in 2008.
# 67: I’m rather discouraged by the article on George W. Bush’s negligence with respect to 9/11. Up to now, I considered it to be “mere negligence” by a man too lazy to pay attention to the hard stuff – the kind of guy accostomed to getting by on a “gentleman’s “C”, with a father who will set him up regardless.
But in this case, it seems George W. Bush and his neo-conservative appointees in the Pentagon were all focused on Saddam Hussein and Iraq, and ACTIVELY dismissed any suggestion of a threat by Al Quida as a “distraction” from their tunnel-focus on Iraq.
You might remember that a former friend of George W. Bush recounted that Bush told him that he couldn’t be a “great” president unless he was a “wartime” president. Give him a war to him, and everything else – social security privatization, etc., would be possible. I had discounted this because it was impossible to verify, but the accounts in the article point to just this – George W. Bush was determined to go to war in Iraq even BEFORE 9/11, and in fact his focus on Iraq distracted him and his administration from all other threats.
Could the 9/11 attackes be prevented? It’s hard to say. The only way the government could ground every aircraft was because the 9/11 attacks had already occured. Without this real example of danger, the government would not have been able to take such an extreme action. As of August 6, they still didn’t have a focus on the exact nature of the attack, the target, or anything more than a general timetable.
But if they had responded to the warnings, they could have directed a team to collect all the dots coming in from intelligence sources throughout the country, and focused more intelligence assets away from Iraq and towards Al Quida both in the U.S. and abroad. A more specific warning of the impending danger might have been available.
What is clear is that President George W. Bush threw away our last, best chance in an attempt to thwart the crisis. Since appointees in the next G.O.P. administration will probably pull from the ranks of those who cut their teeth in the Bush administration, it’s unlikely they will react any differently than they did eleven years ago.
@108: It does make you wonder about the neocon obsession with Saddam itself. Maybe the mass-psychotic, oedipal incompetence starts there, but at least it’s not just one person alone.
And yet, despite the folly of Iraq, the political culture still rewards politicians who believe on Wednesday what they believed on Monday, regardless of what happened on Tuesday.
US Embassy in Eqypt. US Consolate in Libya. Obummer Sadministration response?
Well, then you have a different situation and you handle it differently… But, you’d still have 200 agitated folks clogging a sidewalk that needed dealt with.
Another poll skewed for DUMMOCRAPTS. It seems there is truly voter discontentment for Obummer yet the slobbering libtard media purposely keeps skewing the samples.
Of course rhpee6033 will disagree.
well so much for dumb fuck Roger Rabbit’s theory of “skinheads”…
hey rabbit-ass, give us some more of your “educated guesses”….
did you misplace your broom? shouldnt you be sweeping up something?
Hey Fraggy, if you are a welder Trail King in South Dakota is hiring. 11,000 jobs available. Get off those stupid left wrong sites dude!
Prolly up his ASS!
@17 Not that I expect many of you are going to get this far now that Pudsucker has stepped into this thread and taken his customary dump on the floor, but…
Ryan’s Catholic. Not that that doesn’t carry its own bunch of baggage, but for the most part “mackerel snappers” aren’t expecting to be whisked up to heaven any time soon on the Great Magic Escalator. The church’s doctrine speaks of Jesus returning “at the end of time” and instructs the faithful to pray for a long life here in earth and work to better the lot of those less fortunate than themselves while here.
@115 Puddy, I factchecked your claim. Do you have anything in writing or it is just annother case of puddy bullshit? Trail King is in Mitchell (205) jobs.
http://southdakota.jobs/
What an ungrateful son-of-a-bitch that puddypussypissypants is!
Ol’ Rujax goes to ALL THE TROUBLE to crown the asshole uncle tom puddypusypissypants “the stupidest motherfucker on the planet” and this is the thanks I get.
I just don’t get it.
You’d think…that with ALL the REALLY stupid motherfuckers on this planet…being named the stupidest would have some cachet. Like the Nobel Prize of Stupid or something. There’s a LOT of competition, like I said.
Shit…some people would bitch if you…well, nevermind.
I’m just disappointed, that’s all.
@103 The bounce is still there. You don’t know how to interpret the bar charts. Or maybe you didn’t actually look at them?
@106 “DUMMOCRAPTS believe in vote early vote often vote in multiple states.”
You base this on what? One illegal vote in the entire country? Because that’s what you can prove — one illegal vote — and a voter ID law wouldn’t have prevented it.
@107 Why don’t you ask them? There’s a better chance you know them than I do.
@113 My latest educated guess is that you disembarked from a UFO about a week ago. Do you like the climate here? How about our people and politics? How long do you plan to stay? Does your UFO need repairs? How’s that coming along? Does it fly on an internal combustion engine? How long did it take you to get here? Which shithole galaxy did you fly in from? Does being green space slime enable to crawl through door cracks?
I used to do that. He was full of shit every fucking time.
As Rujax! so rightly observes, he’s the dumbest motherfucker on the planet. And he lies.
Was it good for you GoatBoy?
GoatBoy does his own mother?
Ewwwww!
@66 (and others)
Regarding puddle’s veracity and the results of schooling him…
He has made the claim that Richard Armitage is a Democrat on numerous occasions – and I replied, as you did Roger, that all evidence is that Armitage is a Republican, and moreover, that his part in the Plame leak was innocent and inadvertent, and that Rove and Libby and Cheney were up to their necks in deceit.
It doesn’t matter. Puddle will never acknowledge that he is wrong, no matter the overwhelming weight of evidence.
re 4: “You DO understand that Bush isn’t running for president this year, don’t you, Lib Despair?”
Neither is Clinton running for president, yet his endorsment of Obama seems to be helpful and welcome.
The fact that Bush’s endorsement of Romney is neither asked for nor welcome speaks volumes. Especially since all Romney wants to do is double-down on Bush’s failed presidency.
Nice Graph of Owebamma’s Debt!
http://www.heritage.org/federa.....taod0lgaag
Obama can’t find time to find time to meet with Netanyahu, but has time to be on the Letterman show.
Priorities!
Well I guess the Jews in this country will love that! Let Iran proceed!
129 – 130
Yawwwwwn. the return of the (yd)iot.. How’d birtherpalooza work out for you?
I am a generous person(unlike most progressives), and have graced you with the answers to your questions above…
re 132: You are not generous. You are an overbearing ignoramus (and I’m being ‘generous’ here).
In Maryland, September 12th is a state holiday, Defenders Day, honoring the Defense of Baltimore in general and Fort McHenry in particular during September 1814, against British Forces in the War of 1812. This was a month after the British had burned Washington D.C.(and chased out of town by a hurricane and a tornado).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenders_Day
From TPM:
This is almost verbatim what sharkjumpin’ bob wrote above.
Can’t we just read Romney press releases ourselves, and dispense with Romney-felating bob’s insipid posts?
Listened to Slick Willard’s his pompous self and read all the Slick Willard campaign statements on the way home today. Can’t make heads or tails what the fk his gripe is over the Obama administration’s reaction to the horrible attack and killings at our Embassy in Libya.
Mitt Romney is simply the most desperate craven politician in my lifetime.