I have no idea where that pic was taken, but I notice most of the cars are darker. People in the south tend to go for lighter color cars, so it’s probably somewhere in the north. The housing style is unique, almost barn-like. So maybe it’s somewhere in the upper-midwest. But it could be the denser northeast, as well, seeing how they make efficient use of space. It’s a poorer section of town, but even in the deep south, the hot weather would dictate that at least a few people would have pools. There are none in this pic. It’s definitely in the north, and it’s too cramped to be the upper-midwest. I’ll say Providence, R.I.
7
Piper Scottspews:
American Airlines sucks, but that’s beside the point and mentioned only for context. On my business trip (last leg today, flying home tomorrow) I brought but one book, Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand. Excellent! Highly recommended. If you’ve seen the movie, then let me tell you the book is infinitely more complex and subtle. And it’s an excellent testimony to the value of hard work, pluck, grit, and the essential superiority of the free enterprise system.
But when the book is finished because I had beaucoup extra hours due to multiple delays, gate changes, and missing a flight at DFW, what then? Buy a new book, which is what I did.
The story of Congressman Charlie Wilson and his part in the CIA arming of the Mujahadeen to fight the Russkies has always fascinated me. While I fully intend to catch the flick (opens 12/21), the book, Charlie Wilson’s War, is fascinating in its own right.
While Charlie Wilson was a Democrat – liberal, too, on social issues – he despised commies almost as much as he despised Jimmy Carter and the government of India! And while he and Congressman John Murtha were buddies, author George Crile makes no bones as to just what a sleaze Murtha was (is???), citing the ABSCAM investigation as an example:
“Watching Representative Murtha on the ABSCAM tapes is not an experience designed to make a citizen feel better about Congress.”
But really, it’s Jimmy Carter who comes in for the most scorn. Snookered by the Russkies, Carter turned from commie lover to Cold Warrier overnight by the Christmas invasion of Afghanistan by the Red Army. He still screwed the pooch, however, with his pathetic response. Cancelling American participation in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow only hurt the athletes. Everyone remembers the ass kicking the U.S. hockey team gave the the Russians, and it’s too bad something similar couldn’t have happened at the summer games.
For HA Happy Hooligan purposes, what makes all this so interesting is that apparently the guy most responsible for arming the Mujahadeen to such a point that they were able to beat the Russians, thus paving the way for Taliban control of Afghanistan wasn’t Ronaldus Magnus Reaganus, but…a…liberal…Democratic…Congressman, one Charlie Wilson!
Ironic, huh?
The Piper
8
YLBspews:
Go catch the flick pooper. Scripted by the excellent Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame – the White House most sane people wished we’d had the last 7 years.
Yeah, Murtha’s not perfect but at least he visited the soldiers in the hospital a lot more than the Chimpmeister you voted for twice and he had a pipeline to the frontline grunts carrying out Georgie’s excellent adventure that gave him a more accurate view of the realities on the ground.
In deep contrast to the fabulists you read in the wingnut-o land, neo-con outlets like NRO.
And next to that other “war hero” Cunningham? Heh. No comparison.
9
YLBspews:
And there he goes bashing Jimmy Carter. Blame it Carter, blame it on Clinton.
Round and round it goes. That bubble sure must be comforting to you Bull Pooper.
10
YLBspews:
Yep, arming Islamist fanatics like UBL sure made the world a better place.
11
YLBspews:
Hmmm. There some steep roofs in the pictures. Aren’t they better in snowy climates? But’s there’s a lot of flat roofs as well. Deciduous trees. Reminds me of Michigan.
12
Piper Scottspews:
@9…YLB…
Did I mention Clinton? Or is this just another of your knee-jerk denial deliriums?
No denying it…Jimmy Carter wasn’t even a one-term wonder. His record was so abysmal, that he was booted in no uncertain terms. The ultimate turd in the punchbowl.
Also…I was only reporting on what I read in a book, so don’t bitch at me; contact the author c/o of his publisher.
The Piper
13
Geovspews:
Allentown, PA. That’s my guess.
7: He had plenty of faults as Pres, but Carter was no commie-lover pre-Afghanistan. He was a centrist Dem who ran as a hawk (no, it’s not incompatible with caring about human rights, though he was plenty selective in his caring) and was increasing the military budget well before Reagan. And you left out his other idiotic post-Afghanistan gesture: reinstitution of Selective Service registration, a useless (from the armed forces’ perspective) exercise that did nothing but create another government bureaucracy and try to and force young men (but not women) to pay attention, however briefly, to the volunteer military.
The beatification of Carter post-presidency has in large measure been earned, but it belies that he signed off on plenty of foreign policies as pres that undermine that image. Random example nobody remembers: giving asylum to the Shah of Iran and his stolen riches, the move that triggered the hostage crisis and doomed his presidency.
@7 Piper
I’m not surprised that a Bush loving Republican would find the story of a horse inspiring. Your party has damn little to offer you.
Today I joined a group of anti-war activists dressed in orange jump suits and wearing black hoods as they walked around Westlake Mall and through Pacific Place (until security kicked us out) and numerous people asked me what is this all about. I responded that this is about the prisoners your government is torturing in Guantanamo Cuba. None of them knew what I was talking about. These are YOUR people Piper.
Nicole, before the Iraq war, did you ever once protest the fact that the U.S. has about 750 military bases in foreign counties, or were you silent?
17
Piper Scottspews:
@15…NB…
And the terrorists at Gitmo are your people?
Your breast beating outrage is selective at best; tell me of your outrage at atrocities committed by Islamic extremists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, just recently, Algeria.
Or do you simply not care what our enemies do as you do all you can to run down your own country? Do you approve of bombing civilians or decapitating prisoners? That your idea of a good time?
BTW…Seabiscuit isn’t the story of a horse as much as it is the story of the horse’s owner, trainer, and two of the horse’s jockeys. Guts, vision, belief in an underdog, and a never give up attitude…traditional Republican attitudes and values.
The Piper
18
Piper Scottspews:
@13…Geov…
I remember well when Carter invited the then homeless Shah to come to the U.S. for cancer treatment. It so pissed off radical elements in Iran that Ayatollah Khomanei was able to use them to humiliate the U.S. in an unprecedented way.
Carter’s pathetic response included sending helicopters filled with U.S. troops on an ill-fated “rescue” mission – ill-equiped, poorly trained, and seat-of-the-pants planned – that resulted in a mid-air collision in a sandstorm and a good number of U.S. personnel killed.
Carter gave his very stupid “inordinate fear of communism” speech at Notre Dame, which was like a red flag to th
Soviet Reds. Only after he had his head handed to him by some good old-fashioned real politick did he reverse course and begin to address reality.
But today’s Netroots/DailyKus/HA Happy Hooligans are no different. You see the enemy in all the wrong places while rooting for the wrong side. Apparently 9/11 wasn’t sufficient to get you to overcome a visceral hatred of anything supported by George W. Bush; you’re still pissed over the 2000 election!
Yet the reality of the world marches on irrespective of your fairy stories.
I lose zero sleep over the terrorists imprisoned at Gitmo. I do lose sleep over their victims.
BTW…there was a lot to doom Carter’s presidency. Not only the Iran hostage crisis, but also stagflation, the then phony oil crisis, and just a general sense that nobody wants the President of the United States to blame his failures on the “malaise” of the American people.
I don’t share the adulation accorded him for many of his post-presidential efforts. A lot of grandstanding, if you ask me, done to rehabilitate a reputation that is unrehabilitatable.
Oh, well! Differences of opinion make for interesting living!
The Piper
19
Nicole Broodinghenspews:
Piper I do not approve of bombing civilians. That is simply one of the reasons I disapprove of YOUR president. Other reasons are his attacks on our civil liberties, imprisonment of people without a trial, and the use of torture. In other words Piper I dislike YOUR president for pretty much the very reasons you say dislike the terrorists. But YOUR president has done greater damage to this country than all the fucking terrorist acts combined. Someday Piper when I find out who you really are -I’m leaning toward Frank Blethen right now-I’m going to snitch you off to the CIA as an Islamist believer plotting to bomb the Space Needle; and after they get done torturing your bony ass you will have agreed that everything I told them about you is true. The one thing you’ll have going in your favor is the CIA will likely consider you too fucking stupid to be a terrorist.
20
Nicole Broodinghenspews:
Inside the CIA’s notorious “black sites”
A Yemeni man never charged by the U.S. details 19 months of brutality and psychological torture — the first in-depth, first-person account from inside the secret U.S. prisons. A Salon exclusive.
18: Piper, we don’t disagree much on Carter’s presidency. Tho I do think it was the hostage crisis, and the preposterous rescue attempt – and his idiotic “malaise” comment – that sealed his fate. The other problems would have been enough for him to lose, but not by the landslide Reagan ultimately managed.
I do think you (like many other conservative commenters here) tend to lump all of us on the “left” together in terms of our politics. I didn’t vote for Carter in ’80 (my first presidential election), and I didn’t vote for Gore in 2000. I *do* think Bush stole the election that year, and there’s plenty of evidence to back me up, but I and every lib, radical, & everything in between that I know was rooting for him to handle 9-11 well. For a moment, not just the country but most of the world (including most Muslims) was united in its abhorrance of 9-11. Now we are by far the most hated country in the world as a direct result of Bush’s inept and unconscionable responses, starting with treating terrorism as a military problem (futile) rather than an intelligence, police, and hearts & minds problem. People hate Bush because of what he has done, especially post-9-11. Before that sad date, Bush was unpopular, ridiculed even for his malapropisms, but he didn’t make people embarrassed for their country, and he didn’t have respected historians debating whether he’s the worst president ever. Now they do.
Personally, I don’t hate Bush. I do hate what he and his cronies have done to my country. Of course, I didn’t hate Ted Bundy, either; I wanted him stopped, and I wanted justice for his victims. And I feel the same way about Bush, whose decisions have led to far more dead.
20: Nicole, thank you for being on topic, but WordPress really isn’t very amenable in its comment threads to pasting in 2500 word articles!
22
Nicole Broodinghenspews:
Geov, I can see where 2500 words may be excessive. I’ll try to do better in the future. You graciously thank me for being on topic. This is an open thread so do you mean that I’m on topic by posting an article about the war crimes of the Bushies? Or do you mean I’m on topic when I call Piper fucking stupid? Anyway, isn’t there a place for anger in this thread against loser ass Republicans like Piper who still think in face of enormous evidence to the contrary that the Republicans are a conservative mainstream political party worthy of admiration or that global warming is a hoax. Really, these are not issues that reasonable people can disagree about. Piper and his ilk support war crimes! FUCK ‘EM!!!!! Yes, loss of my civil liberties and torture and other war crimes being committed with my tax dollars does make me a bit grumpy.
23
Nicole Broodinghenspews:
@18 Piper writes:
“I lose zero sleep over the terrorists imprisoned at Gitmo. I do lose sleep over their victims.”
You know for a fact Piper that every single person imprisoned at Gitmo is a terrorist? You know this because Your president would never lie to you right Piper? And the proven guilt of these imprisoned terrorists is why Your president is rushing to bring them to trial and show the world American Justice in it’s fullest manifestation.
But Your president is not bringing these “terrorists” to trial is he Piper? Why is that Piper?
You write that you lose sleep over the victims of these terrorists. Name one fucking terrorist imprisoned at Gitmo and one victim Piper, and how that victim was victimized.
24
YLBspews:
Did I mention Clinton?
No you didn’t Bull Pooper but you and your “knee-jerk” crowd often do. You mention Clinton and Carter because it keeps your puny heads from exploding at the merest inkling of realization that the idiot you voted twice for is by far the WORST, MOST REVILED, White House occupant of this country’s history.
After Jan 2009, people like you will be known as the exploding pinheads, the crowd who knee jerks the same old tired saws about Carter and Clinton at the first mention of the ugly and despised incompetent GWB.
It’s the future you so richly deserve, crackpiper.
25
Geovspews:
22: Sorry Nicole, I just meant “on topic” to the exchanges above it, as opposed to (random example) a certain rabbit’s habit of dropping in articles on whatever. :)
Thanks for going to Westlake today, too. Viva la grumpiness!
26
Nicole Broodinghenspews:
That’s OK Geov, any opportunity given me to call Piper Scott fucking stupid is appreciated.
27
Geovspews:
23: Nicole, I’m going to step in here and hopefully save Piper the trouble of slapping you down.
When ex-CIA interrogation officer John Kiriakou went on the Today Show last week and confirmed torture at Gitmo, the prisoner he cited was Abu Zubaydah, who, according to Wikipedia – among many other things – was sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan for his role in a bombing plot there, and who is alleged to have been Al-Qaeda’s top military strategist at the time of his capture. Another torture victim named by Kiriakou is a chief suspect in the East Africa embassy bombings. There are very real, very bad people out there, who have plotted terror and have killed people, and, whether at Gitmo or some secret CIA prison or wherever, the US has some of them. We also, as you know, have a lot of innocent as well as tangentially involved people in our net.
The problem with torture is you can’t tell the innocent from the guilty, because its victims will tell you whatever you want to hear. (Which you can then use to buttress your fantasyland foreign policy conclusions; c.f. Curveball.) And none of these people have ever had any due process. Either they’re prisoners of war or they’re innocent til proven guilty; instead the Bushies have been making up laws as they go along to suit their own desires, and that, along with the torture itself, is what’s so appalling about this. Oh, and also that a few billion people around the world now think we’re thugs and hypocrites besides.
“The Bush administration says the Guantanamo captives are terrorists who threaten the United States and its allies.
At the same time, it has released 485 of them since the camp opened in January 2002, sending more than 100 home this year.”
29
Nicole Broodinghenspews:
Respond to #28 Piper you stupid fucking republican.
30
mespews:
# headless lucy says: http://hlrp.blogspot.com/2007/ 12/is-junk-media-making-you-si ck.html
Is junk media making you sick???
12/15/2007 at 10:47 am
“# headless lucy says:
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is a little prick.
12/15/2007 at 10:51 am
# headless lucy says: http://www.latimes.com/busines s/la-fi-fcc14dec14,1,7976868.s tory?coll=la-headlines-busines s&ctrack=1&cset=true
More news about FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, the little prick.
12/15/2007 at 10:55 am
# headless lucy says:
Let’s see if we can put Kevin Martin at the head of this internet search: “the little prick”.
Ridcule is a potent weapon.
12/15/2007 at 10:57 am”
Headless Lucy continues to show her off-subject intellect in this thread….
31
mespews:
Nicole Broodinghen @ 19 says:
“Piper I do not approve of bombing civilians. That is simply one of the reasons I disapprove of YOUR president. Other reasons are his attacks on our civil liberties, imprisonment of people without a trial, and the use of torture. In other words Piper I dislike YOUR president for pretty much the very reasons you say dislike the terrorists. But YOUR president has done greater damage to this country than all the fucking terrorist acts combined. Someday Piper when I find out who you really are -I’m leaning toward Frank Blethen right now-I’m going to snitch you off to the CIA as an Islamist believer plotting to bomb the Space Needle; and after they get done torturing your bony ass you will have agreed that everything I told them about you is true. The one thing you’ll have going in your favor is the CIA will likely consider you too fucking stupid to be a terrorist.”
Number 1 – your reply includes leftists adverbs ‘fucking’ which means you have have no support for your arguements
Number 2 – We are at War with the terrorist which you and your ‘ilk’ seem to be totally ignorant of.
Number 3 – Your asinine comments of referring Piper to a government CIA organization only shows what the IDIOT you are.
You Sir are a total idiot!
32
Nicole Broodinghenspews:
@ 31 My “asinine comments of referring Piper to a government CIA organization” were intended to demonstrate how easy it is in this time of American neo-fascism to implicate someone in a crime. That you, “Me,” didn’t get it “only shows what the IDIOT you are.”
This name calling is quite fun. But I think it is high time to reveal my true self. I, as some of the more astute readers of this blog have surely discerned from my prose, am the ink stained wretch Joel Connelly, opinion maker at the Seattle Pi for these many years. Why I remember once when I was having tea with Jimmy Carter telling him “Mr.President it is imperative that you defeat this upstart “B” movie actor Reagan in the upcoming election. A victory for the Republicans will usher in a decades long period of budget deficits and neo-fascism unlike this country has ever seen before.” Dispute the truth of that prediction you stupid fucking republicans!
And “Me” I notice you passed right by comment #28 without a word. Why is that Me? Cat got your tongue? That was a favorite expression of my old friend Dan Evans.
33
Joel Connelly, AKA Nicole Broodinghenspews:
PS: I think Headless Lucy is hot! I wish she would post at SLOG more often.
34
Piper Scottspews:
@21…Geov…
You are correct: not all leftists think exactly the same. Yet there is a tedious sameness to much of what passes for “thinking” among the HA Happy Hooligans. And there’s a virulent rejection of whatever doesn’t fall into a very thin and one-dimensional orthodoxy. I give you Nicole Broodinghen (a not terribly smart or amusing nom de guerre used no doubt by one of the vulgar HA regulars) as an example. Really…unclever, unoriginal, and singularly uncivilized.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree about the 2000 election. My point, however, is that a lot of the anger directed toward Dubya these days is born out of that election. Were he to emerge victorious on all fronts tomorrow, there are still many on the left who would condemn him for any number of reasons, and a goodly number of Happy Hooligan regulars would be at the forefront of that effort.
Personally, that he’s succeeded in pissing off a lot of people is something else about which I lose no sleep; some people need to be pissed off. Instead of some of the niceties of do-nothing UN-speak, there is a definite place for cowboy diplomacy: cross that line and you’re dead meat, pardner!
Much of the resentment also stems from just that, resentment. When you’re jealous, it’s easy to simply hate the one against whom you feel jealous. Better that than acknowledging your own impotence and craven duplicity. Everybody likes to take shots at the big guy…makes them feel good.
Interesting that Nicolas Sarkozy, while acknowledging differences on Iraq, has beat the drum as loudly as anyone against Iran.
Terrorism is a military problem, along with an intelligence, diplomatic, and every other kind of problem. It needs to be addressed in every way possible. Attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11 was the appropriate thing to do, and it will continue to be necessary in order to prevent the Taliban from returning to power.
Still, there is unprecedented international cooperation among intelligence agencies united to combat terrorism. Witness efforts this past summer and fall in the UK and Germany.
No doubt things at certain points could have been done better; name me a war in U.S. history where the same couldn’t be said. And a lot of what is said now about Dubya was said about Lincoln during the dark days of the Civil War. Today, we tend to romanticize #16 while ignoring how loathed and derided he was in his own time.
The first – ultimately the only – responsiblity of the President of the United States is the protection and safety of the American people. In the discharge of that duty, he’s going to anger a lot of people who have no particular regard for the protection and safety of the American people, ergo Gitmo.
During WW II, FDR dealt harshly with any element that impeded the war effort. I cite often the SCOTUS case, ex parte Quirin that involved a gaggle of German saboteurs landed by submarine on Long Island. Caught, tried by a military tribunal, and executed all within the space of six-weeks…and he smiled the whole time.
That some at Gitmo may have to wait a while is one of the breaks of war. Some 3,000 on 9/11 suffered somewhat harsher breaks, and thousands more since have experienced the same. Frankly, I’m not too crazy about giving any of them any breaks. Let the grist mill grind excedingly fine.
To those who contend that such treatment bodes ill for treatment accorded ours imprisoned by them? Listen, they go straight to beheadings and the like; these are people whose moral compass doesn’t point anywhere near true north.
Too many treat the whole terrorism thing too casually as if it’s not real. Well, 9/11 was very real; people died and people suffer today as a result. Last week’s attack in Algeria was very real; a wonderful example of Muslim against Muslim violence.
And it remains true: the bin Laden’s, et al, of the world don’t want us simply out of the Islamic world, they want us to become a part of the Islamic world – convert or die! If anyone wishes to bitch about an imperialistic attitude, then I offer that as a prime example.
That some now in Gitmo get released late? Again…better safe than sorry. Honestly…on all this stuff, when it comes to the safety and protection of America…always, always, always…better safe than sorry.
The Piper
35
headless lucyspews:
Piper: Shut up and go away. You have nothing to offer.
36
Joel Connelly, AKA Nicole Broodinghenspews:
“That some at Gitmo may have to wait a while is one of the breaks of war.’
Ah, Piper, they are not simply sitting around biding their time until the American justice system exonerates them; they are being tortured, you fucking fool.
Yes Piper, 3000 Americans died on 9-11. Your President was given a memo titled “Osama Bin Laden determined to attack US” in August of that year. He told the intelligence officer to do everything possible to prevent the attack. Just kidding Piper. Actually he told the intelligence officer “OK now you’ve covered your ass” and then went back to clearing brush on his ranch with cattle rented from his neighbors. And Iraq and Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11. It was Saudi citizens Piper who crashed planes into the WTC. You know who the Saudis are Piper. They bailed Bush out of his failing oil business way back when. Bush holds hands with them. 3000 Americans have died in Iraq and the corrupt liar Bush had everything to do with that.
30,000 Americans will be killed by domestic guns this year. 400,000 Americans will be killed by cigarette smoking. Why don’t we torture and kill the gun and cigarette pushers, Piper? Or is their style of killing Americans OK with you because it is the “breaks” of capitalism?
And Piper, surely there must be a role of some sort for a brave Republican warrior like yourself in this “long war.” Why don’t you join the military Piper? Or go to work for Halliburton driving a supply truck in Iraq, Piper? Or you could volunteer at the VA Hospital Piper.
37
headless lucyspews:
Piper: When did Congress declare war?
38
Joel Connelly, AKA Nicole Broodinghenspews:
And yes, I do know that this is a strawman argument.
30,000 Americans will be killed by domestic guns this year. 400,000 Americans will be killed by cigarette smoking. Why don’t we torture and kill the gun and cigarette pushers, Piper? Or is their style of killing Americans OK with you because it is the “breaks” of capitalism?
Well I’m off to soundpolitics.com where the republicans are even more fucking stupid than at this blog. As Ted Kennedy told me once: “it is so difficult explaining things to the unwashed.” I said you are right Senator…
39
Proud to be an Assspews:
Piper Scott accusing Jimmy Carter of being a “commie lover” prior to the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan is simply preposterous, and so flat line stupid as to defy belief. My god, you idiot, he graduated from Annapolis and served 7 years in the Navy. As far as the response to the situation in Afghanistan, what would you have him do? The same thing Ike did re Hungary in 1956? (i.e., nothing). Declare nuclear war? Obviously, foreign policy is not your long suit.
Your diatribe exhibits precisely why it is imperative that wingnut fingers not be allowed near nuclear triggers.
As for the balance of his presidency: Some good. Some bad. I do note that he initiated the deregulation mania (trucking, airlines) that has so gutted our regulatory structure, and contributed to the rampant social decline we witness all around us.
And then the kicker. After the wingnut diatribe, that, without exception I might note, shamelessly adhered to all the standard wingnut talking points about Jimmy Carter in each and every sentence, Piper asserts in a later post:
Yet there is a tedious sameness to much of what passes for “thinking” among the HA Happy Hooligans. And there’s a virulent rejection of whatever doesn’t fall into a very thin and one-dimensional orthodoxy.
Pot. Meet kettle.
40
Proud to be an Assspews:
Piper celebrates Republican virtue, and uses terms like “pluck” and “fortitude” harkening back to those old Horatio Alger stories. But you must remember, Horatio usually got his leg up by marrying the bosses’ daughter, a tradition still popular with ass kissers even today.
You must remember that the reason the state exists in Republican Theology is to loot it.
41
Proud to be an Assspews:
Lee: Springfield, Mass.?
42
headless lucyspews:
re 40: Marrying the boss’ daughter takes ‘gumption’. Pluck and fortitude are what is needed to endure her presence for a lifetime.
43
headless lucyspews:
You all may think that ‘Thr Piper’ is gone. But experience tells me he’s just building up another big head o’ blather.
With the next mighty expellation of billowy verbiage, you will all realize, ‘The Piper’ is here to stay.
‘Cuz when it comes down to it, he likes us better than the nitwits over at uSP.
44
Puddybudspews:
Nicole Boobybrain: ain’t you the woman of tiny mind I argumentally destroyed last week? Why yes it is.
Now this new argument “Westlake Mall and through Pacific Place” is a hoot. Westlake Mall * Pacific Place are Moonbat! locations in blue Seattle. These are the people who probably voted for the same Seattle Council Goldy and YLB – The Clueless One gladly voted for.
45
Puddybudspews:
Piper: YLB – Yelling Libby Bumpkin (TM) likes to project. I didn’t see it either, but he did. When you have a single living cell for a brain, he sees many false echoes in his cranial orifice. In all the years I’ve been monitoring the NorthWest Division of Goldy’s ASSHead Liberal Minds he hasn’t said much of anything unless he first visits Media Morons or Daily Kurse.
46
Puddybudspews:
Nicole Broodinghen says: “Piper I do not approve of bombing civilians. That is simply one of the reasons I disapprove of YOUR president. ”
Really? They were doing this waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before GWB. I seem to remember 1993 WTC bombings. Maybe you were a wee little girl then and your NEA entrenched teachers forgot to teach this bit of history to you!
47
Puddybudspews:
Geov@25: Be a man and delete the Pelletizer’s (TM) dead zones and liven this blog up again.
48
Jane Balough's Dogspews:
You have to give Carter credit for one thing; he did ensure that Reagan got elected.
49
Puddybud's mommyspews:
Now Puddybud you stop that right now! You argumentally (not a real word puddybud)destroyed that nice Nicole Broodinghen last week? In your wet dreams little boy. Puddybud here are some challenges for you.
1) Respond to comment #28
2) Give us a convincing argument that your president is not a lying corrupt cheating torturing war criminal.
3) Tell us moonbats 7 things (one for each year in office)that your president has done to make this a better country. Socially, financially, homeland security, rule of law, civil liberties-pick your angle.
4) Prove argumentally that the citizens of this country are better off today than seven years ago.
And puddybud you make Piper look fucking brilliant! Of course, like Piper, over at Sound Politics you are just another dumb fucking republican. Here, at least, when you talk some ignorant shit, unlike at SP, it stands out from the crowd.
50
Puddybud's mommyspews:
Multiple Chice quiz Puddybud. Which of the following statements are GW Bush lies? And puddybud, pointing out the lies of other presidents is not an acceptable answer.
[A]s with blogosphere conservatives, mainstream conservatives are mostly urban sophisticates with a libertarian bent, not rural evangelicals with a social conservative bent. They’re happy to talk up NASCAR and pickup trucks in public, but in real life they mostly couldn’t care less about either. Ditto for opposing abortion and the odd bit of gay bashing via proxy. But when it comes to Ten Commandments monuments and end times eschatology, they shiver inside just like any mainstream liberal. The only difference is that usually they keep their shivering to themselves because they want to keep everyone in the big tent happy.
But then along comes Huckabee, and guess what? He’s the real deal. Not a guy like George Bush or Ronald Reagan, who talks a soothing game to the snake handlers but then turns around and spends his actual political capital on tax cuts, foreign wars, and deregulating big corporations. Huckabee, it turns out, isn’t just giving lip service to evangelicals, he actually believes all that stuff.
53
Puddybud's mommyspews:
Your president puddybud has made America into one of the most hated countries in the world. And not just because of the war. I guess if you are a religious nut case like Bush and think that God speaks through you and that the end times are at hand you don’t give a shit if the world burns up. You are going to heaven! You fuckers make the Taliban look moderate.
News from Bali:
After tears, jeers and a dramatic eleventh-hour U-turn by the United States, a compromise deal for a new international climate change agenda was finally struck in Bali yesterday, just as talks appeared on the brink of collapse.
Amid extraordinary and emotional scenes, which at one point saw the American delegation booed at the UN climate change conference, ministers from more 180 countries thrashed out agreement after days of wrangling.
54
Puddybud's mommyspews:
Bush wants kangaroo court style justice. Why not? He speaks for God. Bush thinks he is as infallible as the Pope.
The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House’s policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.
The administration has proposed a regulation requiring “coordination” with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps – the military’s 4,000-member uniformed legal force – can be promoted. […]
The former JAG officers say the regulation would end the uniformed lawyers’ role as a check-and-balance on presidential power, because politically appointed lawyers could block the promotion of JAGs who they believe would speak up if they think a White House policy is illegal.
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Puddybud's mommyspews:
Senate Republicans blocked a bill Friday that would restrict the interrogation methods the CIA can use against terrorism suspects. […]
Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., placed a hold on the intelligence bill, preventing the Senate from voting on it while the challenge goes forward.
“I think quite frankly applying the Army field manual (abides by the Geneva convention) to the CIA would be ill-advised and would destroy a program that I think is lawful and helps the country,” Graham said in an interview.
As Spencer Ackerman asks, “Torture is counterproductive for the military but valuable for the CIA?” Apparently, to Graham, yes.
56
Puddybud's mommyspews:
To detect narcotics trafficking, for example, the government has been collecting the phone records of thousands of Americans and others inside the United States who call people in Latin America, according to several government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. But in 2004, one major phone carrier balked at turning over its customers’ records. Worried about possible privacy violations or public relations problems, company executives declined to help the operation, which has not been previously disclosed. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12.....ref=slogin
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Puddybud's mommyspews:
The republican debates:
The “mainstream” Republican candidates, knowing what a tough slog they have ahead of themselves, are making strenuous efforts to look and sound normal for the cameras. Conservative commentators play gamely along, talking about their debates as if they were business as usual, though were a soul innocent of the current GOP’s bizarre standards of normalcy to happen upon one of these scenes, it would probably fill him with confusion and horror.
But most of us are not so well-protected, and are by now kind of inured to the Jesus-infused, torture-happy madness of Republicans. Their best chance is to keep a straight face over the course of the remaining 732 debates, and get us all acclimated to their insane ideas once more. Then Keyes comes along frothing at the mouth. Under ordinary circumstances, his competitors might see this as an opportunity to look more normal by comparison. But their supporters, at least, are wrapped too tight at the moment to see it that way. They see the rampaging id of Republicanism let loose upon their stage, and they are terrified that his mania might be catching. They had just learned to live with Ron Paul, and now this!
No wonder Keyes drives them bonkers. He’s blowing their cover.
58
Puddybudspews:
Nicole or whomever you are: To use the “mighty words” of Yelling Libby Blowhard (TM) – I don’t take direction from you!
There I feel better now.
Remember 62+ libbie blowhards on ‘Wipes while only 18 us whom think right.
59
Puddybud's mommyspews:
In honor of December 15, Bill of Rights Day, a little bit of fun. If only the amendments banning detention without due process and torture (it’s cruel, it’s unusual) were in such good shape.
60
Puddybud's mommyspews:
It seems obvious enough to me that liberals have no real reason to feel warmly about either Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee. Neither man is someone who would make a good President of the United States and neither man is someone who shares my values in any serious way.
That said, I do think liberals have pretty good reason to at least cheer them on a bit from the sidelines as their success represents the flying apart of the conservative coalition that’s been dominating American politics for decades. Ronald Reagan wielded a truly formidable political coalition that reached from the Deep South all across the West and into the suburbs of New Jersey and Illinois. George Bush has presided over a much-diminished version of that coalition — a political bloc that left little margin for error. And then he proceeded to presided over a great deal of error — massive, enormous errors — that’s left the Republican Party looking adrift and meandering and has evidently sent large segments of the conservative base to start taking a rose-colored view of these two kookie political figures and their fringy opinions.
The conservative establishment is now flailing wildly to regain control and I’m almost certain they’ll ultimately succeed in delivering the nomination to an establishment-approved figure. But the movement as a whole is clearly sputtering and sick and the better the outsider candidates do the more it frays.
61
Puddybud's mommyspews:
respond to #28 and #49 puddy
62
Puddybud's mommyspews:
Blackwater kills some Iraqi civilians:
Finally, around 5 p.m., [a man who’s only identified as Haythem] phoned his brother who worked at the hospital closest to Nissour Square. His brother went to the emergency room, then to the morgue. He learned that all of the bodies there were identified — except for two that were completely burned with body parts missing. His brother then headed to the square, where he called Haythem to tell him he had found a charred white car with a license plate number written in the sand. The numerals and letters matched the family’s plate.
“Haythem identified his son from what was left of his shoes. His forehead and brains were missing and his skin completely burned. He identified his wife of 20 years by a dental bridge.
“With tears in his eyes, Haythem described his beloved wife and son. “If you perceive marriage as half of your life, Mohasin was my best half,” he said. “We were always together. I don’t know how to manage my life or care for my other two children without her.
63
Why we torture!spews:
WHY WE TORTURE….Responding to yesterday’s post about the conservative moral justification for the use of waterboarding, stress positions, etc. against detainees in American custody, one of my conservative correspondents wrote to me this morning to explain why he supports the torture of suspected terrorists. Beneath the intellectual superstructure that we often hear from torture apologists, I suspect that what he wrote pretty closely mirrors the actual underlying beliefs that we’re up against when we liberals argue against the morality of torture. So without comment, here’s what he sent me:
I want our side to win. Or maybe more accurately, I don’t want our side to lose….As with any other form of violence, motivation is everything. A cop shooting a murderer is not the same as a murderer shooting an innocent victim, although both use guns, and at the end, someone is bleeding and dying.
You’d be amazed at how many people find these things nearly equivalent. A leftist I know sees no difference between a Palestinian child dying from a stray Israeli bullet during a firefight, and an Israeli child dying when a Palestinian terrorist puts the barrel of a gun to the kid’s forehead and blows his brains across the back wall of the child’s bedroom. In his two-dimensional perception, the only important factor is that both resulted in a dead child. Avoiding true moral analysis and motivations allows him to skirt the concept of “evil,” a term which makes many liberals intensely uncomfortable.
John Kiriakou said that waterboarding a terrorist stopped dozens of attacks. Dozens. Not attacks on military targets, but attacks on innocent non-combatants.
That was the motivation.
The terrorists who torture and kill our prisoners (never something as benign as waterboarding) don’t do it because they need information to save innocent people. They do it because they like it, because they want to hurt or kill someone.
At some point you have to decide if a known terrorist having a very bad day (after which he goes back to a hot meal and a cot) is more of a moral problem than allowing a terrorist to blow up a building full of people.
Yes, it’s good if we do it, when it’s for the right reasons. So far, it’s been for the right reasons. And no, it isn’t good when it’s done to us, for the reasons it has been done to us. Get back to me when some enemy tortures one of our soldiers in order to save innocent lives.
Got it?
64
Puddybudspews:
Nicole Boobyhen:
As with blogosphere conservatives, mainstream conservatives are mostly urban sophisticates with a libertarian bent, not rural evangelicals with a social conservative bent.
I believe in donkoinfanticide (puddy word). Do you know what it means? It means culling the liberal herd. Less of your people to vote I am sad my people have culled over 13 MM black babies since 1973.
They’re happy to talk up NASCAR and pickup trucks in public, but in real life they mostly couldn’t care less about either.
In our family we call it Nasty Car. Not a topic of conversation at my jobs or our house.
Ditto for opposing abortion and the odd bit of gay bashing via proxy.
I stated my positions clearly and powerfully. I have placed many GLA, GLAAD, and other words. I placed Margaret Sanger words. She managed to bribe black leaders into culling the herd .
But when it comes to Ten Commandments monuments and end times eschatology, they shiver inside just like any mainstream liberal.
I’m sorry this makes no sense. When have liberals obeyed the 10 Commandments. Your side makes them the 10 Suggestions. I write about Daniel and Revelation whenever I can.
The only difference is that usually they keep their shivering to themselves because they want to keep everyone in the big tent happy.
I could care less about the liberal big tent or action network or rainbow coalition.
But then along comes Huckabee, and guess what? He’s the real deal. Not a guy like George Bush or Ronald Reagan, who talks a soothing game to the snake handlers but then turns around and spends his actual political capital on tax cuts, foreign wars, and deregulating big corporations. Huckabee, it turns out, isn’t just giving lip service to evangelicals, he actually believes all that stuff.
That’s nice. I am not a Huckabee fan.
65
puddybud's mommyspews:
Rich are getting richer faster.
The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 ($524.8 billion) exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans ($383.4 billion), according to a new report by the Congressional Budget Office. “On average, incomes for the top 1 percent of households rose by $465,700 each, or 42.6 percent after adjusting for inflation. The incomes of the poorest fifth rose by $200, or 1.3 percent, and the middle fifth increased by $2,400 or 4.3 percent.”
By November 2005, three different federal judges had issued ironclad preservation-of-evidence orders in cases involving terror suspects and Guantánamo detainees. That was when the CIA elected to destroy tapes of the interrogations and waterboarding of two suspected Al Qaeda members. To the inherent criminality of torture, add contempt of court.
The revelation of those CIA videotapes and their destruction has inspired a leakfest in Washington and Langley, with fingers pointing everywhere and nowhere. “There are other people at the agency who know about this far better than I,” says CIA director Michael Hayden. Meanwhile, “other people at the agency” keep shifting blame between the legal office and the Directorate of Operations. The White House and Justice Department claim they advised the CIA to keep the tapes. But given George W. Bush’s passion for extralegal imprisonment and “extreme interrogation,” the agency had every reason to see mixed signals from Pennsylvania Avenue.
69
Puddybudspews:
Now for the zinger. My mother is dead and been dead a long time. She was a Christian you you can’t channel her!
70
Puddybudspews:
@65: Amazing all those Mattel Toy & Screen Actors Guild Millionaires are skewing the values.
71
Puddybudspews:
Should be: and you, you can’t channel her.
72
Puddybudspews:
Did you see the most of the richest Americans are liberal? That’s an amazing stat.
73
puddybud's mommyspews:
Moving to revive congressional zeal for holding the Bush administration accountable, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed contempt resolutions on Thursday against two of four White House officials who have refused to comply fully with committee subpoenas related to the U.S. attorneys scandal. The resolutions, targeting White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, passed 12 to 7, with Republicans Charles Grassley of Iowa and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania voting for the measure.
Specter’s vote came only after his attempts to appease the White House reached an impasse. Specter told the committee that he had accepted the administration’s ‘s position that presidential aides should be allowed to testify in private, not under oath, and without a transcript. But he drew the line at a White House demand that inquiries into the U.S. Attorney scandal come to an end. “We cannot abrogate or relinquish our constitutional responsibilities,” the Republican insisted last wee
74
YLBspews:
Oh hi Puddybud. Here’s a little something for you to chew over:
That Presidential “R” in 2008 will stand for nothing I believe in. The guy is slick but doesn’t even look competent. And if Republican primary voters are that stupid, they deserve to lose next Fall. To pass over McCain, Thompson, Romney and Giuliani ONLY because someone’s slick and a Jesus Freak, which makes him your average televangelist – forget it.
Now who said those awful things about Mike Huckabee PWhacko? Some “leftist”? No, creepy, ugly Dan Riehl, master right wing bullshit artist said that.
@64 “I could care less about the liberal big tent or action network or rainbow coalition.”
Really puddy-why don’t you tell us how much less you could care?
76
puddybud's mommyspews:
Books by Iraq soldiers reviewed:
In House to House: An Epic Memoir of War, Staff Sergeant David Bellavia—a gung-ho supporter of the Iraq war—casually recounts how in 2004, while his platoon was on just its second patrol in Iraq,
a civilian candy truck tried to merge with a column of our armored vehicles, only to get run over and squashed. The occupants were smashed beyond recognition. Our first sight of death was a man and his wife both ripped open and dismembered, their intestines strewn across shattered boxes of candy bars. The entire platoon hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours. We stopped, and as we stood guard around the wreckage, we grew increasingly hungry. Finally, I stole a few nibbles from one of the cleaner candy bars. Others wiped away the gore and fuel from the wrappers and joined me.
This incident is notable mainly for the fact that the platoon stopped; from the many accounts I have read of the Iraq war, when a US convoy runs over a car, it usually just keeps going.
77
puddybud's mommyspews:
In Chasing Ghosts, Paul Rieckhoff, a graduate of Amherst who led a platoon of Army National Guardsmen in Iraq, describes going out on routine house raids in the summer of 2003 during which his men broke down doors, zipcuffed all the men in sight, and turned rooms upside down in the search for weapons, few of which they ever found. These raids, Rieckhoff writes, “were nasty business. Anybody who enjoyed them was sick. Sometimes I felt like I was a member of the Brown shirts in Nazi Germany.” As Rieckhoff later discovered, some of his men were stealing cash found on these raids—a practice that, as other accounts suggest, is not at all uncommon.
78
puddybud's mommyspews:
In Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the US Army, Kayla Williams, an Arabic-speaking military intelligence officer, tells of attending an interrogation session in Mosul in the fall of 2003 in which US soldiers remove the clothes of a prisoner in a cage and then mock him: “Mock his manhood. Mock his sexual prowess. Ridicule the size of his genitals.” The soldiers flicked lit cigarette butts at the prisoner and smacked him across the face. Williams later learned that a prisoner died in the same cage she had visited.
79
puddybud's mommyspews:
Finally, there are limitations imposed by the political climate in which the press works. Images that seem too graphic or unsettling can cause an uproar. When, for instance, The New York Times in January 2007 ran a photo of a US soldier lying mortally wounded on the ground, the paper was angrily accused of showing disrespect for the troops. More generally, the conduct of US soldiers in the field remains a highly sensitive subject. News organizations that show soldiers in a bad light run the risk of being labeled anti-American, unpatriotic, or—worst of all—”against the troops.” In July, for instance, when The New Republic ran a column by a private that recounted several instances of bad behavior by US soldiers, he and the magazine were viciously attacked by conservative bloggers. Most Americans simply do not want to know too much about the acts being carried out in their name, and this serves as a powerful deterrent to editors and producers.
80
puddybud's mommyspews:
In a cluster of mud-hut homes across from the platoon’s position, old ladies in black robes stand outside, “staring at the pale, white ass of a Marine” who, naked from the waist down, is “taking a dump in their front yard.” A Marine says to Wright, “Can you imagine if this was reversed, and some army came into suburbia and was crapping in everyone’s front lawns? It’s fucking wil
81
puddybud's mommyspews:
Entering the city with the Marines, Wright gets to see just how devastating the impact has been. Smoke curls from collapsed structures, and houses facing the road are pockmarked and cratered. The corpses of Iraqi attackers are scattered on the road leading out of the city. Run over repeatedly by tracked vehicles, “they are flattened, with their entrails squished out,” Wright notes, adding:
We pass a bus, smashed and burned, with charred human remains sitting upright in some windows. There’s a man in the road with no head and a dead little girl, too, about three or four, lying on her back. She’s wearing a dress and has no legs.
82
puddybud's mommyspews:
They are soon approached by five Iraqis dragging two bundles. Inside are two teenaged boys. Both have been wounded—one gravely. Examining him, Doc Bryan, a medic, can see that he’s been shot with 5.56mm rounds, a caliber used by the Americans. “Marines shot this boy!” he roars. It’s now clear that the distant figures who’d been shot at were not fighters with rifles but shepherds with canes.
Fick runs to company headquarters and explains what has happened. He wants the boys evacuated to a field hospital. The major on duty informs him that Lieutenant Colonel Ferrando is sleeping and can’t be disturbed. Fick is livid:
I wanted to tell the major that we were Americans, that Americans don’t shoot kids and let them die, that the men in my platoon had to be able to look themselves in the mirror for the rest of their lives.
83
puddybud's mommyspews:
After one car has been shot at, a Marine named Graves goes to help a little girl cowering in the back seat, her eyes wide open. As he goes to pick her up, “thinking about what medical supplies he might need to treat her…the top of her head slides off and her brains fall out,” Wright writes. As Graves steps back in horror, his boot slips in the girl’s brains. “This is the event that is going to get to me when I go home,” he says.
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puddybud's mommyspews:
“I think it’s bullshit how these fucking civilians are dying!” rages Jeffrey Carazales, a lance corporal from Texas, after he shoots at a building that clearly has civilians in it:
They’re worse off than the guys that are shooting at us. They don’t even have a chance. Do you think people at home are going to see this—all these women and children we’re killing? Fuck no. Back home they’re glorifying this motherfucker, I guarantee you. Saying our president is a fucking hero for getting us into this bitch. He ain’t even a real Texan.
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puddybud's mommyspews:
When, on the morning of April 6, they finally reach the outskirts of Baghdad, they confront what Wright calls a horrorscape of human corpses and of dead cows—bloated to twice their normal size—lying in ditches. Sergeant Espera’s vehicle swerves to avoid running over a human head lying in the road. When the vehicle turns, he looks up to see a dog eating a corpse. “Can it get any sicker than this?” he asks. Reflecting back on the battalion’s performance to this point, he says, “Do you realize the shit we’ve done here, the people we’ve killed? Back home in the civilian world, if we did this, we would go to prison.”
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puddybud's mommyspews:
And Puddy, what do you think about the estimated 10,000 Iraqi civilians killed by American soldiers and bombs and artillery during the invasion? If we were invaded by another country and all those civilians were killed would you feel liberated? Would you be grateful?
87
Puddybudspews:
Crazed liberal@79 typed: “In July, for instance, when The New Republic ran a column by a private that recounted several instances of bad behavior by US soldiers, he and the magazine were viciously attacked by conservative bloggers. Most Americans simply do not want to know too much about the acts being carried out in their name, and this serves as a powerful deterrent to editors and producers.”
Hmmm… The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, a liberal voting MSM lefty, has a differing view, complete with New Republic words.
88
Puddybudspews:
Crazed liberal@79: In reading the July 2007 New Republic article, Franklin Foer used almost all of 13 pages (how many CO2 removing trees does this equate to) of that issue to allege a “military conspiracy” (more phony soldering?). This “conspiracy” occurred in three middle east countries which spanned four bases, involved dozens of soldiers, from privates to colonels, all of them put in a disparaging light.
When I searched the New Republic waiting for a retraction, Foer and The New Republic won’t apologize to all those great soldiers working hard in Iraq and Kuwait they accused of atrocities in his “fine” magazine. And of course the Crazed liberal@79, you drank the stick white kool-aid!
89
Puddybudspews:
Crazed liberal@79: If you bothered to visit the source of Yelling Libby Blatherer (TM) sticky white kool-aid, they even dissed the New Republic. Huh, what you say Puddy, Media Morons? YES.
Fair use claws and copyreallyleft to the URL owner
“Essentially, what unnerved me is that a magazine like TNR was so completely divorced from the military that they did not even have one person on staff — one single person — who was personally connected to a career professional in the military (and Elspeth Reeve, an intern at TNR who is now married to Beauchamp — himself not a career professional in the military — doesn’t count), who could have a) helped them screen what was being sent in the first place, and b) helped them figure out how to fact-check the guy (let alone, after the fact, help them figure out what was really going on). I mean, seriously, how is it that at this point the best de facto depictions of life in-country come … in Doonesbury?! (The very liberal cartoonist Gary Trudeau is, in a strange twist of journalism, apparently far better wired in to real soldiers on the ground than is the editor of a major magazine? How did this happen?)
Folks, we are six freaking years into a war now. Regardless of how you or I or Eric or anybody feels about the causality of these wars, the fact of these wars remain important for all of us to understand. We are six years into a period in which the military and issues of war have been, like, you know, sort of central. How could TNR remain so divorced from anyone in the military for so long that they eventually fell for this?”
90
Puddybudspews:
Crazed liberal@79: Why do I read Media Morons at times? Yelling Libby Blatherer ™ – The Clueless One (TM) likes posts from his stick white kool-aid resource. I need to fact check because sometimes Media Morons will print another piece to diss Yelling Libby Blatherer ™ – The Clueless One (TM) piece. And how can you “know thy enemy” unless you read from them?
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Puddybudspews:
Crazed liberal@79: Wow crazed liberal, you plagiarized this URL and didn’t give it attribution.
You know Persesser Darryl needs to purge all of your posts. You broke one or more of the four “tenets” of the HA Comment Blog Police.
* Deliberately off-topic comments (except in “open threads”), as well as pointless comments on these comments.
* Deliberately repetitive comments, particularly those intended to repeat and a reinforce slander that has already been sufficiently debunked.
* Large chunks of cut-and-paste from copyrighted works or other blogs and comment threads. – Yes
* Blatant sock puppetry. – Puddybud’s mommy? – Yes
Lets see if Perfesser Darryl is true to himself or as I suspect a paper tiger!
Come on Perfesser, do yo thing!
92
YLBspews:
90 – And PStupid drinks in HUGE draughts of the white sticky salty fluid from lakes of right wing bullshit courtesy of the rich wingnut assholes that he worships: Murdoch, Scaife, Moon, Koch, Coors and many others.
The swiss cheese holes in his decaying brain are getting wider and deeper as he plunges further and further into the addiction of “thinking right” which in wingnut bullshit fantasyland is newspeak for “utterly wrong thinking” – a world where down is up and wrong is right.
Already PuddyBS has reconciled Darth Cheney’s and Norm P’s bullshit about Iran. In fact there’s no right wing bullshit that PFool won’t spin into yet another fantasy of victory for his bankrupt worldview.
The inexorable march of PStupido’s worldview into the abyss of insanity continues, on and on until Nov 2008. If he knows what’s good for him, PSilly will lay off the wingnut bullshit lest he pops a weakening vein in his disintegrating grey matter when the moment of truth, indeed reality, draws nigh.
93
Right Stuffspews:
headless lucy says:
Piper: When did Congress declare war?
12/15/2007 at 8:14 pm
Here lies the root of the HA-kookaid drinking-Nutroots foolishness. 9/11/2001
Most of us finally caught on……..WE ARE AT WAR.
War was declared on the United States.
The liberal handwringing HA kooks still don’t get it….
To them the terrorists are just “mothers and fathers”.
94
YLBspews:
Wrong Stuff @ 93
No it is YOU who is the “kook”. Ron Paul happens to disagree about the declaration of war against what? A tactic?
Show me a link to where anyone here at HA declares that Islamist cultists are just “mothers and fathers” and we shouldn’t defend ourselves.
And tell me how many bodies you want to stack before we can declare “victory” and go home?
I should know better than to expect coherent answers from yet another “kook”.
95
Puddybudspews:
Yelling Libby Bullshitter AKA The Clueless One (TM) is a-blathering again.
Not only will he have real problems showing the rest of you HorsesASSHoles where I used any right-wing sites lately, we can attribute his know nothing posting style on his self-imposed moratorium of not visiting MMorons or DKurse. He uses his worn-out clichés, retreading them every month because he has nothing new in his repertoire (if you stretch you imagination and call it that).
May I present some of his “best work”
1) rich wingnut assholes that he worships: Murdoch, Scaife, Moon, Koch, Coors and many others.
Puddy asks – When? I posted from liberal MSM sites these past few weeks. Daddy Love asked for my Lexis-Nexis subscription. Nope!
2) Already PuddyBS has reconciled Darth Cheney’s and Norm P’s bullshit about Iran.
Citation? URL? Entry?
3) white sticky salty fluid – Hmmm…? You Poor Man. He can’t even think of something original. He uses my lines against him as a retort. Typical. Sad but typical.
If you really scrutinize the postings of this idiot gene savant, you’d realize there are twin neon lights flashing in his eyes displaying “Space Available Here”.
Rock on Yelling Libby Bullshitter (TM) AKA The Clueless One (TM)
96
Right Stuffspews:
@94
It was liberal handwringer Rosie O….
She is the fringe of the Democrats as are many of the HA nutroot faithful. “Well, then, get away from the fear. Don’t fear the terrorists. They’re mothers and fathers.”
Ron Paul? you think he is mainstream? please….
We are at war with Al Qaeda, Violent Islamic fundamentalists, and terrorists.
And tell me how many bodies you want to stack before we can declare “victory” and go home?
We stay on the offensive. Killing and capturing Al Qaeda and terrorists around the globe. We declare victory when Violent Islamic Fundalmentlism is destroyed as an ideology.
We press the fight to them.
We don’t wait around wringing our hands, hoping they don’t attack us again…
97
Puddybudspews:
Tight Stuff: Yelling Libby Bullshitter AKA The Clueless One (TM) is a fan of Rosie O’Donnell. Yelling Libby Bullshitter AKA The Clueless One (TM)’s head is so far up her but he sees through her eyes.
98
Puddybudspews:
Yelling Libby Bullshitter AKA The Clueless One (TM), call in your son and maybe he can improve your posting style.
99
Puddybudspews:
Lee: Cleveland Ave, Trenton NJ
100
Daddy Lovespews:
Pud Daddy Love asked for my Lexis-Nexis subscription.
No, I didn’t.
101
Daddy Lovespews:
63 Why we torture!
I see you read Kevin Drum’s Washington Monthly blog Political Animal.
To bad you like to steal whole pieces and post them without attribution.
I’d like to request that WWT’s post @ 6 be deleted as a violation of copyright.
Here’s the post he/she stole:
Crap. Washington Monthly always craps out on Sundays, for some reason. Oh, well, it’s http://www.washingtonmonthly.com
102
Daddy Lovespews:
that’s “I’d like to request that WWT’s post @ 63 be deleted as a violation of copyright.
103
Daddy Lovespews:
93 RS
Here lies the root of the HA-kookaid drinking-Nutroots foolishness.
9/11/2001
Most of us finally caught on……..WE ARE AT WAR.
War was declared on the United States.
Daddy Love: I am projecting like Yelling Libby Bullshitter ™ AKA The Clueless One ™. You asked me to post certain URLs as proof. Those URLs are from Lexis-Nexis. Unless you own one you can’t find the stuff by transcript. I told you to get your own subscription.
106
Daddy Lovespews:
96 RS
We are at war with Al Qaeda, Violent Islamic fundamentalists, and terrorists.
Well, then it seems like bankrupting the country and gutting our military and National Guard to kill a bunch of civilians in Iraq isn’t much of a way of going about a “war with Al Qaeda, Violent Islamic fundamentalists, and terrorists.”
We stay on the offensive. Killing and capturing Al Qaeda and terrorists around the globe. We declare victory when Violent Islamic Fundalmentalism is destroyed as an ideology.
We press the fight to them.
Do you mean like the Liberty 7, who just won one acquittal and six mistrials after the government agents provocateur bribed and entrapped these paintball-shooting losers into talking about harebrained “attacks” on US civilian targets they were not capable of carrying out? Is that “staying on offense?” Or is “staying on offense” allowing UBL to live out his days in Pakistani tribal areas while we support Musharraf’s dictatorship?
BTW, much like Christians, there are lots and lots of “Islamic fundamentalists” and very few of them have any involvement with any violent acts. If we are so against “violent Islamic fundamentalists,” why are we so quiet when Saudi Arabia’s Wahabbis send money into Iraq to arm Sunnis? The government’s actions do not match your words.
We don’t wait around wringing our hands, hoping they don’t attack us again…
No, you start endless, futile, expensive, and bloody wars with countries who are unconnected to terrorist attacks on the US while allowing the mastermind of those attacks to escape. Good plan!
107
Right Stuffspews:
@103
Daddy Love says:
93 RS
Here lies the root of the HA-kookaid drinking-Nutroots foolishness.
9/11/2001
Most of us finally caught on……..WE ARE AT WAR.
War was declared on the United States.
Not by Iraq.
UN Resolution 1441
108
Puddybudspews:
Daddy Love: I’m with you.
Delete all of “Puddybud’s mommy” entries and the one from “Why We Torture”.
Sooooooooooooooo Perfesser Darryl, you up to the many deletions, or because there are many more Moonbat entries, it will cause you heartburn to do it?
109
Daddy Lovespews:
105 Pud
Then you can post the relevant titles, dates, etc. so that your assertions can be verified. Citations matter. Otherwise it’s just your stupid opinion that you claim without proof is supported by some sort of content.
Here’s an opportunity to show that your heart is in the right place: most of the richest Americans are liberal? That’s an amazing stat.
It is amazing, and almost certainly completely different from what you claim. I essentially consider this “stat” to be some sort of your usual bullshit. Anyone who reads it should consider it similarly, unless you provide a citation allowing us to evaluate the source material independently. You know, who conducted the study, when and where it was published, who was surveyed, what they asked or what data they analyzed, grown-up stuff like that.
You know, I’m not holding my breath.
110
Daddy Lovespews:
But regardless, even if “most of the richest Americans are liberal,” What conclusions can we draw from this? Rich people are smarter? Republicans are poor dumbasses? Take your pick.
Conservatives seem to think that somehow rich people who support policies that would help the poor and working people is hypocritical, or they cynically suggest this while knowing full well it’s not true. It’s called “projection,” because you know that if you were rich you wouln’t give a shit about the poor or working people, so you project that attitude onto others.
111
puddybud's mommyspews:
Puddy, your call for Darrell to delete all my comments, (yes they were lifted unattributed from many sites. Any dumbass could tell that.) reminds me of a couple brave Republican warriors who attended the last two anti-war marches I attended in Seattle. Both of them were of military age. Neither had ever served in the military and they told me they had no intention of joining the military. Yet they are avid supporters of the two wars Bush is losing in Afghanistan and Iraq. They actually taunted members of Veterans For Peace calling them cowards and telling them to go “cry in Canada.” And when ever they were approached by a marcher they hollered for the cops. These brave Republican warriors are your kind Puddy pud. Quick Puddy, holler for Darryl again!!
112
puddybud's mommyspews:
Wow Pu! You have lexis-nexis. Why don’t you use it to answer these questions for us librals?
1) Respond to comment #28
2) Give us a convincing argument that your president is not a lying corrupt cheating torturing war criminal.
3) Tell us moonbats 7 things (one for each year in office)that your president has done to make this a better country. Socially, financially, homeland security, rule of law, civil liberties-pick your angle.
4) Prove argumentally (your word Pud)that the citizens of this country are better off today than seven years ago.
113
puddybud's mommyspews:
[W]hat is worrying Republicans these days is that this tepid rank-and-file reception to the best the party has to offer suggests that the Republican Party is hitting a wall after dominating American politics for most of the last 35 years. Republican voters are reacting to — or rather, not reacting to — a field of presidential candidates who have defined their candidacies with familiar, even musty, Republican promises, slogans and policies.
114
puddybud's mommyspews:
[Army Sgt. Darren Manzella], a medic who served in Iraq for a year, currently serves as medical liaison for the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Kuwait, where he says he is “out” to his entire chain of command, including a three-star general. After leaving Iraq, he started receiving anonymous emails warning him about his openness that suggested he was being watched, so he went to his commander to head off an investigation he felt was coming. “I didn’t know how else to do it,” he tells Stahl, acknowledging that he initiated an investigation of himself by violating the policy. “I felt more comfortable being the one to say, ‘This is what is real,’” Manzella says.
He then says his commander reported him, as he was obliged to do, and then “I had to go see my battalion commander, who read me my rights,” he says. He turned over pictures of him and his boyfriend, including video of a passionate kiss, to aid the investigation. But to his surprise, “I was told to go back to work. There was no evidence of homosexuality,” says Manzella. “‘You’re not gay,’” he says his superiors told him. This response confused him and, he says, the closest a superior officer came to addressing his sexuality was to say “I don’t care if you’re gay or not.”
115
puddybud's mommyspews:
More than anything else, what these revelations highlight — yet again — is that the U.S. has become precisely the kind of surveillance state that we were always told was the hallmark of tyrannical societies, with literally no limits on the government’s ability or willingness to spy on its own citizens and to maintain vast dossiers on those activities. The vast bulk of those on whom the Government spies have never been accused, let alone convicted, of having done anything wrong. One can dismiss those observations as hyperbole if one likes — people want to believe that their own government is basically benevolent and “tyranny” is something that happens somewhere else — but publicly available facts simply compel the conclusion that, by definition, we live in a lawless surveillance state, and most of our political officials are indifferent to, if not supportive of, that development.
116
puddybud's mommyspews:
The cooperation between the various military/intelligence branches of the Federal Government — particularly the Pentagon and the NSA — and the private telecommunications corporations is extraordinary and endless. They really are, in every respect, virtually indistinguishable. The Federal Government has its hands dug deeply into the entire ostensibly “private” telecommunications infrastructure and, in return, the nation’s telecoms are recipients of enormous amounts of revenues by virtue of turning themselves into branches of the Federal Government.
There simply is no separation between these corporations and the military and intelligence agencies of the Federal Government. They meet and plan and agree so frequently, and at such high levels, that they practically form a consortium.
117
puddybud's mommyspews:
More Republican values:
As Mike Huckabee gains in the polls, the former Arkansas governor is finding that his record in office is getting more scrutiny. One issue likely to get attention is his handling of a sensitive family matter: allegations that one of his sons was involved in the hanging of a stray dog at a Boy Scout camp in 1998. The incident led to the dismissal of David Huckabee, then 17, from his job as a counselor at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, Ark. It also prompted the local prosecuting attorney— bombarded with complaints generated by a national animal-rights group—to write a letter to the Arkansas state police seeking help investigating whether David and another teenager had violated state animal-cruelty laws. The state police never granted the request, and no charges were ever filed. But John Bailey, then the director of Arkansas’s state police, tells NEWSWEEK that Governor Huckabee’s chief of staff and personal lawyer both leaned on him to write a letter officially denying the local prosecutor’s request. Bailey, a career officer who had been appointed chief by Huckabee’s Democratic predecessor, said he viewed the lawyer’s intervention as improper and terminated the conversation. Seven months later, he was called into Huckabee’s office and fired.
118
puddybud's mommyspews:
When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.
[…]
Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.
119
puddybud's mommyspews:
TX Governor Rick Perry bashes Bush’s fiscal record.
During a campaign stop for Rudy Giuliani this week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) criticized President Bush, saying “George Bush isn’t and he never was” a “real fiscal conservative” or “a bonafide Reagan Republican.” Perry, who succeeded Bush in Texas, also criticized Bush’s tenure as governor:
“Rudy is a real fiscal conservative. He’s a bonafide Reagan Republican. George Bush isn’t and he never was,” Perry said on the videotape.
The Governor extolled Giuliani’s conservative credentials. But at the expense of President Bush, who Perry characterized as too big a spender — even during his days in Texas.
“George Bush was spending money,” Perry told the gathering. “George has never ever been a fiscal conservative.”
120
YLBspews:
PStupid – you are going down. It’s all collapsing.
You are so desperate, you even took a Lexis Nexis sub to sling more wingnut bullshit here at little old HA?
What a loser!
Stick around PStupid. I’m going to be laughing at each brick popping out of the crumbling edifice of your bullshit worldview.
Pop, pop, pop… until your shrinking pinhead pops on election day, Nov 2008.
121
YLBspews:
LMAO!!!
122
puddybud's mommyspews:
YLB is right Puddy. The Republican party is out of the mainstream. It is dead and stinking. It practices not a single one of it’s professed beliefs. If you disagree Puddy, don’t just call me names, prove me wrong: show me a single professed Republican belief that the party leaders actually practice.
123
puddybud's mommyspews:
The top Republican member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee and a leading Democratic voice on security joined in a blistering attack on the CIA and on the complex network of U.S. intelligence agencies in general.
“We want to hold the (intelligence) community accountable for what’s happened to these tapes,” Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We will issue subpoenas … Our investigation should move forward.
He said he had no confidence in U.S. intelligence leadership. “You’ve got a community that’s incompetent. They are arrogant. And they are political. And they don’t believe that they are accountable to anybody. They don’t believe that they’re accountable to the president.”
Hoekstra said CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden should answer for what he called misleading statements by the agency during his term, which began in 2006 after the tapes had been destroyed.
124
puddybud's mommyspews:
During an appearance on Meet the Press today, Mitt Romney took another swipe at his chief primary opponent, Mike Huckabee, calling on him to apologize to President Bush for describing the current U.S. foreign policy as “arrogant bunker mentality.”
“That’s an insult to the president and Mike Huckabee should apologize to the president,” Romney said when read Huckabee’s statement by moderator Tim Russert. “To say that the president is arrogant and has a bunker mentality, that’s when he went over the line.”
125
YLBspews:
Stupid Stuff says:
@94
It was liberal handwringer Rosie O…
Never heard of her. Does she post here at HA? Did you understand my request? No of course not. Your reading comprehension sucks like that old loser MWS.
Ron Paul? you think he is mainstream? please….
He raised 4 million pretty quick. A lot of the whackos you bunk with seem to think he’s evidence of the second coming. I even see some yard signs here around Seattle and environs with his name on them.
We are at war with Al Qaeda, Violent Islamic fundamentalists, and terrorists.
Fine. Go kill ’em I say. What did Iraq have to do with them? Oh and why is that UBL character still running around making tapes? Spending two trillion on that that pig in a poke in Iraq is sure doing a lot to cull the heard of bad guys. Clue: some of them are on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
We stay on the offensive. Killing and capturing Al Qaeda and terrorists around the globe. We declare victory when Violent Islamic Fundalmentlism is destroyed as an ideology.We press the fight to them.
Tell me. Has racial prejudice been destroyed as an ideology? You’re not going to destroy the thoughts in people’s heads, no way no how unless you destroy lots and lots of people and then play Big Brother with whoever is left. Not the kind of world I want to live in.
We don’t wait around wringing our hands, hoping they don’t attack us again…
Again who here at HA.org has advocated this? The bottom line is that your ideology is failing miserably and you want to project your own self-loathing on others.
Seek help.
126
puddybud's mommyspews:
You know why Ron Paul is doing so well at fund raising from grass roots republicans-not corporate power-puddybud? Because he doesn’t act like a Republican.
Insurgent White House hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is on pace to shatter his own one-day GOP online fundraising record, taking in an eye-popping $3 million through the first 14 hours of Sunday, his campaign said.
Paul, who raised $4.2 million in a single day in November, is poised to eclipse that total. He started the day with slightly less than $11.5 million raised in the fourth quarter, according to an aide. At 2:30 p.m., the contribution total on the campaign’s website said that the total was now $14.6 million and climbing steadily.
“Today’s fundraising boom is yet another example Dr. Paul’s tremendous grassroots support across America,” said Paul spokesman Jesse Benton.
While Paul is not considered to be among the front runners for the GOP presidential nomination, he is firmly entrenching himself in the top tier when it comes to raising funds. The latest haul might put the Texas lawmaker ahead of all of his rivals for the fourth quarter.
127
nicole broodinghenspews:
This is for you Puddybud, Marvin and Piper and you other Fox news lovers. Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment lawsuit sung like Handel’s Messiah
Daddy Love: Why do I have to do your homework. Visit the Federal Donations Registry. I posted the link but for your lazy ASS here are the top 12. Only two are conservative. I added Ted Turner for your political enjoyment.
Warren Buffet – Avowed Liberal Hilary Cliton Supporter
William Gates – Avowed Liberal Democrat Party
Larry Ellison – Dianne Feinstein 2X
Paul Allen – Norm Dicks, Maria Cantwell
Sergey Brin & Larry Page – Both of Google – Big Time Liberals Googles gives many times over to democrat causes
Kirk Kerkorian – Liberal – DSCC and DNC Many times
Walton Family – DNC, Emily’s List, Claire McCaskill, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford Jr, and smaller amounts to State RCs – And you guys hate them.
Ted Turner – Liberal BIG TIME
David Koch – Libertarian & Libertarian VP Candidate 1980
Hollywood Elite Movie Moguls – Almost all Liberal
Sheldon Adelson – Conservative
Charles Koch – Conservative
All you have to do is visit the Federal Donor Registry like I did this evening. These are the big names the top 12
You can look at more of them if you need to Daddy Love. I posted the links so all of you can figure out who gives to what party. I rest my case.
129
Puddybudspews:
If Bill O has a lawsuit let’s see where it goes. If he’s guilty then we’ll see what happens next.I still remember the Merry Fitzmas posting here on HorsesASSHoles and still waiting for that to drop. BTW where are the DeLay indictments going?
130
Puddybudspews:
BTW Daddy Love I posted the Google corporation donations and link a few weeks ago. I don’t rehash old news like Yelling Libby Balderdash (TM) The Clueless One (TM), I move to the next victim.
131
Puddybudspews:
So Mommy, you admit plagiarism. Wow a liberal actually telling the truth!
132
Puddybudspews:
I thought Ron Paul had racist issues. Yes, I found the Kos link again.
If it’s in Kos it has to be true right, Yelling Libby Balderdash ™ The Clueless One ™?
133
Puddybudspews:
Nicole Boobybrains: Read Juan Williams book:
“Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It”
I am sending this to all my siblings. It has almost 4.5 stars on Amazon. Then your bravenewfilms message that blacks are still victims template will explode. Where is Booker T and W E B DuBois when we need them today. Enablers like Michael Brown Al NotsoSharpton (Tawana Brawley anyone) and Jesse (public schools for my children – no way, but for you… way) Hi-Action Jackson are only in it for them selves.
134
Puddybudspews:
Daddy Love: I apologize. I had this cued up for where the big money resides, in blue moonbat! areas and I forgot all about it. Thank goodness for the Firefox cached history keystroke.
“Population Migrates Inward but Big Money Hugs the Coasts
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — If you want to follow the money, get on a plane. Forty-five of the nation’s 50 most affluent ZIP codes hug the East and West coasts. Fly-over Land has just three, on the North Shore of Chicago. Atlanta’s Buckhead is the South’s sole outpost in this rich territory. The sun spot of Paradise Valley, Ariz., rounds out the list.
The nation is moving south and west — population center point is now southern Missouri — but the Northeast is still the money belt. Metropolitan New York is home to nearly half — 24 — of the ritzy 50 ZIPs. Add in Boston (five), Philadelphia’s Main Line (two) and suburban Washington (one), and the Northeast corridor accounts for 32 of the most-prized ZIP codes, according to data compiled for Advertising Age’s American Demographics by ESRI, a supplier of geographic information-systems software and data.
Elite households The 50 ZIPs are home to 201,799 households and 565,125 residents. This elite group — just 0.2% of the U.S. population — last year had an average household income of $294,000, four times the national average ($67,572), and average net worth of $1.2 million, about three times the national figure ($468,970), according to American Demographics’ analysis of ESRI data. The top 10 ZIPs, from No. 1 Atherton, Calif., to Old Westbury, N.Y., are all on the coasts.
ESRI ranked ZIP codes based on a formula including such demographic variables as average household income and average net worth. Surging home prices on the coasts have boosted the net worth of households in those regions. But coastal communities also pay better; the coasts are home to nine of the 10 ZIPs with highest household income. (The 10th, Kenilworth, Ill., at least is on the coast of Lake Michigan.)
ESRI found six affluent ZIPs in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, which together form the money center of the West. Los Angeles has just four. Its most celebrated address, Beverly Hills 90210, came in a distant No. 35 nationally, reflecting in part that the ZIP is home to both glitzy houses and not-so-ritzy apartments. Beverly Hills ranked second-lowest in median income; some people only act rich.
Watch less prime-time TV Overall, the rich aren’t much different from one leafy burg to the next. Across cities and regions, they universally spend big money on home improvements (average annual spending: $10,400) and luxury cars. They go to more live theater. They watch far less prime-time TV and read more news magazines. They travel abroad for business and pleasure. They are nearly twice as likely as the average American to shop online and four times as likely to tune their radios to classical music.
But sift through the data, and you will see subtle differences among regions and cities in consumer purchases and activities, according to Market Potential Indexes supplied by ESRI using data from Mediamark Research Inc.
The Northeast accounts for nearly two-thirds of the ritzy ZIPs (32) and more than half of the affluent ZIPs’ population (about 320,000). The greater New York are — including the winding roads of Westchester County, Connecticut and northern New Jersey — is home to 24 top ZIPs and 256,000 residents. Two of the nation’s hubs of old money, Philadelphia and Boston, account for most of the region’s remaining wealthy ZIPs.
Longest commutes Demos for the Northeast’s affluent ZIPs track closely with those of the affluent Midwest (represented by the Chicago North Shore enclaves of Kenilworth, Glencoe and Lake Forest). Residents (median age 41 to 42) have the longest commutes (34 minutes) among the ritzy 50. They buy more luxury cars and vote in elections more reliably than their rich peers in other regions. They’re twice as likely as the average American to take a vacation on a cruise ship.
Bottom line for marketers and media: If it plays in Peoria (or at least Kenilworth), it should play in Westchester.
But there’s not a lot of population growth. ESRI projects slow growth for most ritzy ZIPs in the Northeast and Midwest; it expects only two of the 35 will see growth greater than 1% a year through 2009. In the West, four of the 14 rich ZIPs should see greater than 1% growth. Atlanta’s rich ZIP should grow 1.5% a year.
Residents of the richest ZIPs in the West are a little more Web-centric than their counterparts elsewhere. The West Coasters are more likely to shop at Amazon.com, to purchase airline tickets online and to own a notebook computer. The tech bent isn’t surprising given that the rich-ZIP list includes the estates of Silicon Valley (Atherton, home of Google CEO Eric Schmidt) and suburban Seattle (Medina, Wash., home of Bill Gates).
West’s rich are older One surprise: The West is the new home for old money — not old as in inherited, but older as in age. Median age of the rich list’s 14 West Coast ZIPs is 46, four to five years above that of affluent ZIPs in other regions. What gives? Don’t blame it on Sunbelt retirees. The median age in Los Altos, a pillar of Silicon Valley, is above that of desert oasis Paradise Valley.
Median ages for the rich ZIPs in Northern California and Los Angeles are around the mid-40s. That’s a reminder of how Silicon Valley is getting older (Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs now qualifies for membership in AARP). In Southern California, the aging residents of Santa Monica 90402 go (OK, drive) to the gym more than their cohorts in any other ritzy 50 ZIP. They’re heading toward age 50, but rich residents of that seaside town are not about to surrender their youth.”
You are so freaking stupid, it’s unbelievable.
Best things I can say about Paul is that he’s against the stupid war, he’s actually read the Constitution and he professes to take it seriously.
More money to Ron Paul is a GOOD thing – that means less for neo-con crazy Rompin’ Rudy and Grandpa lazybones Fred. Pandering Mitt is trying to actually trying BUY his presidency.
Now the Christianist crazies are massing behind skinny Mike – a thin skinned ex-preacher who treats the public’s money as his own.
They’re all gonna fail. Your party is hopelessly split.
Do YOU GGGGGGeeeetttt it?!? LMAO!!!!
136
Puddybudspews:
Yelling Liberal Brainless (TM) – The Clueless One (TM):
All I was stating Kos delivered facts about Paul while mommy plagiarizer was stating facts about Paul. I posted a link he didn’t. Where is the proof? All he posted could be a rumor online. You are too much of an idiot to figure it out. Next question.
Goodbye Yelling Liberal Brainless (TM) – The Clueless One (TM)!
headless lucy spews:
http://hlrp.blogspot.com/2007/.....-sick.html
Is junk media making you sick???
headless lucy spews:
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is a little prick.
headless lucy spews:
http://www.latimes.com/busines.....;cset=true
More news about FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, the little prick.
headless lucy spews:
Let’s see if we can put Kevin Martin at the head of this internet search: “the little prick”.
Ridcule is a potent weapon.
Marvin Stamn spews:
Hey headless, why not tell everyone why you are a homophobe?
So anyone that doesn’t believe like you is gay or a retard?
Why do you think calling someone gay is an insult?
#109 headless lucy says:
> I support all those measurers, and anyone who does
> not is retarded, gay, or both!
http://www.horsesass.org/?p=3951#comment-719175
BS spews:
I have no idea where that pic was taken, but I notice most of the cars are darker. People in the south tend to go for lighter color cars, so it’s probably somewhere in the north. The housing style is unique, almost barn-like. So maybe it’s somewhere in the upper-midwest. But it could be the denser northeast, as well, seeing how they make efficient use of space. It’s a poorer section of town, but even in the deep south, the hot weather would dictate that at least a few people would have pools. There are none in this pic. It’s definitely in the north, and it’s too cramped to be the upper-midwest. I’ll say Providence, R.I.
Piper Scott spews:
American Airlines sucks, but that’s beside the point and mentioned only for context. On my business trip (last leg today, flying home tomorrow) I brought but one book, Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand. Excellent! Highly recommended. If you’ve seen the movie, then let me tell you the book is infinitely more complex and subtle. And it’s an excellent testimony to the value of hard work, pluck, grit, and the essential superiority of the free enterprise system.
But when the book is finished because I had beaucoup extra hours due to multiple delays, gate changes, and missing a flight at DFW, what then? Buy a new book, which is what I did.
The story of Congressman Charlie Wilson and his part in the CIA arming of the Mujahadeen to fight the Russkies has always fascinated me. While I fully intend to catch the flick (opens 12/21), the book, Charlie Wilson’s War, is fascinating in its own right.
While Charlie Wilson was a Democrat – liberal, too, on social issues – he despised commies almost as much as he despised Jimmy Carter and the government of India! And while he and Congressman John Murtha were buddies, author George Crile makes no bones as to just what a sleaze Murtha was (is???), citing the ABSCAM investigation as an example:
“Watching Representative Murtha on the ABSCAM tapes is not an experience designed to make a citizen feel better about Congress.”
But really, it’s Jimmy Carter who comes in for the most scorn. Snookered by the Russkies, Carter turned from commie lover to Cold Warrier overnight by the Christmas invasion of Afghanistan by the Red Army. He still screwed the pooch, however, with his pathetic response. Cancelling American participation in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow only hurt the athletes. Everyone remembers the ass kicking the U.S. hockey team gave the the Russians, and it’s too bad something similar couldn’t have happened at the summer games.
For HA Happy Hooligan purposes, what makes all this so interesting is that apparently the guy most responsible for arming the Mujahadeen to such a point that they were able to beat the Russians, thus paving the way for Taliban control of Afghanistan wasn’t Ronaldus Magnus Reaganus, but…a…liberal…Democratic…Congressman, one Charlie Wilson!
Ironic, huh?
The Piper
YLB spews:
Go catch the flick pooper. Scripted by the excellent Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame – the White House most sane people wished we’d had the last 7 years.
Yeah, Murtha’s not perfect but at least he visited the soldiers in the hospital a lot more than the Chimpmeister you voted for twice and he had a pipeline to the frontline grunts carrying out Georgie’s excellent adventure that gave him a more accurate view of the realities on the ground.
In deep contrast to the fabulists you read in the wingnut-o land, neo-con outlets like NRO.
And next to that other “war hero” Cunningham? Heh. No comparison.
YLB spews:
And there he goes bashing Jimmy Carter. Blame it Carter, blame it on Clinton.
Round and round it goes. That bubble sure must be comforting to you Bull Pooper.
YLB spews:
Yep, arming Islamist fanatics like UBL sure made the world a better place.
YLB spews:
Hmmm. There some steep roofs in the pictures. Aren’t they better in snowy climates? But’s there’s a lot of flat roofs as well. Deciduous trees. Reminds me of Michigan.
Piper Scott spews:
@9…YLB…
Did I mention Clinton? Or is this just another of your knee-jerk denial deliriums?
No denying it…Jimmy Carter wasn’t even a one-term wonder. His record was so abysmal, that he was booted in no uncertain terms. The ultimate turd in the punchbowl.
Also…I was only reporting on what I read in a book, so don’t bitch at me; contact the author c/o of his publisher.
The Piper
Geov spews:
Allentown, PA. That’s my guess.
7: He had plenty of faults as Pres, but Carter was no commie-lover pre-Afghanistan. He was a centrist Dem who ran as a hawk (no, it’s not incompatible with caring about human rights, though he was plenty selective in his caring) and was increasing the military budget well before Reagan. And you left out his other idiotic post-Afghanistan gesture: reinstitution of Selective Service registration, a useless (from the armed forces’ perspective) exercise that did nothing but create another government bureaucracy and try to and force young men (but not women) to pay attention, however briefly, to the volunteer military.
The beatification of Carter post-presidency has in large measure been earned, but it belies that he signed off on plenty of foreign policies as pres that undermine that image. Random example nobody remembers: giving asylum to the Shah of Iran and his stolen riches, the move that triggered the hostage crisis and doomed his presidency.
Lee spews:
@13
Geov, Allentown is a good guess, but not it.
Nicole Broodinghen spews:
@7 Piper
I’m not surprised that a Bush loving Republican would find the story of a horse inspiring. Your party has damn little to offer you.
Today I joined a group of anti-war activists dressed in orange jump suits and wearing black hoods as they walked around Westlake Mall and through Pacific Place (until security kicked us out) and numerous people asked me what is this all about. I responded that this is about the prisoners your government is torturing in Guantanamo Cuba. None of them knew what I was talking about. These are YOUR people Piper.
BS spews:
Nicole, before the Iraq war, did you ever once protest the fact that the U.S. has about 750 military bases in foreign counties, or were you silent?
Piper Scott spews:
@15…NB…
And the terrorists at Gitmo are your people?
Your breast beating outrage is selective at best; tell me of your outrage at atrocities committed by Islamic extremists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, just recently, Algeria.
Or do you simply not care what our enemies do as you do all you can to run down your own country? Do you approve of bombing civilians or decapitating prisoners? That your idea of a good time?
BTW…Seabiscuit isn’t the story of a horse as much as it is the story of the horse’s owner, trainer, and two of the horse’s jockeys. Guts, vision, belief in an underdog, and a never give up attitude…traditional Republican attitudes and values.
The Piper
Piper Scott spews:
@13…Geov…
I remember well when Carter invited the then homeless Shah to come to the U.S. for cancer treatment. It so pissed off radical elements in Iran that Ayatollah Khomanei was able to use them to humiliate the U.S. in an unprecedented way.
Carter’s pathetic response included sending helicopters filled with U.S. troops on an ill-fated “rescue” mission – ill-equiped, poorly trained, and seat-of-the-pants planned – that resulted in a mid-air collision in a sandstorm and a good number of U.S. personnel killed.
Carter gave his very stupid “inordinate fear of communism” speech at Notre Dame, which was like a red flag to th
Soviet Reds. Only after he had his head handed to him by some good old-fashioned real politick did he reverse course and begin to address reality.
But today’s Netroots/DailyKus/HA Happy Hooligans are no different. You see the enemy in all the wrong places while rooting for the wrong side. Apparently 9/11 wasn’t sufficient to get you to overcome a visceral hatred of anything supported by George W. Bush; you’re still pissed over the 2000 election!
Yet the reality of the world marches on irrespective of your fairy stories.
I lose zero sleep over the terrorists imprisoned at Gitmo. I do lose sleep over their victims.
BTW…there was a lot to doom Carter’s presidency. Not only the Iran hostage crisis, but also stagflation, the then phony oil crisis, and just a general sense that nobody wants the President of the United States to blame his failures on the “malaise” of the American people.
I don’t share the adulation accorded him for many of his post-presidential efforts. A lot of grandstanding, if you ask me, done to rehabilitate a reputation that is unrehabilitatable.
Oh, well! Differences of opinion make for interesting living!
The Piper
Nicole Broodinghen spews:
Piper I do not approve of bombing civilians. That is simply one of the reasons I disapprove of YOUR president. Other reasons are his attacks on our civil liberties, imprisonment of people without a trial, and the use of torture. In other words Piper I dislike YOUR president for pretty much the very reasons you say dislike the terrorists. But YOUR president has done greater damage to this country than all the fucking terrorist acts combined. Someday Piper when I find out who you really are -I’m leaning toward Frank Blethen right now-I’m going to snitch you off to the CIA as an Islamist believer plotting to bomb the Space Needle; and after they get done torturing your bony ass you will have agreed that everything I told them about you is true. The one thing you’ll have going in your favor is the CIA will likely consider you too fucking stupid to be a terrorist.
Nicole Broodinghen spews:
Inside the CIA’s notorious “black sites”
A Yemeni man never charged by the U.S. details 19 months of brutality and psychological torture — the first in-depth, first-person account from inside the secret U.S. prisons. A Salon exclusive.
[Deleted — Darryl, see HA Comment Policy]
http://www.salon.com/news/feat.....bashmilah/
Geov spews:
18: Piper, we don’t disagree much on Carter’s presidency. Tho I do think it was the hostage crisis, and the preposterous rescue attempt – and his idiotic “malaise” comment – that sealed his fate. The other problems would have been enough for him to lose, but not by the landslide Reagan ultimately managed.
I do think you (like many other conservative commenters here) tend to lump all of us on the “left” together in terms of our politics. I didn’t vote for Carter in ’80 (my first presidential election), and I didn’t vote for Gore in 2000. I *do* think Bush stole the election that year, and there’s plenty of evidence to back me up, but I and every lib, radical, & everything in between that I know was rooting for him to handle 9-11 well. For a moment, not just the country but most of the world (including most Muslims) was united in its abhorrance of 9-11. Now we are by far the most hated country in the world as a direct result of Bush’s inept and unconscionable responses, starting with treating terrorism as a military problem (futile) rather than an intelligence, police, and hearts & minds problem. People hate Bush because of what he has done, especially post-9-11. Before that sad date, Bush was unpopular, ridiculed even for his malapropisms, but he didn’t make people embarrassed for their country, and he didn’t have respected historians debating whether he’s the worst president ever. Now they do.
Personally, I don’t hate Bush. I do hate what he and his cronies have done to my country. Of course, I didn’t hate Ted Bundy, either; I wanted him stopped, and I wanted justice for his victims. And I feel the same way about Bush, whose decisions have led to far more dead.
20: Nicole, thank you for being on topic, but WordPress really isn’t very amenable in its comment threads to pasting in 2500 word articles!
Nicole Broodinghen spews:
Geov, I can see where 2500 words may be excessive. I’ll try to do better in the future. You graciously thank me for being on topic. This is an open thread so do you mean that I’m on topic by posting an article about the war crimes of the Bushies? Or do you mean I’m on topic when I call Piper fucking stupid? Anyway, isn’t there a place for anger in this thread against loser ass Republicans like Piper who still think in face of enormous evidence to the contrary that the Republicans are a conservative mainstream political party worthy of admiration or that global warming is a hoax. Really, these are not issues that reasonable people can disagree about. Piper and his ilk support war crimes! FUCK ‘EM!!!!! Yes, loss of my civil liberties and torture and other war crimes being committed with my tax dollars does make me a bit grumpy.
Nicole Broodinghen spews:
@18 Piper writes:
“I lose zero sleep over the terrorists imprisoned at Gitmo. I do lose sleep over their victims.”
You know for a fact Piper that every single person imprisoned at Gitmo is a terrorist? You know this because Your president would never lie to you right Piper? And the proven guilt of these imprisoned terrorists is why Your president is rushing to bring them to trial and show the world American Justice in it’s fullest manifestation.
But Your president is not bringing these “terrorists” to trial is he Piper? Why is that Piper?
You write that you lose sleep over the victims of these terrorists. Name one fucking terrorist imprisoned at Gitmo and one victim Piper, and how that victim was victimized.
YLB spews:
Did I mention Clinton?
No you didn’t Bull Pooper but you and your “knee-jerk” crowd often do. You mention Clinton and Carter because it keeps your puny heads from exploding at the merest inkling of realization that the idiot you voted twice for is by far the WORST, MOST REVILED, White House occupant of this country’s history.
After Jan 2009, people like you will be known as the exploding pinheads, the crowd who knee jerks the same old tired saws about Carter and Clinton at the first mention of the ugly and despised incompetent GWB.
It’s the future you so richly deserve, crackpiper.
Geov spews:
22: Sorry Nicole, I just meant “on topic” to the exchanges above it, as opposed to (random example) a certain rabbit’s habit of dropping in articles on whatever. :)
Thanks for going to Westlake today, too. Viva la grumpiness!
Nicole Broodinghen spews:
That’s OK Geov, any opportunity given me to call Piper Scott fucking stupid is appreciated.
Geov spews:
23: Nicole, I’m going to step in here and hopefully save Piper the trouble of slapping you down.
When ex-CIA interrogation officer John Kiriakou went on the Today Show last week and confirmed torture at Gitmo, the prisoner he cited was Abu Zubaydah, who, according to Wikipedia – among many other things – was sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan for his role in a bombing plot there, and who is alleged to have been Al-Qaeda’s top military strategist at the time of his capture. Another torture victim named by Kiriakou is a chief suspect in the East Africa embassy bombings. There are very real, very bad people out there, who have plotted terror and have killed people, and, whether at Gitmo or some secret CIA prison or wherever, the US has some of them. We also, as you know, have a lot of innocent as well as tangentially involved people in our net.
The problem with torture is you can’t tell the innocent from the guilty, because its victims will tell you whatever you want to hear. (Which you can then use to buttress your fantasyland foreign policy conclusions; c.f. Curveball.) And none of these people have ever had any due process. Either they’re prisoners of war or they’re innocent til proven guilty; instead the Bushies have been making up laws as they go along to suit their own desires, and that, along with the torture itself, is what’s so appalling about this. Oh, and also that a few billion people around the world now think we’re thugs and hypocrites besides.
Nicole Broodinghen spews:
ABC NEWS 12-14-2007 http://www.abc.net.au/news/sto.....118554.htm
“The Bush administration says the Guantanamo captives are terrorists who threaten the United States and its allies.
At the same time, it has released 485 of them since the camp opened in January 2002, sending more than 100 home this year.”
Nicole Broodinghen spews:
Respond to #28 Piper you stupid fucking republican.
me spews:
# headless lucy says:
http://hlrp.blogspot.com/2007/ 12/is-junk-media-making-you-si ck.html
Is junk media making you sick???
12/15/2007 at 10:47 am
“# headless lucy says:
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is a little prick.
12/15/2007 at 10:51 am
# headless lucy says:
http://www.latimes.com/busines s/la-fi-fcc14dec14,1,7976868.s tory?coll=la-headlines-busines s&ctrack=1&cset=true
More news about FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, the little prick.
12/15/2007 at 10:55 am
# headless lucy says:
Let’s see if we can put Kevin Martin at the head of this internet search: “the little prick”.
Ridcule is a potent weapon.
12/15/2007 at 10:57 am”
Headless Lucy continues to show her off-subject intellect in this thread….
me spews:
Nicole Broodinghen @ 19 says:
“Piper I do not approve of bombing civilians. That is simply one of the reasons I disapprove of YOUR president. Other reasons are his attacks on our civil liberties, imprisonment of people without a trial, and the use of torture. In other words Piper I dislike YOUR president for pretty much the very reasons you say dislike the terrorists. But YOUR president has done greater damage to this country than all the fucking terrorist acts combined. Someday Piper when I find out who you really are -I’m leaning toward Frank Blethen right now-I’m going to snitch you off to the CIA as an Islamist believer plotting to bomb the Space Needle; and after they get done torturing your bony ass you will have agreed that everything I told them about you is true. The one thing you’ll have going in your favor is the CIA will likely consider you too fucking stupid to be a terrorist.”
Number 1 – your reply includes leftists adverbs ‘fucking’ which means you have have no support for your arguements
Number 2 – We are at War with the terrorist which you and your ‘ilk’ seem to be totally ignorant of.
Number 3 – Your asinine comments of referring Piper to a government CIA organization only shows what the IDIOT you are.
You Sir are a total idiot!
Nicole Broodinghen spews:
@ 31 My “asinine comments of referring Piper to a government CIA organization” were intended to demonstrate how easy it is in this time of American neo-fascism to implicate someone in a crime. That you, “Me,” didn’t get it “only shows what the IDIOT you are.”
This name calling is quite fun. But I think it is high time to reveal my true self. I, as some of the more astute readers of this blog have surely discerned from my prose, am the ink stained wretch Joel Connelly, opinion maker at the Seattle Pi for these many years. Why I remember once when I was having tea with Jimmy Carter telling him “Mr.President it is imperative that you defeat this upstart “B” movie actor Reagan in the upcoming election. A victory for the Republicans will usher in a decades long period of budget deficits and neo-fascism unlike this country has ever seen before.” Dispute the truth of that prediction you stupid fucking republicans!
And “Me” I notice you passed right by comment #28 without a word. Why is that Me? Cat got your tongue? That was a favorite expression of my old friend Dan Evans.
Joel Connelly, AKA Nicole Broodinghen spews:
PS: I think Headless Lucy is hot! I wish she would post at SLOG more often.
Piper Scott spews:
@21…Geov…
You are correct: not all leftists think exactly the same. Yet there is a tedious sameness to much of what passes for “thinking” among the HA Happy Hooligans. And there’s a virulent rejection of whatever doesn’t fall into a very thin and one-dimensional orthodoxy. I give you Nicole Broodinghen (a not terribly smart or amusing nom de guerre used no doubt by one of the vulgar HA regulars) as an example. Really…unclever, unoriginal, and singularly uncivilized.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree about the 2000 election. My point, however, is that a lot of the anger directed toward Dubya these days is born out of that election. Were he to emerge victorious on all fronts tomorrow, there are still many on the left who would condemn him for any number of reasons, and a goodly number of Happy Hooligan regulars would be at the forefront of that effort.
Personally, that he’s succeeded in pissing off a lot of people is something else about which I lose no sleep; some people need to be pissed off. Instead of some of the niceties of do-nothing UN-speak, there is a definite place for cowboy diplomacy: cross that line and you’re dead meat, pardner!
Much of the resentment also stems from just that, resentment. When you’re jealous, it’s easy to simply hate the one against whom you feel jealous. Better that than acknowledging your own impotence and craven duplicity. Everybody likes to take shots at the big guy…makes them feel good.
Interesting that Nicolas Sarkozy, while acknowledging differences on Iraq, has beat the drum as loudly as anyone against Iran.
Terrorism is a military problem, along with an intelligence, diplomatic, and every other kind of problem. It needs to be addressed in every way possible. Attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11 was the appropriate thing to do, and it will continue to be necessary in order to prevent the Taliban from returning to power.
Still, there is unprecedented international cooperation among intelligence agencies united to combat terrorism. Witness efforts this past summer and fall in the UK and Germany.
No doubt things at certain points could have been done better; name me a war in U.S. history where the same couldn’t be said. And a lot of what is said now about Dubya was said about Lincoln during the dark days of the Civil War. Today, we tend to romanticize #16 while ignoring how loathed and derided he was in his own time.
The first – ultimately the only – responsiblity of the President of the United States is the protection and safety of the American people. In the discharge of that duty, he’s going to anger a lot of people who have no particular regard for the protection and safety of the American people, ergo Gitmo.
During WW II, FDR dealt harshly with any element that impeded the war effort. I cite often the SCOTUS case, ex parte Quirin that involved a gaggle of German saboteurs landed by submarine on Long Island. Caught, tried by a military tribunal, and executed all within the space of six-weeks…and he smiled the whole time.
That some at Gitmo may have to wait a while is one of the breaks of war. Some 3,000 on 9/11 suffered somewhat harsher breaks, and thousands more since have experienced the same. Frankly, I’m not too crazy about giving any of them any breaks. Let the grist mill grind excedingly fine.
To those who contend that such treatment bodes ill for treatment accorded ours imprisoned by them? Listen, they go straight to beheadings and the like; these are people whose moral compass doesn’t point anywhere near true north.
Too many treat the whole terrorism thing too casually as if it’s not real. Well, 9/11 was very real; people died and people suffer today as a result. Last week’s attack in Algeria was very real; a wonderful example of Muslim against Muslim violence.
And it remains true: the bin Laden’s, et al, of the world don’t want us simply out of the Islamic world, they want us to become a part of the Islamic world – convert or die! If anyone wishes to bitch about an imperialistic attitude, then I offer that as a prime example.
That some now in Gitmo get released late? Again…better safe than sorry. Honestly…on all this stuff, when it comes to the safety and protection of America…always, always, always…better safe than sorry.
The Piper
headless lucy spews:
Piper: Shut up and go away. You have nothing to offer.
Joel Connelly, AKA Nicole Broodinghen spews:
“That some at Gitmo may have to wait a while is one of the breaks of war.’
Ah, Piper, they are not simply sitting around biding their time until the American justice system exonerates them; they are being tortured, you fucking fool.
Yes Piper, 3000 Americans died on 9-11. Your President was given a memo titled “Osama Bin Laden determined to attack US” in August of that year. He told the intelligence officer to do everything possible to prevent the attack. Just kidding Piper. Actually he told the intelligence officer “OK now you’ve covered your ass” and then went back to clearing brush on his ranch with cattle rented from his neighbors. And Iraq and Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11. It was Saudi citizens Piper who crashed planes into the WTC. You know who the Saudis are Piper. They bailed Bush out of his failing oil business way back when. Bush holds hands with them. 3000 Americans have died in Iraq and the corrupt liar Bush had everything to do with that.
30,000 Americans will be killed by domestic guns this year. 400,000 Americans will be killed by cigarette smoking. Why don’t we torture and kill the gun and cigarette pushers, Piper? Or is their style of killing Americans OK with you because it is the “breaks” of capitalism?
And Piper, surely there must be a role of some sort for a brave Republican warrior like yourself in this “long war.” Why don’t you join the military Piper? Or go to work for Halliburton driving a supply truck in Iraq, Piper? Or you could volunteer at the VA Hospital Piper.
headless lucy spews:
Piper: When did Congress declare war?
Joel Connelly, AKA Nicole Broodinghen spews:
And yes, I do know that this is a strawman argument.
30,000 Americans will be killed by domestic guns this year. 400,000 Americans will be killed by cigarette smoking. Why don’t we torture and kill the gun and cigarette pushers, Piper? Or is their style of killing Americans OK with you because it is the “breaks” of capitalism?
Well I’m off to soundpolitics.com where the republicans are even more fucking stupid than at this blog. As Ted Kennedy told me once: “it is so difficult explaining things to the unwashed.” I said you are right Senator…
Proud to be an Ass spews:
Piper Scott accusing Jimmy Carter of being a “commie lover” prior to the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan is simply preposterous, and so flat line stupid as to defy belief. My god, you idiot, he graduated from Annapolis and served 7 years in the Navy. As far as the response to the situation in Afghanistan, what would you have him do? The same thing Ike did re Hungary in 1956? (i.e., nothing). Declare nuclear war? Obviously, foreign policy is not your long suit.
Your diatribe exhibits precisely why it is imperative that wingnut fingers not be allowed near nuclear triggers.
As for the balance of his presidency: Some good. Some bad. I do note that he initiated the deregulation mania (trucking, airlines) that has so gutted our regulatory structure, and contributed to the rampant social decline we witness all around us.
And then the kicker. After the wingnut diatribe, that, without exception I might note, shamelessly adhered to all the standard wingnut talking points about Jimmy Carter in each and every sentence, Piper asserts in a later post:
Yet there is a tedious sameness to much of what passes for “thinking” among the HA Happy Hooligans. And there’s a virulent rejection of whatever doesn’t fall into a very thin and one-dimensional orthodoxy.
Pot. Meet kettle.
Proud to be an Ass spews:
Piper celebrates Republican virtue, and uses terms like “pluck” and “fortitude” harkening back to those old Horatio Alger stories. But you must remember, Horatio usually got his leg up by marrying the bosses’ daughter, a tradition still popular with ass kissers even today.
You must remember that the reason the state exists in Republican Theology is to loot it.
Proud to be an Ass spews:
Lee: Springfield, Mass.?
headless lucy spews:
re 40: Marrying the boss’ daughter takes ‘gumption’. Pluck and fortitude are what is needed to endure her presence for a lifetime.
headless lucy spews:
You all may think that ‘Thr Piper’ is gone. But experience tells me he’s just building up another big head o’ blather.
With the next mighty expellation of billowy verbiage, you will all realize, ‘The Piper’ is here to stay.
‘Cuz when it comes down to it, he likes us better than the nitwits over at uSP.
Puddybud spews:
Nicole Boobybrain: ain’t you the woman of tiny mind I argumentally destroyed last week? Why yes it is.
Now this new argument “Westlake Mall and through Pacific Place” is a hoot. Westlake Mall * Pacific Place are Moonbat! locations in blue Seattle. These are the people who probably voted for the same Seattle Council Goldy and YLB – The Clueless One gladly voted for.
Puddybud spews:
Piper: YLB – Yelling Libby Bumpkin (TM) likes to project. I didn’t see it either, but he did. When you have a single living cell for a brain, he sees many false echoes in his cranial orifice. In all the years I’ve been monitoring the NorthWest Division of Goldy’s ASSHead Liberal Minds he hasn’t said much of anything unless he first visits Media Morons or Daily Kurse.
Puddybud spews:
Nicole Broodinghen says: “Piper I do not approve of bombing civilians. That is simply one of the reasons I disapprove of YOUR president. ”
Really? They were doing this waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before GWB. I seem to remember 1993 WTC bombings. Maybe you were a wee little girl then and your NEA entrenched teachers forgot to teach this bit of history to you!
Puddybud spews:
Geov@25: Be a man and delete the Pelletizer’s (TM) dead zones and liven this blog up again.
Jane Balough's Dog spews:
You have to give Carter credit for one thing; he did ensure that Reagan got elected.
Puddybud's mommy spews:
Now Puddybud you stop that right now! You argumentally (not a real word puddybud)destroyed that nice Nicole Broodinghen last week? In your wet dreams little boy. Puddybud here are some challenges for you.
1) Respond to comment #28
2) Give us a convincing argument that your president is not a lying corrupt cheating torturing war criminal.
3) Tell us moonbats 7 things (one for each year in office)that your president has done to make this a better country. Socially, financially, homeland security, rule of law, civil liberties-pick your angle.
4) Prove argumentally that the citizens of this country are better off today than seven years ago.
And puddybud you make Piper look fucking brilliant! Of course, like Piper, over at Sound Politics you are just another dumb fucking republican. Here, at least, when you talk some ignorant shit, unlike at SP, it stands out from the crowd.
Puddybud's mommy spews:
Multiple Chice quiz Puddybud. Which of the following statements are GW Bush lies? And puddybud, pointing out the lies of other presidents is not an acceptable answer.
I’m opposed to nation building.
I’m a uniter not a divider.
Jesus Christ is my favorite philosopher.
We do not torture.
I believe in the sanctity of life.
Puddybud's mommy spews:
http://www.salon.com/news/feat.....bashmilah/
Puddybud's mommy spews:
Good luck in 2008 puddybud.
Kevin Drum’s reaction was spot-on.
[A]s with blogosphere conservatives, mainstream conservatives are mostly urban sophisticates with a libertarian bent, not rural evangelicals with a social conservative bent. They’re happy to talk up NASCAR and pickup trucks in public, but in real life they mostly couldn’t care less about either. Ditto for opposing abortion and the odd bit of gay bashing via proxy. But when it comes to Ten Commandments monuments and end times eschatology, they shiver inside just like any mainstream liberal. The only difference is that usually they keep their shivering to themselves because they want to keep everyone in the big tent happy.
But then along comes Huckabee, and guess what? He’s the real deal. Not a guy like George Bush or Ronald Reagan, who talks a soothing game to the snake handlers but then turns around and spends his actual political capital on tax cuts, foreign wars, and deregulating big corporations. Huckabee, it turns out, isn’t just giving lip service to evangelicals, he actually believes all that stuff.
Puddybud's mommy spews:
Your president puddybud has made America into one of the most hated countries in the world. And not just because of the war. I guess if you are a religious nut case like Bush and think that God speaks through you and that the end times are at hand you don’t give a shit if the world burns up. You are going to heaven! You fuckers make the Taliban look moderate.
News from Bali:
After tears, jeers and a dramatic eleventh-hour U-turn by the United States, a compromise deal for a new international climate change agenda was finally struck in Bali yesterday, just as talks appeared on the brink of collapse.
Amid extraordinary and emotional scenes, which at one point saw the American delegation booed at the UN climate change conference, ministers from more 180 countries thrashed out agreement after days of wrangling.
Puddybud's mommy spews:
Bush wants kangaroo court style justice. Why not? He speaks for God. Bush thinks he is as infallible as the Pope.
The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House’s policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.
The administration has proposed a regulation requiring “coordination” with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps – the military’s 4,000-member uniformed legal force – can be promoted. […]
The former JAG officers say the regulation would end the uniformed lawyers’ role as a check-and-balance on presidential power, because politically appointed lawyers could block the promotion of JAGs who they believe would speak up if they think a White House policy is illegal.
Puddybud's mommy spews:
Senate Republicans blocked a bill Friday that would restrict the interrogation methods the CIA can use against terrorism suspects. […]
Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., placed a hold on the intelligence bill, preventing the Senate from voting on it while the challenge goes forward.
“I think quite frankly applying the Army field manual (abides by the Geneva convention) to the CIA would be ill-advised and would destroy a program that I think is lawful and helps the country,” Graham said in an interview.
As Spencer Ackerman asks, “Torture is counterproductive for the military but valuable for the CIA?” Apparently, to Graham, yes.
Puddybud's mommy spews:
To detect narcotics trafficking, for example, the government has been collecting the phone records of thousands of Americans and others inside the United States who call people in Latin America, according to several government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. But in 2004, one major phone carrier balked at turning over its customers’ records. Worried about possible privacy violations or public relations problems, company executives declined to help the operation, which has not been previously disclosed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12.....ref=slogin
Puddybud's mommy spews:
The republican debates:
The “mainstream” Republican candidates, knowing what a tough slog they have ahead of themselves, are making strenuous efforts to look and sound normal for the cameras. Conservative commentators play gamely along, talking about their debates as if they were business as usual, though were a soul innocent of the current GOP’s bizarre standards of normalcy to happen upon one of these scenes, it would probably fill him with confusion and horror.
But most of us are not so well-protected, and are by now kind of inured to the Jesus-infused, torture-happy madness of Republicans. Their best chance is to keep a straight face over the course of the remaining 732 debates, and get us all acclimated to their insane ideas once more. Then Keyes comes along frothing at the mouth. Under ordinary circumstances, his competitors might see this as an opportunity to look more normal by comparison. But their supporters, at least, are wrapped too tight at the moment to see it that way. They see the rampaging id of Republicanism let loose upon their stage, and they are terrified that his mania might be catching. They had just learned to live with Ron Paul, and now this!
No wonder Keyes drives them bonkers. He’s blowing their cover.
Puddybud spews:
Nicole or whomever you are: To use the “mighty words” of Yelling Libby Blowhard (TM) – I don’t take direction from you!
There I feel better now.
Remember 62+ libbie blowhards on ‘Wipes while only 18 us whom think right.
Puddybud's mommy spews:
In honor of December 15, Bill of Rights Day, a little bit of fun. If only the amendments banning detention without due process and torture (it’s cruel, it’s unusual) were in such good shape.
Puddybud's mommy spews:
It seems obvious enough to me that liberals have no real reason to feel warmly about either Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee. Neither man is someone who would make a good President of the United States and neither man is someone who shares my values in any serious way.
That said, I do think liberals have pretty good reason to at least cheer them on a bit from the sidelines as their success represents the flying apart of the conservative coalition that’s been dominating American politics for decades. Ronald Reagan wielded a truly formidable political coalition that reached from the Deep South all across the West and into the suburbs of New Jersey and Illinois. George Bush has presided over a much-diminished version of that coalition — a political bloc that left little margin for error. And then he proceeded to presided over a great deal of error — massive, enormous errors — that’s left the Republican Party looking adrift and meandering and has evidently sent large segments of the conservative base to start taking a rose-colored view of these two kookie political figures and their fringy opinions.
The conservative establishment is now flailing wildly to regain control and I’m almost certain they’ll ultimately succeed in delivering the nomination to an establishment-approved figure. But the movement as a whole is clearly sputtering and sick and the better the outsider candidates do the more it frays.
Puddybud's mommy spews:
respond to #28 and #49 puddy
Puddybud's mommy spews:
Blackwater kills some Iraqi civilians:
Finally, around 5 p.m., [a man who’s only identified as Haythem] phoned his brother who worked at the hospital closest to Nissour Square. His brother went to the emergency room, then to the morgue. He learned that all of the bodies there were identified — except for two that were completely burned with body parts missing. His brother then headed to the square, where he called Haythem to tell him he had found a charred white car with a license plate number written in the sand. The numerals and letters matched the family’s plate.
“Haythem identified his son from what was left of his shoes. His forehead and brains were missing and his skin completely burned. He identified his wife of 20 years by a dental bridge.
“With tears in his eyes, Haythem described his beloved wife and son. “If you perceive marriage as half of your life, Mohasin was my best half,” he said. “We were always together. I don’t know how to manage my life or care for my other two children without her.
Why we torture! spews:
WHY WE TORTURE….Responding to yesterday’s post about the conservative moral justification for the use of waterboarding, stress positions, etc. against detainees in American custody, one of my conservative correspondents wrote to me this morning to explain why he supports the torture of suspected terrorists. Beneath the intellectual superstructure that we often hear from torture apologists, I suspect that what he wrote pretty closely mirrors the actual underlying beliefs that we’re up against when we liberals argue against the morality of torture. So without comment, here’s what he sent me:
I want our side to win. Or maybe more accurately, I don’t want our side to lose….As with any other form of violence, motivation is everything. A cop shooting a murderer is not the same as a murderer shooting an innocent victim, although both use guns, and at the end, someone is bleeding and dying.
You’d be amazed at how many people find these things nearly equivalent. A leftist I know sees no difference between a Palestinian child dying from a stray Israeli bullet during a firefight, and an Israeli child dying when a Palestinian terrorist puts the barrel of a gun to the kid’s forehead and blows his brains across the back wall of the child’s bedroom. In his two-dimensional perception, the only important factor is that both resulted in a dead child. Avoiding true moral analysis and motivations allows him to skirt the concept of “evil,” a term which makes many liberals intensely uncomfortable.
John Kiriakou said that waterboarding a terrorist stopped dozens of attacks. Dozens. Not attacks on military targets, but attacks on innocent non-combatants.
That was the motivation.
The terrorists who torture and kill our prisoners (never something as benign as waterboarding) don’t do it because they need information to save innocent people. They do it because they like it, because they want to hurt or kill someone.
At some point you have to decide if a known terrorist having a very bad day (after which he goes back to a hot meal and a cot) is more of a moral problem than allowing a terrorist to blow up a building full of people.
Yes, it’s good if we do it, when it’s for the right reasons. So far, it’s been for the right reasons. And no, it isn’t good when it’s done to us, for the reasons it has been done to us. Get back to me when some enemy tortures one of our soldiers in order to save innocent lives.
Got it?
Puddybud spews:
Nicole Boobyhen:
As with blogosphere conservatives, mainstream conservatives are mostly urban sophisticates with a libertarian bent, not rural evangelicals with a social conservative bent.
I believe in donkoinfanticide (puddy word). Do you know what it means? It means culling the liberal herd. Less of your people to vote I am sad my people have culled over 13 MM black babies since 1973.
They’re happy to talk up NASCAR and pickup trucks in public, but in real life they mostly couldn’t care less about either.
In our family we call it Nasty Car. Not a topic of conversation at my jobs or our house.
Ditto for opposing abortion and the odd bit of gay bashing via proxy.
I stated my positions clearly and powerfully. I have placed many GLA, GLAAD, and other words. I placed Margaret Sanger words. She managed to bribe black leaders into culling the herd .
But when it comes to Ten Commandments monuments and end times eschatology, they shiver inside just like any mainstream liberal.
I’m sorry this makes no sense. When have liberals obeyed the 10 Commandments. Your side makes them the 10 Suggestions. I write about Daniel and Revelation whenever I can.
The only difference is that usually they keep their shivering to themselves because they want to keep everyone in the big tent happy.
I could care less about the liberal big tent or action network or rainbow coalition.
But then along comes Huckabee, and guess what? He’s the real deal. Not a guy like George Bush or Ronald Reagan, who talks a soothing game to the snake handlers but then turns around and spends his actual political capital on tax cuts, foreign wars, and deregulating big corporations. Huckabee, it turns out, isn’t just giving lip service to evangelicals, he actually believes all that stuff.
That’s nice. I am not a Huckabee fan.
puddybud's mommy spews:
Rich are getting richer faster.
The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 ($524.8 billion) exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans ($383.4 billion), according to a new report by the Congressional Budget Office. “On average, incomes for the top 1 percent of households rose by $465,700 each, or 42.6 percent after adjusting for inflation. The incomes of the poorest fifth rose by $200, or 1.3 percent, and the middle fifth increased by $2,400 or 4.3 percent.”
puddybud's mommy spews:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/f.....lackwater/
Puddybud spews:
Nicole@61: See #58.
Repeat see #58. Repeat…
puddybud's mommy spews:
By November 2005, three different federal judges had issued ironclad preservation-of-evidence orders in cases involving terror suspects and Guantánamo detainees. That was when the CIA elected to destroy tapes of the interrogations and waterboarding of two suspected Al Qaeda members. To the inherent criminality of torture, add contempt of court.
The revelation of those CIA videotapes and their destruction has inspired a leakfest in Washington and Langley, with fingers pointing everywhere and nowhere. “There are other people at the agency who know about this far better than I,” says CIA director Michael Hayden. Meanwhile, “other people at the agency” keep shifting blame between the legal office and the Directorate of Operations. The White House and Justice Department claim they advised the CIA to keep the tapes. But given George W. Bush’s passion for extralegal imprisonment and “extreme interrogation,” the agency had every reason to see mixed signals from Pennsylvania Avenue.
Puddybud spews:
Now for the zinger. My mother is dead and been dead a long time. She was a Christian you you can’t channel her!
Puddybud spews:
@65: Amazing all those Mattel Toy & Screen Actors Guild Millionaires are skewing the values.
Puddybud spews:
Should be: and you, you can’t channel her.
Puddybud spews:
Did you see the most of the richest Americans are liberal? That’s an amazing stat.
puddybud's mommy spews:
Moving to revive congressional zeal for holding the Bush administration accountable, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed contempt resolutions on Thursday against two of four White House officials who have refused to comply fully with committee subpoenas related to the U.S. attorneys scandal. The resolutions, targeting White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, passed 12 to 7, with Republicans Charles Grassley of Iowa and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania voting for the measure.
Specter’s vote came only after his attempts to appease the White House reached an impasse. Specter told the committee that he had accepted the administration’s ‘s position that presidential aides should be allowed to testify in private, not under oath, and without a transcript. But he drew the line at a White House demand that inquiries into the U.S. Attorney scandal come to an end. “We cannot abrogate or relinquish our constitutional responsibilities,” the Republican insisted last wee
YLB spews:
Oh hi Puddybud. Here’s a little something for you to chew over:
Now who said those awful things about Mike Huckabee PWhacko? Some “leftist”? No, creepy, ugly Dan Riehl, master right wing bullshit artist said that.
Read that and more like it here.
I looove when you wingnuts eat each other!!!
puddybud's mommy spews:
@64 “I could care less about the liberal big tent or action network or rainbow coalition.”
Really puddy-why don’t you tell us how much less you could care?
puddybud's mommy spews:
Books by Iraq soldiers reviewed:
In House to House: An Epic Memoir of War, Staff Sergeant David Bellavia—a gung-ho supporter of the Iraq war—casually recounts how in 2004, while his platoon was on just its second patrol in Iraq,
a civilian candy truck tried to merge with a column of our armored vehicles, only to get run over and squashed. The occupants were smashed beyond recognition. Our first sight of death was a man and his wife both ripped open and dismembered, their intestines strewn across shattered boxes of candy bars. The entire platoon hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours. We stopped, and as we stood guard around the wreckage, we grew increasingly hungry. Finally, I stole a few nibbles from one of the cleaner candy bars. Others wiped away the gore and fuel from the wrappers and joined me.
This incident is notable mainly for the fact that the platoon stopped; from the many accounts I have read of the Iraq war, when a US convoy runs over a car, it usually just keeps going.
puddybud's mommy spews:
In Chasing Ghosts, Paul Rieckhoff, a graduate of Amherst who led a platoon of Army National Guardsmen in Iraq, describes going out on routine house raids in the summer of 2003 during which his men broke down doors, zipcuffed all the men in sight, and turned rooms upside down in the search for weapons, few of which they ever found. These raids, Rieckhoff writes, “were nasty business. Anybody who enjoyed them was sick. Sometimes I felt like I was a member of the Brown shirts in Nazi Germany.” As Rieckhoff later discovered, some of his men were stealing cash found on these raids—a practice that, as other accounts suggest, is not at all uncommon.
puddybud's mommy spews:
In Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the US Army, Kayla Williams, an Arabic-speaking military intelligence officer, tells of attending an interrogation session in Mosul in the fall of 2003 in which US soldiers remove the clothes of a prisoner in a cage and then mock him: “Mock his manhood. Mock his sexual prowess. Ridicule the size of his genitals.” The soldiers flicked lit cigarette butts at the prisoner and smacked him across the face. Williams later learned that a prisoner died in the same cage she had visited.
puddybud's mommy spews:
Finally, there are limitations imposed by the political climate in which the press works. Images that seem too graphic or unsettling can cause an uproar. When, for instance, The New York Times in January 2007 ran a photo of a US soldier lying mortally wounded on the ground, the paper was angrily accused of showing disrespect for the troops. More generally, the conduct of US soldiers in the field remains a highly sensitive subject. News organizations that show soldiers in a bad light run the risk of being labeled anti-American, unpatriotic, or—worst of all—”against the troops.” In July, for instance, when The New Republic ran a column by a private that recounted several instances of bad behavior by US soldiers, he and the magazine were viciously attacked by conservative bloggers. Most Americans simply do not want to know too much about the acts being carried out in their name, and this serves as a powerful deterrent to editors and producers.
puddybud's mommy spews:
In a cluster of mud-hut homes across from the platoon’s position, old ladies in black robes stand outside, “staring at the pale, white ass of a Marine” who, naked from the waist down, is “taking a dump in their front yard.” A Marine says to Wright, “Can you imagine if this was reversed, and some army came into suburbia and was crapping in everyone’s front lawns? It’s fucking wil
puddybud's mommy spews:
Entering the city with the Marines, Wright gets to see just how devastating the impact has been. Smoke curls from collapsed structures, and houses facing the road are pockmarked and cratered. The corpses of Iraqi attackers are scattered on the road leading out of the city. Run over repeatedly by tracked vehicles, “they are flattened, with their entrails squished out,” Wright notes, adding:
We pass a bus, smashed and burned, with charred human remains sitting upright in some windows. There’s a man in the road with no head and a dead little girl, too, about three or four, lying on her back. She’s wearing a dress and has no legs.
puddybud's mommy spews:
They are soon approached by five Iraqis dragging two bundles. Inside are two teenaged boys. Both have been wounded—one gravely. Examining him, Doc Bryan, a medic, can see that he’s been shot with 5.56mm rounds, a caliber used by the Americans. “Marines shot this boy!” he roars. It’s now clear that the distant figures who’d been shot at were not fighters with rifles but shepherds with canes.
Fick runs to company headquarters and explains what has happened. He wants the boys evacuated to a field hospital. The major on duty informs him that Lieutenant Colonel Ferrando is sleeping and can’t be disturbed. Fick is livid:
I wanted to tell the major that we were Americans, that Americans don’t shoot kids and let them die, that the men in my platoon had to be able to look themselves in the mirror for the rest of their lives.
puddybud's mommy spews:
After one car has been shot at, a Marine named Graves goes to help a little girl cowering in the back seat, her eyes wide open. As he goes to pick her up, “thinking about what medical supplies he might need to treat her…the top of her head slides off and her brains fall out,” Wright writes. As Graves steps back in horror, his boot slips in the girl’s brains. “This is the event that is going to get to me when I go home,” he says.
puddybud's mommy spews:
“I think it’s bullshit how these fucking civilians are dying!” rages Jeffrey Carazales, a lance corporal from Texas, after he shoots at a building that clearly has civilians in it:
They’re worse off than the guys that are shooting at us. They don’t even have a chance. Do you think people at home are going to see this—all these women and children we’re killing? Fuck no. Back home they’re glorifying this motherfucker, I guarantee you. Saying our president is a fucking hero for getting us into this bitch. He ain’t even a real Texan.
puddybud's mommy spews:
When, on the morning of April 6, they finally reach the outskirts of Baghdad, they confront what Wright calls a horrorscape of human corpses and of dead cows—bloated to twice their normal size—lying in ditches. Sergeant Espera’s vehicle swerves to avoid running over a human head lying in the road. When the vehicle turns, he looks up to see a dog eating a corpse. “Can it get any sicker than this?” he asks. Reflecting back on the battalion’s performance to this point, he says, “Do you realize the shit we’ve done here, the people we’ve killed? Back home in the civilian world, if we did this, we would go to prison.”
puddybud's mommy spews:
And Puddy, what do you think about the estimated 10,000 Iraqi civilians killed by American soldiers and bombs and artillery during the invasion? If we were invaded by another country and all those civilians were killed would you feel liberated? Would you be grateful?
Puddybud spews:
Crazed liberal@79 typed: “In July, for instance, when The New Republic ran a column by a private that recounted several instances of bad behavior by US soldiers, he and the magazine were viciously attacked by conservative bloggers. Most Americans simply do not want to know too much about the acts being carried out in their name, and this serves as a powerful deterrent to editors and producers.”
Hmmm… The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, a liberal voting MSM lefty, has a differing view, complete with New Republic words.
Puddybud spews:
Crazed liberal@79: In reading the July 2007 New Republic article, Franklin Foer used almost all of 13 pages (how many CO2 removing trees does this equate to) of that issue to allege a “military conspiracy” (more phony soldering?). This “conspiracy” occurred in three middle east countries which spanned four bases, involved dozens of soldiers, from privates to colonels, all of them put in a disparaging light.
When I searched the New Republic waiting for a retraction, Foer and The New Republic won’t apologize to all those great soldiers working hard in Iraq and Kuwait they accused of atrocities in his “fine” magazine. And of course the Crazed liberal@79, you drank the stick white kool-aid!
Puddybud spews:
Crazed liberal@79: If you bothered to visit the source of Yelling Libby Blatherer (TM) sticky white kool-aid, they even dissed the New Republic. Huh, what you say Puddy, Media Morons? YES.
http://mediamatters.org/altercation/200712030006
Fair use claws and copyreallyleft to the URL owner
“Essentially, what unnerved me is that a magazine like TNR was so completely divorced from the military that they did not even have one person on staff — one single person — who was personally connected to a career professional in the military (and Elspeth Reeve, an intern at TNR who is now married to Beauchamp — himself not a career professional in the military — doesn’t count), who could have a) helped them screen what was being sent in the first place, and b) helped them figure out how to fact-check the guy (let alone, after the fact, help them figure out what was really going on). I mean, seriously, how is it that at this point the best de facto depictions of life in-country come … in Doonesbury?! (The very liberal cartoonist Gary Trudeau is, in a strange twist of journalism, apparently far better wired in to real soldiers on the ground than is the editor of a major magazine? How did this happen?)
Folks, we are six freaking years into a war now. Regardless of how you or I or Eric or anybody feels about the causality of these wars, the fact of these wars remain important for all of us to understand. We are six years into a period in which the military and issues of war have been, like, you know, sort of central. How could TNR remain so divorced from anyone in the military for so long that they eventually fell for this?”
Puddybud spews:
Crazed liberal@79: Why do I read Media Morons at times? Yelling Libby Blatherer ™ – The Clueless One (TM) likes posts from his stick white kool-aid resource. I need to fact check because sometimes Media Morons will print another piece to diss Yelling Libby Blatherer ™ – The Clueless One (TM) piece. And how can you “know thy enemy” unless you read from them?
Puddybud spews:
Crazed liberal@79: Wow crazed liberal, you plagiarized this URL and didn’t give it attribution.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20906
You know Persesser Darryl needs to purge all of your posts. You broke one or more of the four “tenets” of the HA Comment Blog Police.
* Deliberately off-topic comments (except in “open threads”), as well as pointless comments on these comments.
* Deliberately repetitive comments, particularly those intended to repeat and a reinforce slander that has already been sufficiently debunked.
* Large chunks of cut-and-paste from copyrighted works or other blogs and comment threads. – Yes
* Blatant sock puppetry. – Puddybud’s mommy? – Yes
Lets see if Perfesser Darryl is true to himself or as I suspect a paper tiger!
Come on Perfesser, do yo thing!
YLB spews:
90 – And PStupid drinks in HUGE draughts of the white sticky salty fluid from lakes of right wing bullshit courtesy of the rich wingnut assholes that he worships: Murdoch, Scaife, Moon, Koch, Coors and many others.
The swiss cheese holes in his decaying brain are getting wider and deeper as he plunges further and further into the addiction of “thinking right” which in wingnut bullshit fantasyland is newspeak for “utterly wrong thinking” – a world where down is up and wrong is right.
Already PuddyBS has reconciled Darth Cheney’s and Norm P’s bullshit about Iran. In fact there’s no right wing bullshit that PFool won’t spin into yet another fantasy of victory for his bankrupt worldview.
The inexorable march of PStupido’s worldview into the abyss of insanity continues, on and on until Nov 2008. If he knows what’s good for him, PSilly will lay off the wingnut bullshit lest he pops a weakening vein in his disintegrating grey matter when the moment of truth, indeed reality, draws nigh.
Right Stuff spews:
headless lucy says:
Piper: When did Congress declare war?
12/15/2007 at 8:14 pm
Here lies the root of the HA-kookaid drinking-Nutroots foolishness.
9/11/2001
Most of us finally caught on……..WE ARE AT WAR.
War was declared on the United States.
The liberal handwringing HA kooks still don’t get it….
To them the terrorists are just “mothers and fathers”.
YLB spews:
Wrong Stuff @ 93
No it is YOU who is the “kook”. Ron Paul happens to disagree about the declaration of war against what? A tactic?
Show me a link to where anyone here at HA declares that Islamist cultists are just “mothers and fathers” and we shouldn’t defend ourselves.
And tell me how many bodies you want to stack before we can declare “victory” and go home?
I should know better than to expect coherent answers from yet another “kook”.
Puddybud spews:
Yelling Libby Bullshitter AKA The Clueless One (TM) is a-blathering again.
Not only will he have real problems showing the rest of you HorsesASSHoles where I used any right-wing sites lately, we can attribute his know nothing posting style on his self-imposed moratorium of not visiting MMorons or DKurse. He uses his worn-out clichés, retreading them every month because he has nothing new in his repertoire (if you stretch you imagination and call it that).
May I present some of his “best work”
1) rich wingnut assholes that he worships: Murdoch, Scaife, Moon, Koch, Coors and many others.
Puddy asks – When? I posted from liberal MSM sites these past few weeks. Daddy Love asked for my Lexis-Nexis subscription. Nope!
2) Already PuddyBS has reconciled Darth Cheney’s and Norm P’s bullshit about Iran.
Citation? URL? Entry?
3) white sticky salty fluid – Hmmm…? You Poor Man. He can’t even think of something original. He uses my lines against him as a retort. Typical. Sad but typical.
If you really scrutinize the postings of this idiot gene savant, you’d realize there are twin neon lights flashing in his eyes displaying “Space Available Here”.
Rock on Yelling Libby Bullshitter (TM) AKA The Clueless One (TM)
Right Stuff spews:
@94
It was liberal handwringer Rosie O….
She is the fringe of the Democrats as are many of the HA nutroot faithful.
“Well, then, get away from the fear. Don’t fear the terrorists. They’re mothers and fathers.”
Ron Paul? you think he is mainstream? please….
We are at war with Al Qaeda, Violent Islamic fundamentalists, and terrorists.
And tell me how many bodies you want to stack before we can declare “victory” and go home?
We stay on the offensive. Killing and capturing Al Qaeda and terrorists around the globe. We declare victory when Violent Islamic Fundalmentlism is destroyed as an ideology.
We press the fight to them.
We don’t wait around wringing our hands, hoping they don’t attack us again…
Puddybud spews:
Tight Stuff: Yelling Libby Bullshitter AKA The Clueless One (TM) is a fan of Rosie O’Donnell. Yelling Libby Bullshitter AKA The Clueless One (TM)’s head is so far up her but he sees through her eyes.
Puddybud spews:
Yelling Libby Bullshitter AKA The Clueless One (TM), call in your son and maybe he can improve your posting style.
Puddybud spews:
Lee: Cleveland Ave, Trenton NJ
Daddy Love spews:
Pud
Daddy Love asked for my Lexis-Nexis subscription.
No, I didn’t.
Daddy Love spews:
63 Why we torture!
I see you read Kevin Drum’s Washington Monthly blog Political Animal.
To bad you like to steal whole pieces and post them without attribution.
I’d like to request that WWT’s post @ 6 be deleted as a violation of copyright.
Here’s the post he/she stole:
Crap. Washington Monthly always craps out on Sundays, for some reason. Oh, well, it’s http://www.washingtonmonthly.com
Daddy Love spews:
that’s “I’d like to request that WWT’s post @ 63 be deleted as a violation of copyright.
Daddy Love spews:
93 RS
Here lies the root of the HA-kookaid drinking-Nutroots foolishness.
9/11/2001
Most of us finally caught on……..WE ARE AT WAR.
War was declared on the United States.
Not by Iraq.
Daddy Love spews:
URL of the content that “Why We Torture” @ 63 stole: http://www.washingtonmonthly.c.....012712.php
Puddybud spews:
Daddy Love: I am projecting like Yelling Libby Bullshitter ™ AKA The Clueless One ™. You asked me to post certain URLs as proof. Those URLs are from Lexis-Nexis. Unless you own one you can’t find the stuff by transcript. I told you to get your own subscription.
Daddy Love spews:
96 RS
We are at war with Al Qaeda, Violent Islamic fundamentalists, and terrorists.
Well, then it seems like bankrupting the country and gutting our military and National Guard to kill a bunch of civilians in Iraq isn’t much of a way of going about a “war with Al Qaeda, Violent Islamic fundamentalists, and terrorists.”
We stay on the offensive. Killing and capturing Al Qaeda and terrorists around the globe. We declare victory when Violent Islamic Fundalmentalism is destroyed as an ideology.
We press the fight to them.
Do you mean like the Liberty 7, who just won one acquittal and six mistrials after the government agents provocateur bribed and entrapped these paintball-shooting losers into talking about harebrained “attacks” on US civilian targets they were not capable of carrying out? Is that “staying on offense?” Or is “staying on offense” allowing UBL to live out his days in Pakistani tribal areas while we support Musharraf’s dictatorship?
BTW, much like Christians, there are lots and lots of “Islamic fundamentalists” and very few of them have any involvement with any violent acts. If we are so against “violent Islamic fundamentalists,” why are we so quiet when Saudi Arabia’s Wahabbis send money into Iraq to arm Sunnis? The government’s actions do not match your words.
We don’t wait around wringing our hands, hoping they don’t attack us again…
No, you start endless, futile, expensive, and bloody wars with countries who are unconnected to terrorist attacks on the US while allowing the mastermind of those attacks to escape. Good plan!
Right Stuff spews:
@103
Daddy Love says:
93 RS
Here lies the root of the HA-kookaid drinking-Nutroots foolishness.
9/11/2001
Most of us finally caught on……..WE ARE AT WAR.
War was declared on the United States.
Not by Iraq.
UN Resolution 1441
Puddybud spews:
Daddy Love: I’m with you.
Delete all of “Puddybud’s mommy” entries and the one from “Why We Torture”.
Sooooooooooooooo Perfesser Darryl, you up to the many deletions, or because there are many more Moonbat entries, it will cause you heartburn to do it?
Daddy Love spews:
105 Pud
Then you can post the relevant titles, dates, etc. so that your assertions can be verified. Citations matter. Otherwise it’s just your stupid opinion that you claim without proof is supported by some sort of content.
Here’s an opportunity to show that your heart is in the right place:
most of the richest Americans are liberal? That’s an amazing stat.
It is amazing, and almost certainly completely different from what you claim. I essentially consider this “stat” to be some sort of your usual bullshit. Anyone who reads it should consider it similarly, unless you provide a citation allowing us to evaluate the source material independently. You know, who conducted the study, when and where it was published, who was surveyed, what they asked or what data they analyzed, grown-up stuff like that.
You know, I’m not holding my breath.
Daddy Love spews:
But regardless, even if “most of the richest Americans are liberal,” What conclusions can we draw from this? Rich people are smarter? Republicans are poor dumbasses? Take your pick.
Conservatives seem to think that somehow rich people who support policies that would help the poor and working people is hypocritical, or they cynically suggest this while knowing full well it’s not true. It’s called “projection,” because you know that if you were rich you wouln’t give a shit about the poor or working people, so you project that attitude onto others.
puddybud's mommy spews:
Puddy, your call for Darrell to delete all my comments, (yes they were lifted unattributed from many sites. Any dumbass could tell that.) reminds me of a couple brave Republican warriors who attended the last two anti-war marches I attended in Seattle. Both of them were of military age. Neither had ever served in the military and they told me they had no intention of joining the military. Yet they are avid supporters of the two wars Bush is losing in Afghanistan and Iraq. They actually taunted members of Veterans For Peace calling them cowards and telling them to go “cry in Canada.” And when ever they were approached by a marcher they hollered for the cops. These brave Republican warriors are your kind Puddy pud. Quick Puddy, holler for Darryl again!!
puddybud's mommy spews:
Wow Pu! You have lexis-nexis. Why don’t you use it to answer these questions for us librals?
1) Respond to comment #28
2) Give us a convincing argument that your president is not a lying corrupt cheating torturing war criminal.
3) Tell us moonbats 7 things (one for each year in office)that your president has done to make this a better country. Socially, financially, homeland security, rule of law, civil liberties-pick your angle.
4) Prove argumentally (your word Pud)that the citizens of this country are better off today than seven years ago.
puddybud's mommy spews:
[W]hat is worrying Republicans these days is that this tepid rank-and-file reception to the best the party has to offer suggests that the Republican Party is hitting a wall after dominating American politics for most of the last 35 years. Republican voters are reacting to — or rather, not reacting to — a field of presidential candidates who have defined their candidacies with familiar, even musty, Republican promises, slogans and policies.
puddybud's mommy spews:
[Army Sgt. Darren Manzella], a medic who served in Iraq for a year, currently serves as medical liaison for the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Kuwait, where he says he is “out” to his entire chain of command, including a three-star general. After leaving Iraq, he started receiving anonymous emails warning him about his openness that suggested he was being watched, so he went to his commander to head off an investigation he felt was coming. “I didn’t know how else to do it,” he tells Stahl, acknowledging that he initiated an investigation of himself by violating the policy. “I felt more comfortable being the one to say, ‘This is what is real,’” Manzella says.
He then says his commander reported him, as he was obliged to do, and then “I had to go see my battalion commander, who read me my rights,” he says. He turned over pictures of him and his boyfriend, including video of a passionate kiss, to aid the investigation. But to his surprise, “I was told to go back to work. There was no evidence of homosexuality,” says Manzella. “‘You’re not gay,’” he says his superiors told him. This response confused him and, he says, the closest a superior officer came to addressing his sexuality was to say “I don’t care if you’re gay or not.”
puddybud's mommy spews:
More than anything else, what these revelations highlight — yet again — is that the U.S. has become precisely the kind of surveillance state that we were always told was the hallmark of tyrannical societies, with literally no limits on the government’s ability or willingness to spy on its own citizens and to maintain vast dossiers on those activities. The vast bulk of those on whom the Government spies have never been accused, let alone convicted, of having done anything wrong. One can dismiss those observations as hyperbole if one likes — people want to believe that their own government is basically benevolent and “tyranny” is something that happens somewhere else — but publicly available facts simply compel the conclusion that, by definition, we live in a lawless surveillance state, and most of our political officials are indifferent to, if not supportive of, that development.
puddybud's mommy spews:
The cooperation between the various military/intelligence branches of the Federal Government — particularly the Pentagon and the NSA — and the private telecommunications corporations is extraordinary and endless. They really are, in every respect, virtually indistinguishable. The Federal Government has its hands dug deeply into the entire ostensibly “private” telecommunications infrastructure and, in return, the nation’s telecoms are recipients of enormous amounts of revenues by virtue of turning themselves into branches of the Federal Government.
There simply is no separation between these corporations and the military and intelligence agencies of the Federal Government. They meet and plan and agree so frequently, and at such high levels, that they practically form a consortium.
puddybud's mommy spews:
More Republican values:
As Mike Huckabee gains in the polls, the former Arkansas governor is finding that his record in office is getting more scrutiny. One issue likely to get attention is his handling of a sensitive family matter: allegations that one of his sons was involved in the hanging of a stray dog at a Boy Scout camp in 1998. The incident led to the dismissal of David Huckabee, then 17, from his job as a counselor at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, Ark. It also prompted the local prosecuting attorney— bombarded with complaints generated by a national animal-rights group—to write a letter to the Arkansas state police seeking help investigating whether David and another teenager had violated state animal-cruelty laws. The state police never granted the request, and no charges were ever filed. But John Bailey, then the director of Arkansas’s state police, tells NEWSWEEK that Governor Huckabee’s chief of staff and personal lawyer both leaned on him to write a letter officially denying the local prosecutor’s request. Bailey, a career officer who had been appointed chief by Huckabee’s Democratic predecessor, said he viewed the lawyer’s intervention as improper and terminated the conversation. Seven months later, he was called into Huckabee’s office and fired.
puddybud's mommy spews:
When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.
[…]
Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.
puddybud's mommy spews:
TX Governor Rick Perry bashes Bush’s fiscal record.
During a campaign stop for Rudy Giuliani this week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) criticized President Bush, saying “George Bush isn’t and he never was” a “real fiscal conservative” or “a bonafide Reagan Republican.” Perry, who succeeded Bush in Texas, also criticized Bush’s tenure as governor:
“Rudy is a real fiscal conservative. He’s a bonafide Reagan Republican. George Bush isn’t and he never was,” Perry said on the videotape.
The Governor extolled Giuliani’s conservative credentials. But at the expense of President Bush, who Perry characterized as too big a spender — even during his days in Texas.
“George Bush was spending money,” Perry told the gathering. “George has never ever been a fiscal conservative.”
YLB spews:
PStupid – you are going down. It’s all collapsing.
You are so desperate, you even took a Lexis Nexis sub to sling more wingnut bullshit here at little old HA?
What a loser!
Stick around PStupid. I’m going to be laughing at each brick popping out of the crumbling edifice of your bullshit worldview.
Pop, pop, pop… until your shrinking pinhead pops on election day, Nov 2008.
YLB spews:
LMAO!!!
puddybud's mommy spews:
YLB is right Puddy. The Republican party is out of the mainstream. It is dead and stinking. It practices not a single one of it’s professed beliefs. If you disagree Puddy, don’t just call me names, prove me wrong: show me a single professed Republican belief that the party leaders actually practice.
puddybud's mommy spews:
The top Republican member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee and a leading Democratic voice on security joined in a blistering attack on the CIA and on the complex network of U.S. intelligence agencies in general.
“We want to hold the (intelligence) community accountable for what’s happened to these tapes,” Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We will issue subpoenas … Our investigation should move forward.
He said he had no confidence in U.S. intelligence leadership. “You’ve got a community that’s incompetent. They are arrogant. And they are political. And they don’t believe that they are accountable to anybody. They don’t believe that they’re accountable to the president.”
Hoekstra said CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden should answer for what he called misleading statements by the agency during his term, which began in 2006 after the tapes had been destroyed.
puddybud's mommy spews:
During an appearance on Meet the Press today, Mitt Romney took another swipe at his chief primary opponent, Mike Huckabee, calling on him to apologize to President Bush for describing the current U.S. foreign policy as “arrogant bunker mentality.”
“That’s an insult to the president and Mike Huckabee should apologize to the president,” Romney said when read Huckabee’s statement by moderator Tim Russert. “To say that the president is arrogant and has a bunker mentality, that’s when he went over the line.”
YLB spews:
Stupid Stuff says:
Never heard of her. Does she post here at HA? Did you understand my request? No of course not. Your reading comprehension sucks like that old loser MWS.
He raised 4 million pretty quick. A lot of the whackos you bunk with seem to think he’s evidence of the second coming. I even see some yard signs here around Seattle and environs with his name on them.
Fine. Go kill ’em I say. What did Iraq have to do with them? Oh and why is that UBL character still running around making tapes? Spending two trillion on that that pig in a poke in Iraq is sure doing a lot to cull the heard of bad guys. Clue: some of them are on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Tell me. Has racial prejudice been destroyed as an ideology? You’re not going to destroy the thoughts in people’s heads, no way no how unless you destroy lots and lots of people and then play Big Brother with whoever is left. Not the kind of world I want to live in.
Again who here at HA.org has advocated this? The bottom line is that your ideology is failing miserably and you want to project your own self-loathing on others.
Seek help.
puddybud's mommy spews:
You know why Ron Paul is doing so well at fund raising from grass roots republicans-not corporate power-puddybud? Because he doesn’t act like a Republican.
Insurgent White House hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is on pace to shatter his own one-day GOP online fundraising record, taking in an eye-popping $3 million through the first 14 hours of Sunday, his campaign said.
Paul, who raised $4.2 million in a single day in November, is poised to eclipse that total. He started the day with slightly less than $11.5 million raised in the fourth quarter, according to an aide. At 2:30 p.m., the contribution total on the campaign’s website said that the total was now $14.6 million and climbing steadily.
“Today’s fundraising boom is yet another example Dr. Paul’s tremendous grassroots support across America,” said Paul spokesman Jesse Benton.
While Paul is not considered to be among the front runners for the GOP presidential nomination, he is firmly entrenching himself in the top tier when it comes to raising funds. The latest haul might put the Texas lawmaker ahead of all of his rivals for the fourth quarter.
nicole broodinghen spews:
This is for you Puddybud, Marvin and Piper and you other Fox news lovers. Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment lawsuit sung like Handel’s Messiah
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/ 21860-bill-o-reilly-s-sexual-h arassment-lawsuit-sung-like-ha ndel-s-messiah
Puddybud spews:
Daddy Love: Why do I have to do your homework. Visit the Federal Donations Registry. I posted the link but for your lazy ASS here are the top 12. Only two are conservative. I added Ted Turner for your political enjoyment.
Warren Buffet – Avowed Liberal Hilary Cliton Supporter
William Gates – Avowed Liberal Democrat Party
Larry Ellison – Dianne Feinstein 2X
Paul Allen – Norm Dicks, Maria Cantwell
Sergey Brin & Larry Page – Both of Google – Big Time Liberals Googles gives many times over to democrat causes
Kirk Kerkorian – Liberal – DSCC and DNC Many times
Walton Family – DNC, Emily’s List, Claire McCaskill, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford Jr, and smaller amounts to State RCs – And you guys hate them.
Ted Turner – Liberal BIG TIME
David Koch – Libertarian & Libertarian VP Candidate 1980
Hollywood Elite Movie Moguls – Almost all Liberal
Sheldon Adelson – Conservative
Charles Koch – Conservative
All you have to do is visit the Federal Donor Registry like I did this evening. These are the big names the top 12
You can look at more of them if you need to Daddy Love. I posted the links so all of you can figure out who gives to what party. I rest my case.
Puddybud spews:
If Bill O has a lawsuit let’s see where it goes. If he’s guilty then we’ll see what happens next.I still remember the Merry Fitzmas posting here on HorsesASSHoles and still waiting for that to drop. BTW where are the DeLay indictments going?
Puddybud spews:
BTW Daddy Love I posted the Google corporation donations and link a few weeks ago. I don’t rehash old news like Yelling Libby Balderdash (TM) The Clueless One (TM), I move to the next victim.
Puddybud spews:
So Mommy, you admit plagiarism. Wow a liberal actually telling the truth!
Puddybud spews:
I thought Ron Paul had racist issues. Yes, I found the Kos link again.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/17/155438/459
If it’s in Kos it has to be true right, Yelling Libby Balderdash ™ The Clueless One ™?
Puddybud spews:
Nicole Boobybrains: Read Juan Williams book:
“Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It”
I am sending this to all my siblings. It has almost 4.5 stars on Amazon. Then your bravenewfilms message that blacks are still victims template will explode. Where is Booker T and W E B DuBois when we need them today. Enablers like Michael Brown Al NotsoSharpton (Tawana Brawley anyone) and Jesse (public schools for my children – no way, but for you… way) Hi-Action Jackson are only in it for them selves.
Puddybud spews:
Daddy Love: I apologize. I had this cued up for where the big money resides, in blue moonbat! areas and I forgot all about it. Thank goodness for the Firefox cached history keystroke.
“Population Migrates Inward but Big Money Hugs the Coasts
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — If you want to follow the money, get on a plane. Forty-five of the nation’s 50 most affluent ZIP codes hug the East and West coasts. Fly-over Land has just three, on the North Shore of Chicago. Atlanta’s Buckhead is the South’s sole outpost in this rich territory. The sun spot of Paradise Valley, Ariz., rounds out the list.
The nation is moving south and west — population center point is now southern Missouri — but the Northeast is still the money belt. Metropolitan New York is home to nearly half — 24 — of the ritzy 50 ZIPs. Add in Boston (five), Philadelphia’s Main Line (two) and suburban Washington (one), and the Northeast corridor accounts for 32 of the most-prized ZIP codes, according to data compiled for Advertising Age’s American Demographics by ESRI, a supplier of geographic information-systems software and data.
Elite households The 50 ZIPs are home to 201,799 households and 565,125 residents. This elite group — just 0.2% of the U.S. population — last year had an average household income of $294,000, four times the national average ($67,572), and average net worth of $1.2 million, about three times the national figure ($468,970), according to American Demographics’ analysis of ESRI data. The top 10 ZIPs, from No. 1 Atherton, Calif., to Old Westbury, N.Y., are all on the coasts.
ESRI ranked ZIP codes based on a formula including such demographic variables as average household income and average net worth. Surging home prices on the coasts have boosted the net worth of households in those regions. But coastal communities also pay better; the coasts are home to nine of the 10 ZIPs with highest household income. (The 10th, Kenilworth, Ill., at least is on the coast of Lake Michigan.)
ESRI found six affluent ZIPs in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, which together form the money center of the West. Los Angeles has just four. Its most celebrated address, Beverly Hills 90210, came in a distant No. 35 nationally, reflecting in part that the ZIP is home to both glitzy houses and not-so-ritzy apartments. Beverly Hills ranked second-lowest in median income; some people only act rich.
Watch less prime-time TV Overall, the rich aren’t much different from one leafy burg to the next. Across cities and regions, they universally spend big money on home improvements (average annual spending: $10,400) and luxury cars. They go to more live theater. They watch far less prime-time TV and read more news magazines. They travel abroad for business and pleasure. They are nearly twice as likely as the average American to shop online and four times as likely to tune their radios to classical music.
But sift through the data, and you will see subtle differences among regions and cities in consumer purchases and activities, according to Market Potential Indexes supplied by ESRI using data from Mediamark Research Inc.
The Northeast accounts for nearly two-thirds of the ritzy ZIPs (32) and more than half of the affluent ZIPs’ population (about 320,000). The greater New York are — including the winding roads of Westchester County, Connecticut and northern New Jersey — is home to 24 top ZIPs and 256,000 residents. Two of the nation’s hubs of old money, Philadelphia and Boston, account for most of the region’s remaining wealthy ZIPs.
Longest commutes Demos for the Northeast’s affluent ZIPs track closely with those of the affluent Midwest (represented by the Chicago North Shore enclaves of Kenilworth, Glencoe and Lake Forest). Residents (median age 41 to 42) have the longest commutes (34 minutes) among the ritzy 50. They buy more luxury cars and vote in elections more reliably than their rich peers in other regions. They’re twice as likely as the average American to take a vacation on a cruise ship.
Bottom line for marketers and media: If it plays in Peoria (or at least Kenilworth), it should play in Westchester.
But there’s not a lot of population growth. ESRI projects slow growth for most ritzy ZIPs in the Northeast and Midwest; it expects only two of the 35 will see growth greater than 1% a year through 2009. In the West, four of the 14 rich ZIPs should see greater than 1% growth. Atlanta’s rich ZIP should grow 1.5% a year.
Residents of the richest ZIPs in the West are a little more Web-centric than their counterparts elsewhere. The West Coasters are more likely to shop at Amazon.com, to purchase airline tickets online and to own a notebook computer. The tech bent isn’t surprising given that the rich-ZIP list includes the estates of Silicon Valley (Atherton, home of Google CEO Eric Schmidt) and suburban Seattle (Medina, Wash., home of Bill Gates).
West’s rich are older One surprise: The West is the new home for old money — not old as in inherited, but older as in age. Median age of the rich list’s 14 West Coast ZIPs is 46, four to five years above that of affluent ZIPs in other regions. What gives? Don’t blame it on Sunbelt retirees. The median age in Los Altos, a pillar of Silicon Valley, is above that of desert oasis Paradise Valley.
Median ages for the rich ZIPs in Northern California and Los Angeles are around the mid-40s. That’s a reminder of how Silicon Valley is getting older (Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs now qualifies for membership in AARP). In Southern California, the aging residents of Santa Monica 90402 go (OK, drive) to the gym more than their cohorts in any other ritzy 50 ZIP. They’re heading toward age 50, but rich residents of that seaside town are not about to surrender their youth.”
Copyleft and fair use claws to the URL holder.
http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=44689#
YLB spews:
PFooley @ 132
You are so freaking stupid, it’s unbelievable.
Best things I can say about Paul is that he’s against the stupid war, he’s actually read the Constitution and he professes to take it seriously.
More money to Ron Paul is a GOOD thing – that means less for neo-con crazy Rompin’ Rudy and Grandpa lazybones Fred. Pandering Mitt is trying to actually trying BUY his presidency.
Now the Christianist crazies are massing behind skinny Mike – a thin skinned ex-preacher who treats the public’s money as his own.
They’re all gonna fail. Your party is hopelessly split.
Do YOU GGGGGGeeeetttt it?!? LMAO!!!!
Puddybud spews:
Yelling Liberal Brainless (TM) – The Clueless One (TM):
All I was stating Kos delivered facts about Paul while mommy plagiarizer was stating facts about Paul. I posted a link he didn’t. Where is the proof? All he posted could be a rumor online. You are too much of an idiot to figure it out. Next question.
Goodbye Yelling Liberal Brainless (TM) – The Clueless One (TM)!