Cromleys News

A gander on the future of south suburban Dallas media

2009-08-14T09:54:00.003-07:00

A week or so ago, I took an in-depth look at the likelihood of survival of the Suburban, the attempt to restart a pseudo-edgy version of Today. (Tabloid-size format doesn’t make you “edgy”; ax-grinding just to grind axes makes you sound like a former Ellis County Press reporter.)br /br /Now, I’m looking at the likely future success, or lack thereof, of other print media in south suburban Dallas.br /br /That includes Focus Daily News, the Neighbors section of the Dallas Morning News, the News itself, and other venues.br /br /First, this “against the wall” observation.br /br /In newspaper job interviews I’ve had so far, plus talks with others who know the biz, the verdict is unanimous — even if you know how to run a newspaper, a suburban weekly is tougher than an exurban or rural community paper. And, folks at the Suburban don’t know how to run a newspaper, while part of the “competition” isn’t really a newspaper, part of it isn’t fully suburban, part of it, you have to question how it’s being run, and part of it isn’t a newspaper at all.br /br /Details on all below the jump.br /br /span class="fullpost"br /Marlon Hanson’s Focus? He claims his 33,000 circulation is audited, but didn’t tell me iby whom./i If it hasn’t been audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it ain’t that real. (And, I’ve looked for an ABC logo in the paper, from time to time.) And, I can do long division; at 33K circ, that’s better market penetration than the Dallas Morning News.br /br /That said, in one recent interview at another newspaper company, started by the former top editor at the Dallas Times-Herald, with its executive editor being a former DTH higher-level editor, when I mentioned Mr. Hanson, formerly a national ad account manager at the DTH, they basically rolled their eyes. And once of them said the Focus was essentially a wrapper for inserts.br /br /Yes, Hanson’s still making money. Mainly because Brett Shipp at WFAA has yet to do the story on it. (Or a lottery winner with a personal interest has yet to hire a lawyer.)br /br /A decade ago, Hanson did have at least a bit of local news more thanbr /br /The “Neighbors” Friday tab of the Dallas Morning News? Half the ads in its Best Southwest version aren’t even from the Best Southwest suburbs. In essence, other editions of “Neighbors” are subsidizing the BSW one. Maybe it still makes a profit. But, with an editor AND assistant editor both making more money than I did at Today, I doubt it. I really doubt it.br /br /Plus, I’ve heard rumor that Belo is looking at yet more cuts. If you’ve seen the ads in a recent issue, or lack thereof, that shouldn’t surprise you.br /br /So, how long will Belo continue to subsidize it from other regional versions?br /br /And, even if that many people in the Best Southwest read “Neighbors” itself, do they actually read its staff’s blogs? br /br /I doubt it. (No offense to my friend Loyd Brumfield.) Blogging by newspaper staff, like op-ed pages, as a prime source of advertising revenue, online circulation focus, or whatever, is a no-go. The New York Times found that out several years back when Times Select folded like a cheap tent.br /br /And, beyond that, unless Loyd has more pressure than so far to increase news content in the tab, it’s largely reader-submitted feature stories.br /br /Ellis County Press? It may do OK covering the white-flight folks in Ellis County.br /br /But, by definition, those folks don’t live in southern Dallas County. The folks that do, whether white, black, or Hispanic, don’t want to read what ECP offers.br /br /ECP is thin on coverage as is, and thin on real news at times instead of ax-grinding. (See top.)br /br /So, it’s an exurban, not a suburban, paper, with no angle on suburbia.br /br /The main pages of the Dallas Morning News? See “cuts” above, and note thinness of current staff. Note also the decade-old “Collin County plan.”br /br /In short, the occasional world-class feature (the August home-rebuild story should take care of the next three months), and the more than occasional bad news story of hard news, and that’s it.br /br /Now magazine? A monthly features magazine. No news.br /br /Now, the circulation side.br /br /In one interview I’ve had since Today closed, I told the people who headed that newspaper group, those two former Dallas Times-Herald editorial staffers, what the circ numbers were at Today’s individual papers before they consolidated into one, then closed and they rolled their eyes, but in a different way than over Marlon’s claims with the Focus.br /br /Beyond that, as shown by “Neighbors,” south Suburban Dallas businesses simply aren’t buying that many ads. Yes, they bought more in Today, but that was with three ad salespeople, not one.br /br /The best odds? Minority-oriented newspapers, perhaps.br /br //spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-8143766691483984608?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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‘Centrist’ Dem Senators back off Waxman-Markey

2009-08-14T09:54:00.001-07:00

The fact that four Democratic Senators a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchivesid=ah3CTKEw4HQc"want to gut the cap-and-trade heart of Waxman-Markey/a, the House’s climate control bill, is one of the reasons, per the poll in the right-hand rail, I think it’s already too weak. It doesn’t allow for the Senate’s angle, or conference committee cuts.br /-END-div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-4271750503233470774?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Krugman, NYT weigh in on ‘death panel’ smears

2009-08-14T09:29:00.003-07:00

Paul Krugman wonders how President Barack Obama “a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/opinion/14krugman.html"will deal with the death of his postpartisan dream /a,” then notes he has part of the blame for his lack of pushing and explaining the bill, first, and his lack of passion, second.br /br /In other words, as I have blogged before, we a href="http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2009/07/prez-kumbaya-instead-of-william.html"needed William Jennings Bryan/a and got Kumbaya instead.br /br /The paper, meanwhile, backstops Krugman with a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health/policy/14panel.html"details of where the “death panel” claims arose/a.br /-END-div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-1623502110038391340?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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DFAIT’s ‘Secret Story’ About Suaad Hagi Mohamud

2009-08-14T09:29:00.001-07:00

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Netroots Nation 09 - Photos from Day One

2009-08-14T07:48:00.001-07:00

centera href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVh9mNr25I/AAAAAAAABnE/5zx1D9FG8hs/s1600-h/nn09-berner.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 301px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369805841567046546" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVh9mNr25I/AAAAAAAABnE/5zx1D9FG8hs/s400/nn09-berner.jpg" //a /centercenterGeorgia Berner from a href="http://www.whatifpost.com/"http://www.whatifpost.com//a/centercenterat the Women's Caucusbr /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVh9_ROTPI/AAAAAAAABnM/V0ffvBhf6Gw/s1600-h/nn09-womens.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 251px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369805848292773106" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVh9_ROTPI/AAAAAAAABnM/V0ffvBhf6Gw/s400/nn09-womens.jpg" //abr /Fadia Halma, Politcal Director, Pennsylvania Democratic Party/centercenterat the Women's Caucus (in purple)/centercenterbr /a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVh-TubFhI/AAAAAAAABnU/hWCE8roQGqk/s1600-h/nn-09-david-tony.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 305px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369805853783954962" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVh-TubFhI/AAAAAAAABnU/hWCE8roQGqk/s400/nn-09-david-tony.jpg" //abr /The Other Political Junkie and Post-Gazette's Tony Norman/centercenterand my camera functioning poorly/centercenterbr /a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVh--eHojI/AAAAAAAABnc/tfeiQPURehs/s1600-h/nn09-Carpenter.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 325px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369805865258295858" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVh--eHojI/AAAAAAAABnc/tfeiQPURehs/s400/nn09-Carpenter.jpg" //a /centercenterThe Post-Gazette's Mackenzie Carpenterbr /br /a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVh_cUboBI/AAAAAAAABnk/xQ-_fWGNwpg/s1600-h/nn09-McNulty.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 354px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369805873270726674" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVh_cUboBI/AAAAAAAABnk/xQ-_fWGNwpg/s400/nn09-McNulty.jpg" //abr /The Post-Gazette's Tim McNultybr /br /a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoViYf-ZyUI/AAAAAAAABns/uHf3VZtYhyM/s1600-h/nn09-digby.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 311px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369806303748802882" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoViYf-ZyUI/AAAAAAAABns/uHf3VZtYhyM/s400/nn09-digby.jpg" //abr /As always: What Digby Said (a href="http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/"http://digbysblog.blogspot.com//a)br /br /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoViYoTpkxI/AAAAAAAABn0/prTDILtDIDY/s1600-h/nn09-fetterman-celeste.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 266px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369806305985401618" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoViYoTpkxI/AAAAAAAABn0/prTDILtDIDY/s400/nn09-fetterman-celeste.jpg" //abr /Braddock Mayor John Fetterman and /centercenterCeleste Taylor from a href="http://pennsylvaniaequity.org/"http://pennsylvaniaequity.org//abr /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoViZK0penI/AAAAAAAABn8/qp7ISVHp3GU/s1600-h/nn09-chelsa.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 397px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369806315250612850" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoViZK0penI/AAAAAAAABn8/qp7ISVHp3GU/s400/nn09-chelsa.jpg" //a /centercenterPA Rep. Chelsa Wagner talking about redistrictingbr /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoViZv8LPQI/AAAAAAAABoE/W-I85XHSsZc/s1600-h/nn09-pam-spaulding.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 339px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369806325214297346" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoViZv8LPQI/AAAAAAAABoE/W-I85XHSsZc/s400/nn09-pam-spaulding.jpg" //abr /Pam Spaulding from a href="http://www.pamshouseblend.com/"http://www.pamshouseblend.com//a /centercentertakes one for the blogbr /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoViZ4MGL1I/AAAAAAAABoM/Bo1alr9Cd-c/s1600-h/nn09-crowd.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 315px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369806327428558674" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoViZ4MGL1I/AAAAAAAABoM/Bo1alr9Cd-c/s400/nn09-crowd.jpg" //abr /The crowd waits for The Big Dog/centercenterbr /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVis-e4cpI/AAAAAAAABoU/oFwMRU99ZvY/s1600-h/nn09-onorato.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 355px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369806655535477394" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVis-e4cpI/AAAAAAAABoU/oFwMRU99ZvY/s400/nn09-onorato.jpg" //abr /Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato/centercentersrunning for governor/s talking about our regionbr /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVitjInskI/AAAAAAAABok/WlyeMn9UJng/s1600-h/nn09-clinton-2.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 378px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369806665374216770" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVitjInskI/AAAAAAAABok/WlyeMn9UJng/s400/nn09-clinton-2.jpg" //abr /Surprisingly this was taken before the a href="http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/12485/nn09-updates-clinton-says-repeal-dadt-and-doma-at-keynote-i-was-on-ron-reagans-show"heckler/a. /centercenterSomeone shouted out about Don't Ask Don't Tell. /centercenterBy the time that Clinton finshed answering/centercenterLane Hudson, Hudson gave Clinton a Standing O./centercenterbr /a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVitBpAmzI/AAAAAAAABoc/LzK6qEEwO3Y/s1600-h/nn09-clinton.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 351px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369806656383261490" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVitBpAmzI/AAAAAAAABoc/LzK6qEEwO3Y/s400/nn09-clinton.jpg" //abr /This way to the party at The Warholbr /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVitz1qIGI/AAAAAAAABos/Bc0J1xMrZIE/s1600-h/nn09-dok-harris.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 336px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369806669858087010" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoVitz1qIGI/AAAAAAAABos/Bc0J1xMrZIE/s400/nn09-dok-harris.jpg" //abr /Franco "Dok" Harris outside The Warhol. /centercenterspan style="color:#ffffff;".br //span/centerdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8213262-6310561031338269608?l=2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com'//div

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UI VPs and ICCSD Consultants

2009-08-14T07:23:00.001-07:00

span style="font-family:arial;"biJuly 14, 2009, 8:30 a.m./i/bbr /br /centerbConcerns About Consultants and Vice Presidents/bbr /(brought to you by a href="http://fromdc2iowa.blogspot.com/"FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com/a*)/centerbr /UI vice presidents and ICCSD school district consultants are back in the news.br /br /a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consultant"Wikipedia tells us/a that "A consultant, from the Latin 'consultare,' means 'to discuss' from which we also derive words such as consul and counsel . . .."br /br /Put "consultants" into Google and you get 88 million hits.br /br /Clearly, there's a lot of discussion going on. Why it's going on and whether it's worth the time and money is what interests me.br /br /Rob Daniel's piece in the iPress-Citizen/i yesterday, informing me that "The Iowa City School District could hire a consultant to help sort out what needs to be done to eventually build a third high school," is what got me thinking about consultants once again. a href="http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090813/news01/908130312s=apage=5#pluckcomments"Rob Daniel, "District may hire consultant; Would help smooth planning process for new high school,"/a iIowa City Press-Citizen/i, August 13, 2009, p. A3.br /br /Similar issues (for reasons I'll discuss shortly) are raised by this morning's story by a href="http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20090814/NEWS01/908140312/1079"Brian Morelli, "UI goes forward with VP search; Hope to fill senior communications position by Nov.,"/a iIowa City Press-Citizen/i, August 14, 2009, p. A3.br /br /It turns out that, notwithstanding the initial objections to the UI expenditure in these economic times, we're going ahead with the creation of yet another Vice Presidential position: "Vice President for Strategic Communication." Given that the least UI's vice presidents are paid is $214,000, with benefits, office and staff we're talking well in excess of $300,000 a year (an extra $10 annually from each of 30,000 students).br /br /So why are we doing this now, while cuts are being made throughout the University and UI spokesman Tom Moore acknowledges that "The economic climate requires thoughtful decision-making"? Because, apparently, it was "through that [thoughtful decision-making] process [that] it was determined we should move forward with creating this position."br /br /I guess that explanation should probably be enough to silence all doubters.br /br /After all, as Moore continued, "The new position is essential to . . . assuring that we communicate effectively with all our constituents."br /br /Hold that thought. I'll be back to the vice president in a minute.br /br /Before I continue, let me make a couple of things clear. It is not the purpose of this blog entry to criticize either the University or the school district. That's because (a) the points I want to make have to do with administrators use of consultants, and the equivalent of vice presidents, in general, and (b) because I don't have enough of the background facts involved in these two decisions to come to definitive conclusions about their justification and wisdom. (However, even if I don't have confidence in the answers I do have confidence in the questions and what are not intended to be anything more than superficial suspicions.)br /br /Now let's examine Superintendent Lane Plugge's explanation of the reasons for his consultant.br /br /Daniel reports the consultant is "to discuss the process of getting a new high school built in the North Liberty area. He [Plugge] said the consultant was necessary to help analyze the financial and enrollment data the district already has and use that data to possibly eventually redraw boundaries district wide." He then quotes Plugge, "What I'm looking to get from that consultant is the public engagement in the process."br /br /To summarize, the consultant (a) will "discuss the process" of building new schools, (b) "analyze financial and enrollment data" already possessed, (c) "possibly redraw boundaries," and (d) "public engagement."br /br /We'll come back to that explanation as well. But first, just what is it consultants and vice presidents do?br /br /No institution -- corporation, university, government agency -- can have all the specialized expertise it needs in its permanent employees. It makes financial sense, when addressing challenges that could not have been predicted, or that come up extremely rarely, to bring in an outsider -- an architect, trial lawyer, doctor, or specialist in toxic waste disposal. Moreover, even with staff expertise, decisions of sufficient seriousness, where there is disagreement within the profession as to the best course of action, there may be a point to seeking "a second opinion."br /br /But all too often the functions of consultants and "vice presidents" (which I'm using in the general sense of anyone holding the title and responsibility for some of the CEO's functions) are far less savory.br /br /A CEO (a title I'll use to include "president," "commissioner," "superintendent," "executive director," or "chair") for a variety of possible reasons wants a "vice president" for "decision deniability," a potential scapegoat, either in general, or with regard to a specific sub-set of his or her responsibilities. Or perhaps he or she is insecure about their ability to do a portion of their job, a job for which they were hired on the assumption they had that expertise.br /br /A consultant may be hired for similar reasons. They be brought in, and instructed, to support a decision of the CEO that needs political shoring up. They may hired to perform tasks well within the job descriptions of permanent employees -- tasks those employees are incompetent, or simply not up to, performing.br /br /At best, an outside consultant will have to be educated from the knowledge base possessed by the permanent employees. At worst s/he will bring to the institution little more than the general, basic textbook knowledge from their profession that many of the employees could quickly read on their own.br /br /During my time on the school board we recognized the urgency of addressing (creating, actually) the governance system (the role and function of the board; the members relations with each other; the board's relationship to the superintendent, and other administrators; the functions of the superintendent and their evaluation; management information reporting systems). We could have hired a consultant; not just someone who had read John Carver's books, but the author -- at a cost of about $5000 a day. Instead, we chose to buy the books, read them, and relate Carver's suggestions to our own local circumstances. As a result, we were not simply accepting a consultant's suggestions with less than full understanding, we were willing to put in the hours necessary to really make the governance system we created our own.br /br /Let me repeat and make clear: (a) I like Lane Plugge ("what's not to like?") and try to be as supportive as I can, and (b) I really do not know the "back story" on why he and the Board are now considering hiring a consultant. (c) I'd like to believe it's fully warranted in this instance.br /br /It's just that superficially and simplistically it seems to me the tasks that have been identified are those that are well within the expertise of those we have in place: (a) will "discuss the process" of building new schools, (b) "analyze financial and enrollment data" already possessed, (c) "possibly redraw boundaries," and (d) "public engagement."br /br /We have bright and experienced school board members. We have a number of administrators with advanced degrees from quality colleges of education. Moreover, isn't the process of building a high school very similar to the process of building an elementary school -- only for slightly bigger people? Isn't that something they've already done? Do they really need a consultant to "discuss the process"? Haven't they been thoroughly trained, aren't they already experienced, in the analysis of financial and enrollment data? Isn't the drawing of school boundaries about as bullseye central to the responsibility of a school board member (goals and criteria) and superintendent (application to data) as any decision they'll ever make?br /br /I've provided some suggestions on how they might improve their efforts at "public engagement" -- as have a number of other members of the public. But this is something they ought to be doing on an ongoing basis, and it's not rocket science. If they really have additional questions about how best to do it there's plenty of advice on the Internet and from local citizens. And perhaps the first principle of "public engagement" is that it is self-defeating to delegate the task to a consultant -- Board members need to involve their personal hearts, minds and bodies in the process.br /br /Ultimately my initial questions about this use of a consultant may be satisfactorily answered. I really do hope so. It's just that those answers are not now apparent.br /br /Similar questions remain for me about the UI's latest vice presidential addition. I am even more hopeful that my initial questions about that one will also be answered.br /____________br /br /* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnsonbr /br /center# # #/center/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/30130444-1586206784865701485?l=fromdc2iowa.blogspot.com'//div

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Paul Begala a sellout on national healthcare

2009-08-14T06:58:00.003-07:00

Personally, I don’t think his a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081202575.html"Social Security analogy holds water/a. The bottom line of Social Security from the get-go was that it was a PUBLIC retirement program.br /br /The analogy with national healthcare is the “public option,” pure and simple.br /br /Begala blew it.br /br /The correct analogy would be, “What level of coverage will a public option offer to start with?”div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-6975364990965872668?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Southwest-Frontier deal is dead

2009-08-14T06:58:00.001-07:00

Frontier pilots refused to swap a 40 percent wage hike in exchange for surrendering all their seniority, a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/0814dnbussouthwest.d75bbefb.html"so Southwest’s bankruptcy offer for Frontier is dead/a. Republic, which previously got Midwest out of bankruptcy, is the winner.br /br /Per the story of what it did to Midwest’s pilots, the Frontier pilots may not have made the right decision, but that’s a toughie in the dog-eat-dog world of pilot seniority, if you have any knowledge of that.br /br /And, despite some analysts’ pooh-pooh-ing, Republic is a definite winner.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-5624092824935345443?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Innovation

2009-08-14T04:28:00.001-07:00

object height="344" width="425"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/e0ffdwBUL78amp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/e0ffdwBUL78amp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"/embed/objectbr /a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/arts/music/14paul.html?_r=1amp;partner=rssamp;emc=rss"br /Les Paul, R.I.P./adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-8791407211184772971?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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A photograph of Gumley Hall

2009-08-14T01:07:00.003-07:00

I have written about the village of a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2009/08/contradictions-of-gumley.html"Gumley/a and its a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2009/08/gumleys-cricket-field.html"cricket ground/a recently.br /br /The a href="http://museums.leics.gov.uk/collections-on-line/GetObjectAction.do?objectKey=282939"Leicestershire County Council/a site has a picture of the Fernie hounds meeting at the long demolished Hall in 1903.br /br /The first edition of Pevsner's Leicestershire and Rutland described it thus: blockquoteBegun in 1764. The house is of brick, seven bays wide and two and a half stories high. Three-bay hediment. No quoins. The Tuscan colonnade in front is Victorian./blockquotespan style="color:#ff0000;"Quoins?/spanbr /br /a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoin_(architecture)"Quoins/a.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-6771926271242171307?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Will a call to privatise the NHS be Liberal Vision's Conference stunt?

2009-08-14T01:07:00.001-07:00

In recent years Liberal Democrat annual conferences have been enlivened by Ben Ramm's poetry magazine The Liberal calling for the party's leader to be sacked.br /br /Last year the media stunt torch passed to Liberal Vision, who predicted that the party would lose lots of seats unless it followed just the policies that the group advocates.br /br /What will Liberal Vision's stunt be this year?br /br /Perhaps there are some clues. In response to the span style="color:#ff0000;"#welovethenhs/span Twitter campaign, a href="http://www.liberal-vision.org/2009/08/12/if-you-love-the-nhs-so-much-marry-it-privatisethenhs/"Sara Scarlett/a, writing on Liberal Vision, invited people to write tweets with the "anti-NHS" hashtag span style="color:#ff0000;"#privatisetheNHS/span.br /br /Of course, what we should be talking about is span style="color:#ff0000;"#howtheLibDemswillruntheNHSdifferently/span, but neither side has been very interested in that this week.br /br /The second clue, found via a href="http://www.theliberati.net/quaequamblog/2009/08/13/when-rightwhingers-demand-nuance-count-the-spoons/"James Graham/a, is that Progressive Vision has launched a Facebook group to "help end rationed healthcare in Britain". It aims to "make span style="color:#ff0000;"#no2NHS/span the No.1 tweeting trend".br /br /This is significant because, in the words of a href="http://www.liberal-vision.org/faq/"Liberal Vision's FAQs/a, "In strict legal terms, we are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the classical liberal think tank, Progressive Vision." They also say they are "not obliged to support all or any of Progressive Vision’s specific policies", but it does show you which way the wind is blowing.br /br /The idea of privatising the NHS is a fantasy, but calling for it would certainly get Liberal Vision the publicity it craves.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-5904874113435562644?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Interesting Choice

2009-08-13T23:27:00.001-07:00

A new picture based on the span style="font-style: italic;"Diary of Anne Frank/span will be a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2009/08/12/2009-08-12_the_diary_of_anne_frank_to_return_to_the_big_screen_david_mamet_will_write_direc.html"written and directed by David Mamet./a Roy gets a set of steak knives fora href="http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/08/leaked_excerpt.php" getting us an advance script excerpt..../adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-1197632629664151952?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Howard Dean on why 'bi-partisanship' is BULL

2009-08-13T23:02:00.001-07:00

diviframe height="339" width="425" src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/32410542#32410542" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"/iframep style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;"Visit msnbc.com for a style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com"Breaking News/a, a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032507" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;"World News/a, and a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032072" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;"News about the Economy/a/p/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-7338031783109431654?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Damon Weaver gets his interview with President Barack Obama

2009-08-13T21:47:00.003-07:00

object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rP-695ATg-crel=0color1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rP-695ATg-crel=0color1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-6271319020654473562?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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The Dishonest GOPers who are lying about 'Death Panels'

2009-08-13T21:47:00.001-07:00

diviframe height="339" width="425" src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/32410950#32410950" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"/iframep style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;"Visit msnbc.com for a style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com"Breaking News/a, a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032507" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;"World News/a, and a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032072" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;"News about the Economy/a/p/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-6569764936127445830?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Rambling about we20

2009-08-13T21:22:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8cD3YQg3jXU/SoJNXw8ioqI/AAAAAAAAAnE/lMpzfpkNx74/s1600-h/tiger+lily01.jpg"img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 258px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8cD3YQg3jXU/SoJNXw8ioqI/AAAAAAAAAnE/lMpzfpkNx74/s320/tiger+lily01.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368938776450212514" //abr /br /On Saturday night I was out to visit friends. I was amused by a comment about my online profile picture, to the effect that I'm not really so ugly in person. Some of the conversation that evening was about the Internet and how tricky the balancing act of online and offline life is. It's not just about time, but more importantly who we are and how we imagine ourselves to be.br /br /I love Sharon Astyk's blog a href="http://sharonastyk.com/"Casabon's Book/a. I was looking at her site today and marveled at the clarity of her statement of what the site is about:blockquoteDepletion and Abundance are just two sides of the same coin. We're no longer speaking of the future when we talk about climate change and peak oil. So now the project is to accept depletion, and still find a good and abundant way of life, not just for ourselves, but for those who will come after us. We can do this - it is one heck of a challenge, but we have to find a way, so we will. That's what this site is for - finding a way forward./blockquoteLast time I wrote here, I said I'm no good at making plans. It's true, I'm not, but I'm still eager to get something together around the a href="http://we20.org/"we20/a initiative. This coming Saturday I'll have a chance to see some of my friends again, and I'm trying to develop a pitch for a we20 meeting the following weekend at my place. br /br /When I think about economics, I think about it from a global environmental frame. With my friends, I often discover I'm really out of sync with their perspectives. Most of the time feel at a loss as to what to say. I want to get together with friends to talk about as Astyk puts it: "finding a way forward" and don't quite yet know how to make that happen. br /br /When I talk to friends about climate change and peak oil, I never get feedback that neither is real, but the discussions always seems to dead end. My friends are busy people doing what they need to do, which in America requires lots of driving around. I talk too much and don't listen enough. Proceeding from the assumptions of climate change and peak oil isn't going to happen unless everyone in the group actually talks about those issues.br /br /Present tense, when we're speaking about economics,mostly we're concerned with making enough money to provide for ourselves. Unemployment is an issue among some of my friends, and it's a subject that we're loathe to talk about. Sharon Astyk's statement about what her blog is about brings climate change and peak oil into the present tense. So how to have a meeting that starts from this presumption is challenge number one.br /br /I've lived in the greater Pittsburgh area for most of my life. I'm very happy that I have old friends, people who've known me for a long while. Really, we share a great deal in common, even if my politics have always seemed on the fringe. My politics have never been terribly coherent. Back in the 1970's a definably leftist cant in politics was often expressed. Some of the leftists seemed fairly conservative to me then, and grew more so. Actually having to get a job seemed to turn their heads around pretty quickly. One way or another we all had to make lives for ourselves. br /br /Early this month Morgan Meis wrote a a href="http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article08050902.aspx"remembrance/a of Leszek Kolakowski. Meis discusses an essay "How to be a Conservative-Liberal-Socialist." I loved Meis's essay so much I wanted to find Koladowski's essay online too. I a href="http://www.mrbauld.com/conlibsoc.html"found/a it.span style="font-weight:bold;"*/span Morgan Meis writes: blockquoteIt's impossible to be a conservative/liberal/socialist. Except that Kolakowski did it./blockquoteMy hunch is most of my friends politics is actually rather along the lines of Kolakowski's Conlibsoc, even if they've never heard of Kolakowski. But there are no Conlibsoc candidates on the ballot, and our talk is usually more present tense.br /br /The point of going on about politics is that Pittsburgh will host the a href="http://www.pittsburghsummit.gov/"G20 Summit/a on the 24th and 25th of September. I do have my eyes cocked for various responses to the meeting. It is an important event. As I say, I'm not particularly political, but whenever the subject of the G20 comes up, it seems there's a presumption of political activism on my part. I think my friends aren't willing to acknowledge just how lazy I actually am. Of course I do value political dissent and would be happy to engage in discussions about Seattle 1999. But geez, that was ten years ago. The interesting challenge that we20 puts forward is to make a plan; to talk about now and in the future.br /br /I was hunting through the archives of Transition Culture for ideas and came upon an a href="http://transitionculture.org/2008/10/06/the-2030-school-reunion-a-powerful-tool-for-visualising-the-future/"exercise/a for visualizing the future. The idea is four characters talking at a 2030 class reunion, the premise they were young people then and my age in 2030. Cards with statements about the characters are to be distributed in the audience so they can join in asking questions about "what was it like?" br /br /I like the idea, but need to modify the exercise so that it can be done without people preparing as actors. Still, the exercise provides a good framework for discussion to think about the present from a future perspective. Many of my friends have children in their teens and twenties now. We are all intensely concerned about them and their futures. So that's rough idea about how I intend to get the ball rolling.br /br /A regular practice Sharon Astyk follows on her blog is to provide updates. The format of the updates follows: blockquotePlanted:br /Harvested:br /Preserved:br /Waste Not:br /Want Not:br /Ate the Food:br /Build Community Food Systems:/blockquote I love the list and that people who read the blog often join in the comments with their own updates. I doubt any plan we come up with will be exactly like hers. Still it really ought to be a plan that can be measured in actions taken during a week. Sharing what we do can motivate us to keep on doing and motivate us to do more.br /br /br /blockquotespan style="font-weight:bold;"*/span The excerpt references that it's from Kolakowski's book a href="http://www.amazon.com/Modernity-Endless-Trial-Leszek-Kolakowski/dp/0226450465/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8qid=1250214994sr=8-1"Modernity on Endless Trial/a. From that essay I went to the homepage of Mr. Bauld's English. A note on the bottom of the page reads:blockquoteSend comments to Brian Bauld, who has just retired from Amherst Regional High School, Amherst, Nova Scotia, in the summer of 2003./blockquote Mr. Bauld created an incredible online resource! I've saved it for my own study, and also to recommend for someone I know who's dropped out of school and is looking to take her GED and get into college.br //blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/17190292-5802611854064578877?l=bazungubucks.blogspot.com'//div

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NetRoots Today

2009-08-13T20:32:00.001-07:00

Interesting day.br /br /I arrived at the a href="http://www.pittsburghcc.com/cc/"David L. Lawrence Convention Center/a a little before 10am, met a href="http://sporkinthedrawer.typepad.com/blog/"Spork/a and a href="http://www.newshoggers.typepad.com/blog/festers-bio.html"Fester/a. Did you know Fester has a beard now? Neither did I.br /br /I got to see an amazing panel - "a href="http://www.netrootsnation.org/node/1120"How to Get The Most Out Of The Polling Data You Read About/a":blockquoteThis panel will share insights and observations from some veteran pollsters and analysts that might help you interpret the next set of poll data you see. Charlie Cook (The Cook Political Report, a href="http://www.cookpolitical.com/" title="www.cookpolitical.com"www.cookpolitical.com/a), Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin (a href="http://www.pollster.com/" title="www.pollster.com"www.pollster.com/a), and Nate Silver (a href="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/" title="www.fivethirtyeight.com"www.fivethirtyeight.com/a) will join moderator Greg Dworkin (Daily Kos) on a discussion about how to get the most out of poll watching.br //blockquote McNulty was a href="http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/bigstory/archive/2009/08/13/cook-dems-in-trouble.aspx"there/a, too:blockquoteCharlie Cook of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report had bad news for the liberal Dems at Netroots Nation today -- political intensity has switched over to the Republican side and Dems are facing a bloodbath next year. p Democrats had a great run from 2006 through 2008, Cook said, running up a 54 seat advantage in the House alone. But "there's offense and there's defense -- right now you're going to be spending time on defense," he said at a polling panel today./p "Intensity matters a lot. Last time you had it, this time they have it."br /br /Cook expects Democrats to lose about 20 seats in the 2010 midterm elections, cutting their majority in the House of Reps in half./blockquote And:blockquoteSuperstar pollster Nate Silver of a target="_blank" href="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/"FiveThirtyEight/a doesn't agree with Cook -- he thinks the Dems will do bworse./b pSilver said Democrats commonly told him his Obama-friendly polls comforted them last fall. "I don't think you should feel at all comforted about 2010," he said to the liberal Dems at the conference today. He said he was 80% confident Democrats will lose between 20-50 House seats and up to six Senate seats. /p/blockquote There was a lot more stuff in the discussion. Lotsa stuff about how to place the numbers in context. Great talk.br /br /Lunch time - a sandwich at a href="http://www.downtownpittsburgh.com/go/sammys-famous-corned-beef2"Sammy's/a. Earlier in the day, I'd e-mailed my friend Fred (who's got a radio show on KDKA) to let him know I was at NetRoots. Not really sure why I did but I did. Right in the middle of my roast beef on wheat (with provolone and mustard) my phone rang. It was Fred's producer. He wanted to know if I wanted to be on the air at 1:30. It was 1:20. I said yea, sure.br /br /a href="javascript:openPlayer('Episode',3948890);"/aThe result can be found a href="http://www.kdkaradio.com/pages/72413.php"here/a.br /br /After lunch there was a panel on a href="http://netrootsnation.org/node/1202"comedy/a and then a panel on a href="http://netrootsnation.org/node/1153"the newspaper business/a. The former was very funny. The latter, while just as important, was (forgive me) kinda boring. Maybe I was just hungry.br /br /More tomorrow. And Saturday.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8213262-836221716102363735?l=2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com'//div

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GQ Johnny Edward to fess up on Hunter baby

2009-08-13T18:52:00.003-07:00

GQ Johnny is a href="http://www.wral.com/news/local/politics/story/5791651/"going to fess up/a that he is indeed the father of Noelle Hunter, after the National Enquirer earlier today said a href="http://www.nationalenquirer.com/john_edwards_secret_dna_test_proves_paternity_mistress_testifies_federalgrand_jury_/celebrity/67120"DNA confirmation is in/a on the paternity of Rielle Hunter’s baby. The degree and firmness with which l’affaire Edwards was covered up made me suspect him as daddy-san to baby Noelle all along.br /br /That’s not all. Rielle Hunter supposedly testified to a grand jury looking at Johnny Boy’s 2008 campaign financing. Know a good lawyer, John Boy? Do not count yourself. Talk about making Slick Willie Clinton look moral.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-7245049805208291240?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Ted Rall asks why we’re fighting in A-stan

2009-08-13T18:52:00.001-07:00

I agree with the overall gist of his article, that we’re risking measuring “success” by using a more esoteric version of a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20090813/cm_ucru/whatiftheygaveawarandnobodyknewwhy"Vietnam War-type metrics/a. What next? Warlord contracts instead of body counts?br /br /And, as for propping up President Hamid Karzai, what if a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090813/wl_nm/us_afghanistan_3"top campaign opponent Abdullah Abdullah/a beats him? Do we stay even longer?div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-8384291141436581777?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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NYT Styles: Trying To Prove That Stereotypes About Manhattanites Are True!

2009-08-13T15:57:00.001-07:00

Shorter a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/fashion/13CRITIC.html?_r=1amp;ref=todayspaper"Cintra Wilson/a: "They let non-rich people and fat people (by which I mean people who aren't a more morally appropriate size 2, like myself -- have I mentioned that I'm a size 2?) buy clothes now? In Manhattan? Ewwwwwwwwww!"br /br /[Via a href="http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/08/13/good-thing-no-nyc-natives-are-fat-ugly-or-unstylish.aspx"Cottle/a and a href="http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/08/quote-of-day_12.html"McEwan/a.]div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-3632108567301622757?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Carlos Watson wonders about 'socialist'

2009-08-13T15:32:00.001-07:00

diviframe height="339" width="425" src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/32359980#32359980" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"/iframep style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;"Visit msnbc.com for a style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com"Breaking News/a, a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032507" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;"World News/a, and a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032072" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;"News about the Economy/a/p/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-3850283798147504256?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Good news for St Albans Lib Dems

2009-08-13T15:07:00.001-07:00

a href="http://conservativehome.blogs.com/goldlist/2009/08/anne-main-mp-faces-deselection-vote-this-evening.html"Conservative Home/a reports that Ann Main MP, Tory MP for St Albansm has survived the attempt to deselect her.br /br /Which is a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2009/08/tory-polls-predict-lib-dems-will-gain.html"good news/a from Sandy Walkington and St Albans Lib Dems.br /br /a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2009/08/st-albans-conservatives-at-war-over.html"Some background here./adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-7031785952199763968?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Noel Symington and his exploding Mosleyite soup

2009-08-13T13:52:00.003-07:00

a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoRBjQYSJqI/AAAAAAAAC8s/voOg7L3F9As/s1600-h/symingstons.jpg"img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369488729680520866" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoRBjQYSJqI/AAAAAAAAC8s/voOg7L3F9As/s320/symingstons.jpg" //aEach week the Harborough Mail takes a look at stories from the past in a feature called The Vault.br /br /One of a href="http://www.lutterworthmail.co.uk/news/THE-VAULT-August-1012-1939.5551940.jp"the stories this week/a is from 20 years ago. The Mail for 10 August 1989 reported that:br /divblockquotepemA carnival-style launch was being planned to officially open the new all-weather pitch at Welland Park College [it has now been replaced with a new pitch, which was finished last year]./em/p/blockquoteI have entered history because I helped persuade Harborough District Council to stump up some of the funding for that pitch when I was a councillor. I recall agreeing the figure we would put into it with one of the Indepenents when we happened to meet in the gents during the relevant committee meeting. And now it has been replaced. Look upon my works, ye mighty...br /br /More importantly, in 1949:br /br /blockquoteemA laboratory at the W Symington and Co coffee mills factory in Springfield Street ... was destroyed by fire. The fire brigade prevented the fire spreading. Fumes from burning chemicals filled the building./em/blockquoteI think we have read enough on this blog in recent weeks to know what was going on here.br /br /a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2009/07/noel-symington-and-night-climbers-of.html"Noel Symington/a, it is clear, was working on an exploding soup mix which Oswald Mosley could use to fight his way to power. No wonder he "left to spend time on his farm" in 1951./divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-3393163371926692030?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Beyond MLB

2009-08-13T13:52:00.001-07:00

I like a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/opinion/13glanville.html?pagewanted=2_r=1"Doug Glanville's op-ed/a on the options open to professional athletes after their careers end; it helps to clarify (which is more important than to "dispel") the "set for life" perception of how retired athletes live. It's obviously more complicated than the two poles we're most commonly treated to; on the one hand, the incredibly wealthy athlete who declares bankruptcy shortly after retirement, and on the other hand the retiree who spends his time appearing at celebrity golf courses and endorsing local car dealerships. Glanville also makes explicit the idea that so much of what is available in economic life is only available if you know how to take advantage of it, and you only know how to do that if you're fortunate enough to have picked up appropriate tools of analysis and to have enough time to analyze all your options. It reminds me a touch of some of the debates about health care coverage; in many situations, decent coverage is available, but it often takes a very long time to figure out what can be had, what the best options are, and so forth.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-2724508840489088716?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Hurricanes highest since last global warming

2009-08-13T12:36:00.001-07:00

The BBC reports that hurricane frequency is a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8197191.stm"at its highest in 1,000 years/a, the time of the Medieval Climate Anomaly, also known as the Medieval Warm Period.br /br /Of course, there was no human influence on that warming.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-1051313444240182336?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Cheney pissed about second-term Bush

2009-08-13T11:20:00.001-07:00

And, he’s apparently going to do a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081203306.html"a lot of dissing in his memoir/a. Interestingly, that’s not slated for print until 2011. Is Che Ney trying to influence the 2012 presidential election?div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-5124640762265364020?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Noel Symington and the exploding Mosleyite soup

2009-08-13T10:30:00.001-07:00

Obama HAS lost control of healthcare debate – and why

2009-08-13T10:04:00.001-07:00

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Briefing-by-White-House-Press-Secretary-Robert-Gibbs-8/12/09/"may dodge the issue/a, whether artfully or not (I say not; he’s becoming Ari Fleischer-like), but I think many supporters of major healthcare reform, let alone opponents, agree that President Barack Obama has lost control of the debate on the issue (if he ever was on top of it in the first place).br /br /Why? Well, as I have blogged before, some people have “Onward Christian Soldiers,” not “Kumbaya,” in their hymnals. And, whether it’s fear of the “angry black man” stereotype, or, this just isn’t Obama, he has failed to be a href="http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2009/07/prez-kumbaya-instead-of-william.html"William Jennings Bryan/a and understand, and grasp, the anger on other issues, the populist anger, that has led to this point.br /br /Another reason? As exemplified on his approach to economic issues, a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125003045380123953.html"he’s a micromanager/a. Elsewhere, he’s been described as “professorial” in his public speaking style on big issues. Neither works with this.br /br /Beyond that, the same WSJ story notes that Obama has pulled his punches on more than one issue already. “All hat, no cattle?”br /-END-div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-2406470181324824400?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Germany and France officially out of recession

2009-08-13T09:39:00.001-07:00

In another sign that, contra economic sneerers on the equivalent of Don Rumsfeld, the “old Europe” of the Eurozone has plenty of vigor, Germany and France are both officially out of recession a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8198766.stm"with second-quarter economic growth/a.br /br /That said, overall Eurozone growth dropped 0.1 percent. However, that’s still smaller than the U.S. second-quarter drop. In the rest of the EU, the UK seemed to the biggest laggard, with its financial sector still struggling more.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-5120956936835925326?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Original cap-and-trade creators doubt its CO2 use

2009-08-13T09:14:00.003-07:00

Thomas Crocker and others who came up with emissions cap-and-trade systems to control traditional air pollution a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125011380094927137.html"doubt its applicability to global warming/a. One difference is the global nature of, er, global warming. Another, he said, is that warming’s costs haven’t been sufficiently quantified yet to properly price caps.br /br /The better answer, Crocker and others say, is carbon taxes.br /br /At the same time, the National Association of Manufacturers and other big biz groups claim the Waxman-Markey climate control bill, a cap-and-trade bill, could cost a href="http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/climate-bill-could-cost-2-million-jobs-2009-08-12.html"2 million jobs/a. Nonsense. Nobody in Europe talks about job losses even close to that, let alone job losses in the abstract as a major fallout of the bill.br /-END-div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-7243578016708618624?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Who’s your baby daddy, Rielle? John Edwards!

2009-08-13T09:14:00.001-07:00

No surprise at all to me, as the National Enquirer says a href="http://www.nationalenquirer.com/john_edwards_secret_dna_test_proves_paternity_mistress_testifies_federalgrand_jury_/celebrity/67120"DNA confirmation is in/a on the paternity of Rielle Hunter’s baby. The degree and firmness with which l’affaire Edwards was covered up made me suspect him as daddy-san to baby Noelle all along.br /br /That’s not all. Rielle Hunter supposedly testified to a grand jury looking at Johnny Boy’s 2008 campaign financing. Know a good lawyer, John Boy? Do not count yourself.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-520755028226178767?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Baseball's Worst Riccardis

2009-08-13T08:49:00.001-07:00

A a href="http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/08/11/ricciardis/"good list/a, although I think the Beltre contract was OK (as Posnanski half-concedes.) Two apercus I particularly endorse:br /br /ulli"Here’s my thing about J.P. Ricciardi, the thing that really baffles the heck out of me: How can someone keep giving out contracts THIS BAD and keep his job and reputation? How? I’m serious. How?" br //lili"Funny, people will constantly rip the Yankees and Red Sox and teams like that for all the money they spend … but it is teams like the Mariners, Royals, Brewers, Blue Jays and Indians that seem to actually make the worst signings." /li/ulA query: would Halladay + Wells's contract in return for a Circuit City gift card be a good trade? I think it's close...div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-3451021173820026419?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Um, Senator McCaskill, let's get something straight

2009-08-13T08:24:00.001-07:00

hat tip - parker404br /br /from a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0809/McCaskill_says_Rep_Scotts_racism_charge_irresponsible.html"Politico.com/abr /br /blockquotebr /strongbr /August 12, 2009br /Categories: Health Carebr /McCaskill says Rep. Scott's racism charge 'irresponsible'/strongbr /br /Sen. Claire McCaskill -- who went through a pretty tough town hall herself today -- told CNN tonight that it was "irresponsible" for Democratic Rep. David Scott to blame racism for some of the town hall anger across the nation.br /br /"I think that is irresponsible to say," McCaskill said on Anderson Cooper 360 Wednesday night. "There may be individual instances of that but there are a whole lot of people who are frustrated ... but I'm not sure if it would be accurate to make that about race."br /br /Scott, who is black, had a fairly confrontational town hall earlier this week where he shouted back at a doctor in the audience who challenged him. The next day the sign for Scott's Atlanta area office had a swastika painted on it./blockquotebr /br /br /br /embr /WHEN A BLACK MAN...br /br /FROM GEORGIA.../embr /br /Gets a SWASTIKA painted on his office door...br /br /and gets mail that calls him a strongNIGGA../strong.br /br /I think he knows RACISM when he sees it.br /br /So, go somewhere and sit your ass on down. br /br /Hell no...I don't go for the okeydoke of racism only being valid when WHITE people think that it's happened.br /br /PHUCK THAT. br /br /David Scott has been BLACK IN AMERICA longer than 3 weeks. br /br /He KNOWS racism when he sees it. br /br /And RACISM is all over this 'protesting' at town halls on healthcare.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-4895566683949799408?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Food another tough hurdle for manned mission to Mars

2009-08-13T07:59:00.001-07:00

Apollo and space station/shuttle food preparation, preservation and packaging a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/la-sci-mars-food13-2009aug13,0,6213121.story "just won’t cut it/a on the tougher interplanetary rigors of a trip to Mars.br /br /NASA is both looking at new preservation techniques and sending an unmanned advance lander with a food cache.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-2775043699771372702?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Mercenaries oversee mercenaries in A-stan

2009-08-13T07:08:00.001-07:00

Yes, our government, claiming it’s too busy, has hired a British company of “contractors,” Aegis, a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-afghan-contractors13-2009aug13,0,5024548.story"to oversee the likes of Blackwater/a. Talk about foxes guarding henhouses.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-7054536929989749088?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Top Gear is the new Last of the Summer Wine

2009-08-13T06:42:00.003-07:00

a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoQLSu7SYMI/AAAAAAAAC8k/uK85V9NrVrk/s1600-h/summerwine.jpg"img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 281px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369429072194724034" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoQLSu7SYMI/AAAAAAAAC8k/uK85V9NrVrk/s400/summerwine.jpg" //aI have been known to complain about a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2009/06/top-gear-presenters-are-not-boys.html"the BBC's habit/a of describing the ageing presenters of Top Gear as "boys".br /div/divbr /divThe week after I last did so the programme's trailer ludicrously implied that they are "the kids on the street" who "never miss a beat"./divbr /divI was having my hair cut this morning and the barber's shop had TVs showing the Dave channel. As I gather is usual, it was running an old episode of Top Gear./divbr /divAnd it suddenly struck me where I had seen the characters before./divbr /divThree ageing men who, unencumbered by women or families, and with lots of time on their hands, get involved in increasingly contrived adventures. It's Last of the Summer Wine./divbr /divEven the characters from that programme's heyday fit:/divulliThe tall one who likes telling the others what to do - Jeremy Clarkson/Foggy Dewhurst/liliThe quiet, sensible one - James May/Clegg/liliThe small one who is made to risk his life in dangerous contraptions - Richard Hammond/Compo/li/ulpThere is only one way in which the parallel breaks down: Top Gear sometimes makes you laugh./pdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-8854833619141587582?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Not so fast with Chevy Volt economy claims

2009-08-13T06:42:00.001-07:00

The EPA is saying a href="http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/1042/questions-surround-chevy-volt-fuel-economy-claim"spare me the hype/a, in part because it hasn't finalized its method of testing the "fuel economy equivalent of all or primarily electric cars.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-5760781492027290380?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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US$40,000 For 5 Local Flights!

2009-08-13T06:17:00.001-07:00

I'm not asking our Ministers to travel budget airlines like some of the Pakatan Rakyat leaders. But a href="http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/35014-tiong-claims-rm10-million-donation-paid-in-cash-to-tee-keat"US$40,000/a (or ~RM140,000) in expenses for 5 return local flights is just completely mind-boggling. Here are the details of the flights taken by MCA President and Minister of Transport, Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat:br /br /Twice, travelling by jet G450:br /ulli12 Feb 2009 SZB/JB/KCH - ETD11am/12pm/5pm (Johor Bahru/Kuching)/lili19 Feb 2009 SZB/JB/SZB - ETD 730am/1030pm (Johor Bahru)/li/ulbr /Thrice, travelling by Learjet60br /ulli7 Mac 2009 SZB/K'TAN/SZB - ETD12pm/10pm (Kuantan)/lili24 Mac 2009 SZB/JB/SZB - ETD 330pm10pm (Johor Bahru)/lili20 Apr 2009 SZB/JB/SZB - ETD 530pm/11pm (Johor Bahru)/li/ul Each return trip costs an average of US$8,000 or approximately RM28,000 or the annual salary of a worker paid RM2,000 per month with 2 months of bonus.br /br /I think its disgusting and a sheer abuse of ministerial powers. And Ong Tee Keat has the cheek to tell the public that the flight company's bill hasn't been paid because the a href="http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/35002-tee-keat-denies-taking-rm10-million-from-fellow-bn-man"Ministry has not received the invoices/a. This also confirmed that Ong intends to pay for these flights using public funds.span class="fullpost"br /br /But what is perhaps more interesting is whether Ong's excuse that the bills have not been paid due to the absence of invoice is valid. I'm certain that to book these flights an "order" must have been made via the Ministry? Was the order properly executed and documented and accounted for? Or was the excuse made only because Ong Tee Keat cannot possibly be implicated as having received such favours from the Port Klang Free Zone developer, Kuala Dimensi Sdn Bhd?br /br /And how about Ong Tee Keat explaining whether he took these flights to carry out government business or private/party matters?br /br /Are these the only private jet flights taken by Ong? Did he take private jets sponsored by generous donors as well to Beijing and Seoul this year?br /br /Is there a Government directive that Ministers are not to take private jets?br /br /There are a hundred and one questions we want to ask both Ong and Tiong now to find out more about their cosy relationship. And I'm certain we'll see more exciting things to come as more and more dirt get exposed.br /br /But one thing for sure, I want to campaign for Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat to pay for the luxury flights costing some RM140,000 with his own money and not paid for by the rakyat!/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/37045477-7192320134759714190?l=tonypua.blogspot.com'//div

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Book Bloggingheads: Graveyard of Empires

2009-08-13T05:26:00.001-07:00

Seth Jones and I talked about his book Graveyard of Empires last week on Bloggingheads:br /embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://static.bloggingheads.tv/maulik/offsite/offsite_flvplayer.swf" flashvars="playlist=http%3A%2F%2Fbloggingheads%2Etv%2Fdiavlogs%2Fliveplayer%2Dplaylist%2F21793%2F00%3A39%2F03%3A39" height="288" width="380"/embeddiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-516290934547253512?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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@ Netroots Nation Today

2009-08-13T04:34:00.001-07:00

I'll be a little busy today:br /br /centera href="http://www.netrootsnation.org/"img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoAK1ojpj1I/AAAAAAAABk0/1zskWHRpoO8/s400/NetrootsNation-front.gif" //a/centerbr /More at:br /br /span style="color:#cc0000;"span style="font-size:130%;"strongemPittsburgh City Paper/em/strongbr //span/spanstrongPulling Up Roots and Moving to Pittsburgh/strongbr /Never mind the G-20: For progressives across the country, the data streams converge in Pittsburgh this week.br /a href="http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:67200"http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:67200/abr /br /strongNetting the Big Names/strongbr /Guess who's coming to Pittsburgh?br /a href="http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A67201"http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A67201/abr /br /strongSeparation Anxietybr //strongNetroots panel to discuss idea of unifying church and state a href="http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A67204"http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A67204/abr /br /strongGreen Rootsbr //stronga href="http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A67205"http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A67205/abr /br /br /strongspan style="font-size:130%;"emspan style="color:#cc0000;"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/span/embr //spanLiberal bloggers descend upon city for convention/strongbr /a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09225/990561-53.stm"http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09225/990561-53.stm/abr /br /strongConservative bloggers meeting here admit being outgunned by liberal counterparts/strongbr /a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09225/990560-53.stm"http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09225/990560-53.stm/abr /br /br /strongspan style="font-size:130%;"emspan style="color:#cc0000;"Pittsburgh Tribune-Review/span/embr //span/strongLiberals, conservatives come together in Pittsburghbr /a href="http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_638017.html"http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_638017.html/abr /br /br /Will try to post something here tonight.br /span style="color:#ffffff;"./spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8213262-2372654505606965400?l=2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com'//div

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Teh Crazie Continues

2009-08-13T03:19:00.001-07:00

From a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/opinions/tomtoles/?name=Tolesamp;date=08122009amp;type=c"Tom Toles at the Washington Post/a:br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xeewKZ2fD0Q/SoPnOk7qpMI/AAAAAAAAAiI/MUqCgUQn5N8/s1600-h/c_08122009_520.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 340px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xeewKZ2fD0Q/SoPnOk7qpMI/AAAAAAAAAiI/MUqCgUQn5N8/s400/c_08122009_520.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369389418373883074" border="0" //aFunny 'cause it's true:div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8213262-1499955782772866906?l=2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com'//div

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Green Party abandons internal election over dirty tricks

2009-08-13T02:53:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2009/08/greens-throw-mud-in-internal-party.html"wrote about the contest/a to become the Green Party's external communications officer and the increasingly nasty tone it has been taking. Most of the nastiness seems to have come from supporters of Rupert Read, would-be Mr Clean of the recent Norwich by-election, and his running mate.br /br /This morning comes news that the party's executive has issued the following statement:br /blockquotepStatement from the electoral returning officer (ERO)/ppA contractor working with the party overstepped their authority by sending a message to all local parties making allegations against one of the candidates for External Communications Co-ordinator without that candidate having any possibility of a right to reply. I am treating this as illegal canvassing by that contractor./ppThis situation is so serious that it has prejudiced the fairness of the postal ballot for External Communications Co-ordinator./ppI refer all members to the following section in the Election rules:/pp5 Conduct of other party membersbr /5.1 Rules of conduct /ppThe ERO has no redress against members who are not candidates in the election. A candidate should not be disquali?ed due to the actions of another member, unless it is clear that member has acted with the approval of the candidate. However, if, in the opinion of the ERO, the actions of a third party may have materially affected the result of the election, the ERO may declare the election void./ppAs ERO, with the support of the Standing Orders Committee (SOC), I have taken the decision to call off the postal ballot for the position of External Communications Co-ordinator./ppThis was not a decision taken lightly./ppThe election for Chair of the Green party executive is not affected and will continue as normal./ppNominations for the position of External Communications Co-ordinator will re-open at conference, as for other GPEx positions where there were one or zero nominations./ppThere will be no campaigning allowed for the position of External Communications Co-ordinator until nominations close at conference.Valid candidates' nominations already submitted will still stand, unless they withdraw, but will be treated in the same way as valid nominations for any other position being re-opened at conference./ppThese decisions were made with the support of SOC./pp/pp/p/blockquoteThe executive also says it is taking legal advice over allegations made in the email.br /br /So much for the Green Party representing a clean new form of politics.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-7161079785249346594?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Heydon Prowse in The Secret Garden

2009-08-13T01:37:00.001-07:00

a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoM_7PJSekI/AAAAAAAAC8c/xkQduflsc1A/s1600-h/heydonprowse.jpg"img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 150px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369205467666086466" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoM_7PJSekI/AAAAAAAAC8c/xkQduflsc1A/s200/heydonprowse.jpg" //a Heydon Prowse and his Don't Panic website are in the news because of a a href="http://www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/power/the-political-animal"secretly filmed interview/a in which Alan Duncan complained that MPs are "treated like shit" and "have to live on rations".br /br /We may return to the ethics of this incident and what it tells us about Mr Duncan. For the time being, let me just point out that Prowse was a child actor in a 1993 film of a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108071/"The Secret Garden/a.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-4600325680933884800?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Gene Wojciechowski is standing outside Derek Jeter's window, lofting a boom box into the air

2009-08-12T23:30:00.001-07:00

Shorter a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_geneid=4392903sportCat=mlb"Wojo/a:blockquotEIf Derek Jeter is discovered to have used PEDs, I, too, will pump my fist -- span style="font-style:italic;"into my own broken heart/span!/blockquoteArguably the worst part of drug war moralism (Sporting Division) is that people like Gene Wojciechowski are permitted to earn a living by repeating the idiotic fantasy that certain players bear within them with game's Purity of Essence. It's bad enough that such declarations of abiding love for the game actually indicate their opposite, but when this peculiar form of romance is folded into the catechism of the Order of St. Jeter, it's difficult not to feel embarrassed for the guy. I mean, imagine if the "template for baseball professionalism" included, say, not adding superfluous leaps to routine grounders, or sharing pernicious viruses with supermodels -- ihow could Gene Wojciechowski face his children each morning?/idiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-1742663981554836374?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Equality California holds Prop. 8 fire until 2012

2009-08-12T21:49:00.001-07:00

I’m not sure a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090812/pl_nm/us_gaymarriage_california_4"that decision/a. And, per the story, other gay rights groups agree.br /br /I think EC will have to jump in line, if enough of these other groups push for a 2010 repeal.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-873090490478335099?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Like fish in a barrel *UPDATED

2009-08-12T20:59:00.001-07:00

strongspan style="font-size:130%;color:#cc0000;"UPDATE:/span/strong emVideo of the interview at the end of this post./embr /br /a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_O%27Donnell"strongLawrence O'Donnell/strong/a is guest hosting for Chris Matthews on strongemHardball /em/strongtoday and he had this woman (beginning of video - "I don't want this country turning into Russia... turning into a socialized country."..."You have awakened a sleeping giant." "What are you going to do to restore this country to what the founders intended according to the Constitution" she says.) on as his guest:br /br /centerobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qm8N1BzQVQIamp;color1=0xb1b1b1amp;color2=0xcfcfcfamp;hl=enamp;feature=player_embeddedamp;fs=1"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qm8N1BzQVQIcolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/centerbr /Her name is s'/sKaty Abram. sThe apostrophe is not a typo by me -- either it's strongemHardball's/em/strong or that's how she spells her name (I'm hoping it's the latter as she did remind me of a none-to-self-aware character in the movie strongemLA Story/em/strong who as she's writing her name on Steve Martin's hand spells it out loud for him, "SanDeE*, Big S, little A, little N, Big D, little E, Big E. With a star at the end!")./s em[What looked like an apostrophe on my TV now appears to be a tiny arrow when I view this on Youtube.]/embr /br /O'Donnell could of course have wiped the floor with her, but he did say that he understood that she's not a professional talking head so he was pretty gentle with her. However, it didn't matter because she had no clue. Not a one.br /br /When talking about taxes, for example, he asked her if she knew that Obama had said he'd only raise taxes on those families making $250,000.00 and above. He then asked her if her family would qualify with the small business she said they had. At first she said she'd rather not say. Fair enough. But then she went on to say that she didn't know because her husband handled all that. Oh lord! Does he sign her name to their tax forms too? Wouldn't be the first time for some wives...br /br /He asked her if her parents are on Medicare. She said they were getting to that age. So he went on to ask her if Medicare and Social Security should be abolished (seeing as how they were socialistic and not something contemplated by the Founders). She couldn't answer his questions -- not wouldn't -- strongcouldn't/strong.br /br /I wish he had asked her if she had wanted to restore slavery -- you know -- like the Founders intended.br /br /em[sigh]br /br /* Here's the video:br /centerobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oKwgV8PAAYEamp;color1=0xb1b1b1amp;color2=0xcfcfcfamp;hl=enamp;feature=player_embeddedamp;fs=1"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oKwgV8PAAYEcolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/centerbr //emspan style="color:#ffffff;"./spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8213262-6367748817639563874?l=2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com'//div

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President Obama hosts reception for JUSTICE Sotomayor

2009-08-12T20:34:00.001-07:00

embed src="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1155201977" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=33521768001playerId=1155201977viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://console.brightcove.com/services/amfgatewayservicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/servicescdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.comdomain=embedautoStart=false" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"/embeddiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-3555464182751937635?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Melissa Harris-Lacewell on the birthers

2009-08-12T20:09:00.003-07:00

diviframe height="339" width="425" src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/32380340#32380340" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"/iframep style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;"Visit msnbc.com for a style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com"Breaking News/a, a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032507" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;"World News/a, and a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032072" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;"News about the Economy/a/p/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-7591431259888242041?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Who is behind these town hall disruptions and why

2009-08-12T20:09:00.001-07:00

object width="425" height="349"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7JvSS4RY-Xwborder=1color1=0x2b405bcolor2=0x6b8ab6hl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7JvSS4RY-Xwborder=1color1=0x2b405bcolor2=0x6b8ab6hl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="349"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-6029578759673574338?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Lil Ricky Santorum running for president? Yes, please!

2009-08-12T17:14:00.001-07:00

According to strongemPolitico/em/strong, Santorum is dipping his toes in the 2010 Iowa waters (see a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26029.html#ixzz0NyT213KL"stronghere/strong/a).br /br /My first question, of course, is will he be running as a Pennsylvanian or a Virginian?br /br /I know that that elections officials a href="http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2008/11/santorum_eligible_to_vote_in_w.html"strongruled/strong/a last year that he was eligible to vote in PA. I know that he claims that Penn Hills PA is his residence. I know that he says that he lives with his family. And, I know that his eldest daughter graduated from a high school in Virginia this spring. I know that because my nephew was one of her classmates. So, I guess we all know that she commuted about 250 miles each way -- 500 miles each day -- five days a week to attend school.br /br /But aside from that wouldn't, say, a Santorum-Palin or Palin-Santorum be a dream ticket?br /br /I mean for bloggers like me, it'd be a dream ticket (hard to say if Ricky or Lukey is my true muse). Selfish of me I know. But there it is.br /br /Let's take a stroll down memory lane, shall we?br /br /centera href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLq33yAlI/AAAAAAAABm0/NFnvevwYbtc/s1600-h/santorum-ill.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 260px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369218380680266322" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLq33yAlI/AAAAAAAABm0/NFnvevwYbtc/s400/santorum-ill.jpg" //abr /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLZQZOqhI/AAAAAAAABms/6UJa3bby6XU/s1600-h/santorum-seersucker.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369218078025361938" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLZQZOqhI/AAAAAAAABms/6UJa3bby6XU/s400/santorum-seersucker.jpg" //abr /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLY2GU_uI/AAAAAAAABmk/6xnTPzbSsLM/s1600-h/santorum-nytimes.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 306px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369218070966763234" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLY2GU_uI/AAAAAAAABmk/6xnTPzbSsLM/s400/santorum-nytimes.jpg" //abr /br /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLYd6Uj5I/AAAAAAAABmc/44wjmeAvdB0/s1600-h/st-santorum.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 198px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369218064473952146" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLYd6Uj5I/AAAAAAAABmc/44wjmeAvdB0/s400/st-santorum.jpg" //abr /br /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLX10iffI/AAAAAAAABmU/SzIwadDib-g/s1600-h/crackhead-rick.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 350px; HEIGHT: 356px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369218053712281074" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLX10iffI/AAAAAAAABmU/SzIwadDib-g/s400/crackhead-rick.jpg" //abr /br /a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLXTWrjrI/AAAAAAAABmM/XhUWYa1ORl4/s1600-h/thebeav-santorum.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 256px; HEIGHT: 330px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369218044460240562" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNLXTWrjrI/AAAAAAAABmM/XhUWYa1ORl4/s400/thebeav-santorum.jpg" //abr /br /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNK53lGsZI/AAAAAAAABmE/7TAJVNdiSd0/s1600-h/beaver-santorum.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 313px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369217538788340114" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNK53lGsZI/AAAAAAAABmE/7TAJVNdiSd0/s400/beaver-santorum.jpg" //abr /br /a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNK4uNC24I/AAAAAAAABl8/F1DuOPsSuR4/s1600-h/rick-w.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 288px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369217519091637122" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNK4uNC24I/AAAAAAAABl8/F1DuOPsSuR4/s400/rick-w.jpg" //abr /br /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNK4EKdy1I/AAAAAAAABl0/Z0J6CqrnvjM/s1600-h/rick-gomer.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 355px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369217507806530386" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNK4EKdy1I/AAAAAAAABl0/Z0J6CqrnvjM/s400/rick-gomer.jpg" //abr /Separated at Birthbr /br /a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNK3nFc6wI/AAAAAAAABls/5NOQjI297Dg/s1600-h/rick-superman.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 286px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369217500000873218" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNK3nFc6wI/AAAAAAAABls/5NOQjI297Dg/s400/rick-superman.jpg" //abr /br /a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNK3O6oBNI/AAAAAAAABlk/bmd-nMj4460/s1600-h/ricksredskins1.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 353px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369217493513012434" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoNK3O6oBNI/AAAAAAAABlk/bmd-nMj4460/s400/ricksredskins1.jpg" //abr /br /strongspan style="font-size:130%;"And, there's /span/stronga href="http://2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com/2005/09/absolut-corruption.html"strongspan style="font-size:130%;"this/span/strong/astrongspan style="font-size:130%;".br //span/strongbr /span style="font-size:180%;"span style="color:#cc0000;"strongRUN, RICKY, RUN/strong!/span/center/spanbr /span style="color:#ffffff;"./spanbr /span style="font-size:180%;"/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8213262-6914023948709692095?l=2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com'//div

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Like fish in a barrel

2009-08-12T15:59:00.003-07:00

a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_O%27Donnell"strongLawrence O'Donnell/strong/a is guest hosting for Chris Matthews on strongemHardball /em/strongtoday and he had this woman (beginning of video - "I don't want this country turning into Russia... turning into a socialized country."..."You have awakened a sleeping giant." "What are you going to do to restore this country to what the founders intended according to the Constitution" she says.) on as his guest:br /br /centerobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qm8N1BzQVQIamp;color1=0xb1b1b1amp;color2=0xcfcfcfamp;hl=enamp;feature=player_embeddedamp;fs=1"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qm8N1BzQVQIcolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/centerbr /Her name is 'Katy Abram. The apostrophe is not a typo by me -- either it's strongemHardball's/em/strong or that's how she spells her name (I'm hoping it's the latter as she did remind me of a none-to-self-aware character in the movie strongemLA Story/em/strong who as she's writing her name on Steve Martin's hand spells it out loud for him, "SanDeE*, Big S, little A, little N, Big D, little E, Big E. With a star at the end!").br /br /O'Donnell could of course have wiped the floor with her, but he did say that he understood that she's not a professional talking head so he was pretty gentle with her. However, it didn't matter because she had no clue. Not a one.br /br /When talking about taxes, for example, he asked her if she knew that Obama had said he'd only raise taxes on those families making $250,000.00 and above. He then asked her if her family would qualify with the small business she said they had. At first she said she'd rather not say. Fair enough. But then she went on to say that she didn't know because her husband handled all that. Oh lord! Does he sign her name to their tax forms too? Wouldn't be the first time for some wives...br /br /He asked her if her parents are on Medicare. She said they were getting to that age. So he went on to ask her if Medicare and Social Security should be abolished (seeing as how they were socialistic and not something contemplated by the Founders). She couldn't answer his questions -- not wouldn't -- strongcouldn't/strong.br /br /I wish he had asked her if she had wanted to restore slavery -- you know -- like the Founders intended.br /br /em[sigh]br //emspan style="color:#ffffff;"./spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8213262-6367748817639563874?l=2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com'//div

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Greens throw mud in internal party election

2009-08-12T15:59:00.001-07:00

a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoM6wXJsI5I/AAAAAAAAC8U/otwaK0Utg1M/s1600-h/muddy.jpg"img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 159px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369199783278551954" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoM6wXJsI5I/AAAAAAAAC8U/otwaK0Utg1M/s200/muddy.jpg" //aA couple of readers have contacted me today about the Green Party's election for its external communications officer. Rupert Read and Jason Kitkat are standing on job-share basis against the current incumbent Tracy Dighton-Brown.br /br /And their supporters are fighting a personal and dirty campaign.br /br /On Read and Knight's own a href="http://rupertjason.wordpress.com/endorsements/"campaign site/a one supporter has written:br /divblockquotepOn Friday 12 June, Tracy Dighton-Brown, the current External Comms Co-ordinator, said to me, and I quote exactly: “I’m going to destroy you, Mark Hill.”/ppI can work with the madness of the Royal Mail. I can cope with the civil service for the sake of the Party. But I simply can’t work with an External Comms Co-ordinator who routinely excludes me from Committee meetings and decisions, and who is basically impossible to work with./p/blockquotea href="http://www.dailyplanet.org.uk/10/08/2009/green-party-executive-elections-2009/"dailyplanet.org.uk/a lists six (count 'em) reasons why is Dighton-Brown's fault that the Greens did not do better in the recent Norwich by-election, where Read was the party's candidate.br /br /Among them is that she:br /blockquotecaused two press officers to resign. Sian Berry and Gary Dunion - who had come up with a strategy to build a media narrative (as they had done with huge success in the London campaign) - resigned after Tracy trashed their strategy. The strategy was never replaced, and nor was one of their posts./blockquoteShe does have her defenders among Green bloggers. a href="http://another-green-world.blogspot.com/2009/08/muddy-electioni-suppose-thats-politics.html"Another Green World/a writes:br /br /blockquotepI have been amazed by how much mud has been thrown at Tracy Dighton-Brown the current External comms member of the Green Party Executive./ppUnfounded rumours that she is opposed to the free post system are one example./ppand I have had this 'Tracy is one of the most frightening and scary people that I have ever met. She is utterly manipulative, two-faced and has no sense of morality as far as I can see. I am personally terrified that she is in control of the Green Party's media operation. All she has done so far is to stop other people from doing things.'/ppDepressing./p/blockquoteRemind me. Wasn't it Rupert Read who launched, to great fanfares, his "clean politics pledge" during the Norwich North campaign?br /br /Indeed it was. Here he is writing on the a href="http://www.norwichgreenparty.org/default.aspx?url=http://www.norwichgreenparty.org/news/090707.html"Norwich Green Party/a website on 7 July:br /blockquotepIf politicians are going to mean what they say about cleaning up politics, then it is vital to begin with cleaning up political campaigning. Citizens need to be able to trust what politicians say .../ppA clean campaign is about having a constructive debate on the issues between the candidates and ensuring that the issues are not obscured by lies, personal attacks and mud-throwing./p/blockquoteMaybe that pledge should be extended to the Green Party's own internal elections?/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-2151022745508821709?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Palin-LaRouche 2012! Or would that be LaRouche-Palin?

2009-08-12T15:09:00.003-07:00

a href="http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/default.aspx"Suzy Khimm/a offers some thoughts on the presence of LaRouchites along the midways of various health care town halls.blockquoteThe LaRouchies' logic seems virtually indistinguishable from the current right-wing fear-mongering. "Citizens are receiving Hitler-era ‘reasons' for why they must accept drastic medical cutbacks, sickness, and death," LaRouche writes on his site. "For example, you must forego what is called ‘wasteful, excessive treatment,' during your end-of-life months." The only difference between their agitations and the far right's histrionics? Larouchies maintain that Obama and his cronies are in cahoots with HMOs and the insurance industry-and that the real solution to their fascistic agenda is a single-payer plan (which would presumably be rid of its Hitler-inspired leadership, though they don't go into the details)./blockquoteI suspect the LaRouchites would argue that once HMOs are abolished and a href="http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2009/3628lar_obama_fascist_health.html"placed on trial for crimes against humanity/a, their political enablers will join them in the dock -- thus turning the American political system over to a new class of leaders who are determined at last to do battle against the English Crown.br /br /Nuance aside, Khimm is obviously correct to point out the crossover between LaRouche and the Soylent Green Right; however, she fails to notice the most obvious (and literal) link in the axis. While Sarah Palin's views on the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Lyndon_LaRouche#The_.22British.22_conspiracy"Queen of England and her role in the international drug trade/a are, as yet, undisclosed, LaRouche has a href="http://larouchepub.com/other/2002/2908ibero_ldbge.html"been a perennial advocate of a Land Bridge to Nowhere/a, connecting Asia and the Americas by tunneling under the Bering Strait. LaRouche's ideas are custom-made for someone like Palin, whose "Drill, Baby, Drill" mantra could be easily adapted to support yet another federally-funded project to benefit a state comprised of independent, freedom-loving people who proudly reject federal funds except when, like, they prefer not to.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-2418298335602007841?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Tory polls predict Lib Dems will gain St Albans

2009-08-12T15:09:00.001-07:00

Last week I reported the rows with St Albans Conservatives. Tonight comes news from the a href="http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/search/4539287.St_Albans_Tory_association_s_chairman_rallies_support_for_MP_s_de_selection/"St Albans amp; Harpenden Review/a that Matt Peck, a deputy chairman of the party in the city, has written all its members saying:br /blockquoteThe initial actions to de-select Anne Main were as a direct result of information about poll data obtained by Central Office informing us that our seat is likely to be lost to the Liberal Democrats, with a significant contributing factor being the public's perception of Anne Main's expenses claims./blockquoteemThanks to a href="http://robprowse.mycouncillor.org.uk/2009/08/12/torys-tip-lib-dems-to-win-election/"Rob Prowse/a./emdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-8476196248478108374?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Self-Inflicted Wounds

2009-08-12T14:44:00.003-07:00

I think a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/why_are_tom_vilsack_and_janet.html"this is definitely correct/a. I didn't understand why Obama was appointing viable Senate candidates at the time, and it looks even worse in retrospect. (Although the subsequent analysis doesn't apply in her case, one can also add Sebeius, who would have been at least a credible challenger for the soon-to-be vacant Senate seat in Kansas, and would likely have been more progressive than the typical red state senator to boot had she won.) If I understood the logic, Obama felt it was important to have ex-legislators in the cabinet to facilitate relations with Congress and help advance his agenda. Hence the failed Daschle nomination as well. But, as a href="http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/08/the-pressure.php"Matt says/a, I think that was misguided -- what matters is span style="font-style: italic;"power/span, and a credible challenger means vastly more than having someone in the cabinet with some experience as a legislator.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-6584451810990621487?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Why Even TRY Bipartisanship With The Lying GOP?

2009-08-12T14:44:00.001-07:00

Just stumbled over this at a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/12/grassley-scare-mongers/"thinkprogress/a.br /br /Yesterday nascent Anti-Christ and Sarah Palin's baby's would-be executioner President Barack Obama said a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090812/NEWS/90811030/1001"this/a of Senator Chuck Grassley, God-fearing Republican of Iowa:blockquoteNow, I think that there are some of my Republican friends on Capitol Hill who are sincerely trying to figure out if they can find a health care bill that works — Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Olympia Snowe from Maine have been — yes, I got to admit I like Olympia, too. They are diligently working to see if they can come up with a plan that could get both Republican and Democratic support.br //blockquote Today, according to the a href="http://iowaindependent.com/18456/grassley-government-shouldnt-decide-when-to-pull-the-plug-on-grandma"Iowa Independent/a, that same Senator Grassley said this about the Socialist Deathcare Plan being foisted on an unwitting public by that Kenyan-born usurper-to-The-Oval Office:blockquoteAmericans should be scared of provisions in a health care bill currently in the U.S. House because it will allow the government to have a say in end-of-life decisions, Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley told a crowd of more than 300 Wednesday morning.br /br /“In the House bill, there is counseling for end of life,” Grassley said. “You have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life, you should have done that 20 years before. Should not have a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma”/blockquote And in case you're thinking that Dan Rather hoaxed the story (like he probably hoaxed that Australian birth certificate to discredit Orly Taitz and Alan Keyes) Thinkprogress has the video:br /br /centerobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/n2xVamHocZkamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/n2xVamHocZkamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/centerbr /My one question is this (all wingnut conspiracy crazie aside) why is the Democratic Party looking to play nice and be all "bi-partisan" with the GOP?br /br /They're certainly not returning the favor.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8213262-3640396568641248738?l=2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com'//div

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The Wall Street Journal’s BIG lies on healthcare

2009-08-12T14:19:00.001-07:00

The lies in an opinion piece start with the claim a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204908604574332293172846168.html"9 of 10 people under 65 are insured already/a.br /br /The claim that states with “guaranteed issue” of insurance are struggling? Well, deductibility of corporate-offered insurance is a federal, not state tax issue, so already, the WSJ is comparing apples and oranges. As for costs, well, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts have high overall costs of living, so what do you expect?div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-3339325516137313314?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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URGENT! You Are Needed at Specter Town Hall!

2009-08-12T12:13:00.003-07:00

By now many of you have seen the disruptive outbursts and repetition of stalking points/s BLATANT LIES that occurred at Sen. Arlen Specter's last town hall on health care reform (see a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09223/990094-100.stm"here/a and a href="http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/earlyreturns/archive/2009/08/11/to-specter-god-s-going-to-judge-you.aspx"here/a and a href="http://macyapper.blogspot.com/2009/08/health-care-opposition-idiots-edition.html"here/a).br /br /Tomorrow (8/13), Sen. Specter will be in Kittanning for a town hall meeting - the strongemonly/em/strong one that he'll be doing in Western PA before returning to DC to work on the health care bill.br /br /Those who know how vital health care reform is to the very health of this nation must turn out for this meeting.br /br /And of course the idea is not to come to shut out or shout down the other side, but to civilly and respectfully make our side's determination felt ("our side" being the vast majority of Americans).br /br /strongWHAT:/strong Sen. Specter Town Hall Meetingbr /strongWHEN:/strong Thursday, August 13, 2009. Meeting starts at 3:00PM, but coordinating meeting at noon, 11:00AM or earlier is even better to help insure we get the limited tickets that allow reform proponents to ask questions.br /strongWHERE/strong: Belmont Complex, 415 Butler Rd. Kittanning, PA 16201br /br /See here for more info: a href="http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2009/08/05/how-to-fight-back-against-the-right/"stronghttp://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2009/08/05/how-to-fight-back-against-the-right//strong/a .br /br /If you have questions or if you simply want to let organizers know that you can make it, contact: Dave Ninehouser, SEIU, Pennsylvanians For HealthCare a href="mailto:dave.nine@hotmail.com"dave.nine@hotmail.com/a 412.370.5247br /br /centerobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qn3KyYhd7l8amp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qn3KyYhd7l8hl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectbr /br /object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/egCYDBAbaGEamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/egCYDBAbaGEhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectbr /br /object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qm8N1BzQVQIamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qm8N1BzQVQIhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/centerbr /strongAnd remember, we already have nameless, faceless bureaucrats making decisions on our health care: they work at the insurance companies.br /br /And, the death panels are real:/strongbr /br /centera href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoMFBTixQUI/AAAAAAAABlc/Nm9UD5HtVu0/s1600-h/red_stage_curtains_death_spreadsheet.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 291px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369140700739879234" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fnsOmb0Fvog/SoMFBTixQUI/AAAAAAAABlc/Nm9UD5HtVu0/s400/red_stage_curtains_death_spreadsheet.jpg" //a/centerbr /span style="color:#ffffff;"./spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8213262-7890245446288288035?l=2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com'//div

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Bats may save Bowstring Bridge

2009-08-12T12:13:00.001-07:00

a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoMQTmRVE5I/AAAAAAAAC8M/ZiEmx_oQJpI/s1600-h/bowstring6.jpg"img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369153109632553874" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoMQTmRVE5I/AAAAAAAAC8M/ZiEmx_oQJpI/s400/bowstring6.jpg" //aFrom today's a href="http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news/Wildlife-delay-Bowstring-Bridge-demolition/article-1244700-detail/article.html"Leicester Mercury/a:br /blockquotepExperts are to study Leicester's Bowstring Bridge before its planned demolition next month to ensure no protected wildlife lives on or around it./ppPeople have claimed to have seen bats around the Duns Lane bridge and its arches, which could cause delays for Leicester City Council./ppWhen any structure is due to be demolished, an expert must inspect the site to ensure no endangered species are there, because it is illegal to disturb or hurt them./p/blockquotedivemA bat comments exclusively for Liberal England:/embr /br //divbr /divFrankly, I found that a disappointment. Couldn't hear a thing.br /br /Now read a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2009/08/leicesters-bowstring-bridge-and-de.html"more on the bridge./a/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-4921164230968924732?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Dumber and Dumbest

2009-08-12T10:56:00.001-07:00

It has to be some sort of landmark in American political discourse when both a href="http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/08/11/From-Lee-Siegel_2C00_-Noted-Bioethicist-and-Philosopher_2E002E002E00_.aspx"Lee Siegel/a and a href="http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/23921.html"Camille Paglia/a weigh in on American health care policy. Total combined knowledge of relevant policy area displayed: approaching zero.br /br /Still, tough as the competition is I'd have to say that the Paglia argument is decisively worse. Siegel is at least kind of crazy, making his bad arguments more original, and he does have an actual sensible point about the unwillingness of Dems to raise taxes embedded within the nonsense. Paglia, meanwhile, just re-heats especially stupid talking points (there will be "rationing!" Unlike the current system, where everyone has absolutely unlimited resources!), combined with apparently discovering for the first time that the United States doesn't have a parliamentary system. I'm reluctant to say that a Paglia argument is embarrassing even by her standards, but...it is.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-422681154360827517?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Healthcare ideas again scuttle myth of ‘liberal’ Whole Foods

2009-08-12T10:31:00.001-07:00

Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey has worked long and hard to “brand” his luxury grocery store as also being a liberal grocery store. Well, it’s been shown before not to be true.br /br /And, a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html"some of his own proposals/a for his version of healthcare reform demonstrate that again.br /• Tort reform;br /• More “freedom” for health savings accounts;br /• Looking only at Canada and the UK as alternatives, rather than Germany, France, Netherlands.br /br /Not a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html"all of Mackey’s proposals/a are bad; just remember the source — a CEO busted for anonymous fluffing of his own company on blogs a couple of years back.br /-END-div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-8485541357824250296?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Profile: The psychologist authors of U.S. torture

2009-08-12T10:06:00.003-07:00

The New York Times has a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/us/12psychs.html"an excellent article/a on career military psychologists Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the pair who reverse-engineered Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, or SERE, eventually leading to waterboarding and other torture.br /br /At the peak of their work, the pair was getting $2K/day, each from the CIA. And, doing things like chatting up and down Martin Seligman, the psychologist who discovered and researched the concept of “learned helplessness,” without telling him WHY they wanted to pick his brain.br /-END-div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-715789421565362889?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Trade deficit increases in recession - another 'green shoot'?

2009-08-12T10:06:00.001-07:00

Why?br /br /Primary due to a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/business/13econ.html"rising oil and gas prices/a.br /br /Why? Wall Street hails this as another sign of recovery, but, maybe it has another reason.br /br /Meet Andrew J. Hall, arguably a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/business/02bonus.html"the king of oil commodities future speculators/a. It was him and his ilk, in addition to legitimate supply and demand concerns just 12 short months ago, who were probably adding an extra $25/bbl to the price of oil even as we were already officially in a recession and moving deeper into it.br /br /It’s people like him who have caused the recent spike in gas prices, all because Wall Street is less “recessed” than you and I.br /br /Oh, and he wants $100 million from Citigroup for his work, even though Citi got bilions in TARP money from Uncle Sam, aka “you and I.”div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-5590610411588872285?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Adventures In Rent-Seeking

2009-08-12T09:41:00.003-07:00

It's not suprising how the interests line up, but a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-08-11/news/what-do-you-have-to-do-to-get-a-bottle-of-wine-around-here/2"here's a good account/a of why New York's irrational policy of banning wine sales in grocery stores remains in place.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-6675701992943275244?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Privatizing human services work backfires on states

2009-08-12T09:41:00.001-07:00

Indiana is cited as a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125003802691324435.html"the primary example/a for how privatizing delivery of services such as food stamps and Medicaid can go wrong, but other states also get mention.br /br /Toll roads? Traffic doesn’t change much, and certainly isn’t likely to ramp up, in a recession.br /br /Food stamps? Different story. And, I bet that in the Indiana case, IBM once again assumed that Alan Greenspan and his magic bubbles had permanently banished recessions.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-3792241099854023881?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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RM10 million "loan" to Ong Tee Keat?

2009-08-12T08:51:00.001-07:00

The show is just getting exciting. Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) 2 days ago took Kuala Dimensi Sdn Bhd (KDSB) the developer for the project to the cleaners for either a href="http://tonypua.blogspot.com/2009/08/pkfz-rm1-billion-fraud-excess-charges.html"fraud or overcharging as much as RM1 billion/a in fees. br /br /Today, the owner of KDSB, who is also the Barisan Nasional MP for Bintulu, Datuk Seri Tiong King Sing decided that enough was enough and took the Minister of Transport to the cleaners by alleging that Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat took a a href="http://malaysiakini.com/news/110396"RM10 million loan/a from him "to give to MCA divisions". br /br /Tiong, who is also the BN Backbenchers' Club (BBC) chairman even admitted willingly that he regularly "donated" millions to people.br /br /Ong Tee Keat issued an a href="http://www.ongteekeat.net/gogo_en/content/view/295/53/"immediate statement/a, which The Malaysian Insider a href="http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/35002-tee-keat-denies-taking-rm10-million-from-fellow-bn-man"took as a denial/a. But true to form, Ong's statement is pretty wordy and convoluted. You'll have to read through quite a few times to decide what exactly he was trying to say or imply. And I'm still not sure. You can also read his Chinese statement a href="http://www.ongteekeat.net/gogo/content/view/357/48/"here/a, and it reads the same to me.br /br /All I'm sure is that after reading it a couple of times (below), I don't see any sentence which says "I did not take a single cent of cash or loan from Tiong". I also did not read a sentence which says, "I will sue Tiong for defamation", which he has been inclined to do recently to Chinese newspapers which did not portray him in positive light. ;-)span class="fullpost"br /blockquotespan style="font-size:85%;"I am not surprised that the smear tactics and character assassination against me had picked up pace especially with the latest revelations by the PKFZ Task Force.br /br /If indeed I have received pecuniary and financial benefits for myself or the Party, there will be more reasons for me to protect the interests of the givers, as opposed to proceeding to expose their misdeeds. By doing so, I am risking my personal and family safety as well as my own credibility.br /br /The allegation by Dato’ Seri Tiong King Sing that I have taken the RM10 million "loan" from him for use by the Party's divisions, are obviously made with several motives, including diverting attention away from the alleged irregularities exposed by the Task Force. It could also be meant to create suspicion among my Party comrades that I have pocketed funds meant for the divisions. The fact that he indicated that it was a loan could mean that he wants the option of taking me to court to further embarrass me.br /br /The period mentioned by Dato' Seri Tiong was 2008, during which I was vice-president until I assumed the presidency in October. The need for me as vice-president to raise money for the divisions was a non-starter. Later, as President, we already have access to party funds and allocations. I doubt any reasonable person would part with RM10 million based on such a story./span /blockquoteMake no mistake, I support the Minister's actions 100% to take KDSB to court for alleged fraud and over-charging and commend him for taking such actions. But the above statement, in my humble opinion, certainly raise more questions than answers./spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/37045477-535478833209545373?l=tonypua.blogspot.com'//div

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Jon Stewart On The Healthers

2009-08-12T08:26:00.001-07:00

Funny.br /br /Especially Bill O'Reilly playing the "Nazi" card - on the left.br /br /Go watch:br /centertable style='font:11px arial; color:#333; background-color:#f5f5f5' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='360' height='353'tbodytr style='background-color:#e5e5e5' valign='middle'td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;'a target='_blank' style='color:#333; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;' href='http://www.thedailyshow.com'The Daily Show With Jon Stewart/a/tdtd style='padding:2px 5px 0px 5px; text-align:right; font-weight:bold;'Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c/td/trtr style='height:14px;' valign='middle'td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;' colspan='2'a target='_blank' style='color:#333; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;' href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-10-2009/healther-skelter'Healther Skelter/a/td/trtr style='height:14px; background-color:#353535' valign='middle'td colspan='2' style='padding:2px 5px 0px 5px; width:360px; overflow:hidden; text-align:right'a target='_blank' style='color:#96deff; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;' href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/'www.thedailyshow.com/a/td/trtr valign='middle'td style='padding:0px;' colspan='2'embed style='display:block' src='http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:240655' width='360' height='301' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' wmode='window' allowFullscreen='true' flashvars='autoPlay=false' allowscriptaccess='always' allownetworking='all' bgcolor='#000000'/embed/td/trtr style='height:18px;' valign='middle'td style='padding:0px;' colspan='2'table style='margin:0px; text-align:center' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='100%' height='100%'tr valign='middle'td style='padding:3px; width:33%;'a target='_blank' style='font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;' href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes'Daily Showbr/ Full Episodes/a/tdtd style='padding:3px; width:33%;'a target='_blank' style='font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;' href='http://www.indecisionforever.com'Political Humor/a/tdtd style='padding:3px; width:33%;'a target='_blank' style='font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;' href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-july-28-2009/spinal-tap-extended-performance'Spinal Tap Performance/a/td/tr/table/td/tr/tbody/table/centerdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8213262-2685975613494829665?l=2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com'//div

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Chevy Volt will be a ‘landmark’ just to get to market

2009-08-12T07:10:00.001-07:00

Please, Buck Private Motors, a href="http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090811/tc_afp/usautogmcompanyelectric_20090811161805"spare me the hype/a about how the Volt will be a “landmark” vehicle.br /br /Nissan’s Leaf, the first planned mass-production all-electric car that can go more than 100 miles without a charge, is a “landmark” vehicle.br /br /An overpriced electric-with-gas-engine-boost that can only do another 100 miles and will cost $15K more, while taking 3x as long to get from idea to reality, is NOT “landmark.”br /br /Hell, GM CEO Fritz Henderson admits that himself:br /blockquote"The key to high-mileage performance is for a Volt driver to plug into the electric grid at least once each day," Henderson said./blockquotebr /So, in other words, the Volt is really an all-electric in drag, and therefore is overpriced compared to the Leaf, which can go more than 100 miles without a charge and without a backup gas engine.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-279923647069765526?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Big Pharma Makes Me Sick

2009-08-12T06:44:00.001-07:00

span style="font-family:arial;"biJuly 12, 2009, 8:30a.m./i/bbr /br /centerbBig Pharma is a Carcinogen/bbr /(brought to you by a href="http://fromdc2iowa.blogspot.com/"FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com/a*)/centerbr /The pharmaceutical industry is deliberately causing and spreading cancer -- and very successfully so.br /br /It is the cancer of corruption spreading throughout our body politic.br /br /I'm indebted to a href="http://www.hollymosher.com/"Holly Mosher/a (a successful, self-described "independent filmmaker - producing and directing independent media with an eye towards positive change") for bringing the film "Money Talks: Profits Before Public Safety" to my attention -- and especially for making the a href="http://www.moneytalksthemovie.com/"entire film available for viewing, for free/a!br /br /Those from inside pharma, academic medicine, medical research, and practicing physicians who are willing to talk, describe in horrifying detail in this film how the pharmaceutical industry's money and influence has infected institutions well beyond those with which we're familiar: the Congress (campaign contributions and lobbying expenses -- as we're now experiencing)and the White House (ie.g./i, though not in film, recent revelation of President's agreement to not support provision permitting government to negotiate for lower drug prices, as result of secret closed door meeting with pharma's top lobbyist).br /br /According to those in the film, pharma's carcinogenic infestation of American institutions now includes relations, financial and otherwise, with practicing physicians, medical schools, research institutions, government regulators, mass media and the academic journals. Pharma is designing, paying for, controlling, manipulating and iwithholding the data/i from clinical trials.br /br /There's not room in a single blog entry to provide you a transcript of the additional litteny of shocking practices -- and their consequences, up to and including unnecessary deaths (and obviously wildly overinflated prices for drugs that are sometimes less effective than the cheaper generics).br /br /According to the Web page, the American Library Association has called "Money Talks" one of the most important films of 2008.br /br /As the bumper sticker has it, "If you're not outraged you haven't been paying attention." In either case you need to watch this film. If you're already outraged you'll be much better informed. If you're not yet outraged you will be after you've watched it.br /br /Obviously, it contains a crucial set of timely lessons now, while our nation confronts its last best hope for meaningful health care reform.br /br /But for public policy wonks, social studies teachers, and others interested in politics and our legal system, it contains more general lessons as well. They will, sadly, undoubtedly be as usefully insightful ten years from now in other contexts as they are today for health care.br /br /This film portrays a classic case study of how we get ourselves in the fix we're so often in. How do industries, sometimes individual companies, spread their influence throughout not just our political institutions, but many to all of the powerful institutions in our society -- universities, organized religion, labor unions, the mass media? There is far more involved in this process than spreading around a few hundred million dollars on elected officials and mass media advertising.br /br /So when you watch this film don't just learn how and why the drug industry makes us sick. Think about the analogies: the power that ATamp;T once had over America (before its breakup), how Wall Street was able to get trillions of taxpayer dollars, why the auto industry was able to be the favored recipient of government largess when dollars elsewhere might have produced more meaningful recovery elsewhere faster -- and the examples of other companies and industries that seem to have what would otherwise be inexplicable power. This film explains how they do it.br /____________br /br /* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnsonbr /br /center# # #/center/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/30130444-301462873215298945?l=fromdc2iowa.blogspot.com'//div

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Sack Incompetent MACC Chief!

2009-08-12T06:19:00.001-07:00

MACC Chief Commissioner, Dato' Sri Haji Ahmad Said bin Hamdan should be sacked for demonstrating sheer incompetence in the investigations over the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) RM12.5 billions scandal.br /br /The PKFZ special taskforce which was set up only in June 2009 has within a period of 3 months a href="http://tonypua.blogspot.com/2009/08/pkfz-rm1-billion-fraud-excess-charges.html"determined with strong evidence/a of about RM1 billion in fees charged by PKFZ developer, Kuala Dimensi Sdn Bhd (KDSB) “to be either over-charged, unsubstantiated or even possibly fraudulent”. This amount which is described by the taskforce as “the tip of the iceberg” constitutes nearly 30% of the overall project cost of RM3.522 billion, excluding interest costs.br /br /The scandal includes possible fraudulent claims on electrical infrastructure worth RM55.8mil and 33kv supply works and civil infrastructure works worth RM83mil which were never carried out. No documents and justifications were also provided for more than RM550 million in charges and variation orders. br /br /Despite the fact that the first Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) report which was made way back in December 2004, and as many as 3 further subsequent reports were made with regards to PKFZ by Ronnie Liu on various corruption, abuse of power and mismanagement allegations, the ACA and subsequently, MACC has found absolutely nothing worthy of detailed investigation on the project and closed all the above files.span class="fullpost"br /br /Even after the chairman of Port Klang Authority (PKA) which owns PKFZ had himself filed an MACC report in May 2009 based on the Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) report on PKFZ, the commission has continued to make little or no progress on the investigations.br /br /In fact, despite the size and scale of the scandal which implicates corruption and abuse of power to the highest levels, including several ministers and prominent elected representatives, MACC has not even conducted any interviews with the ministers, including Tun Ling Liong Sik and Tan Sri Chan Kong Choy, as well as the other BN politicians.br /br /Hence the findings of fraud and over-charging by the PKFZ special taskforce has proven the complete failure, ineffectiveness and negligence by Ahmad Said and MACC, whether intentional or otherwise for the latter could not detect any of the various misdeeds which added up to RM1 billion of tax-payers' monies. In line with Najib's call for “people first, performance now”, Ahmad Said must be held accountable and hence resign or be removed from his position.br /br /What makes the whole circumstance repulsive is the fact that while MACC had neglected mega-scandals like PKFZ, they have left no stones unturned in their efforts to detect corruption among DAP and Pakatan Rakyat representatives in Selangor, even if it means going to the level of check every RM100 receipts!br /br /It is MACC's reckless and relentless pursuit of such political victimisation that the political secretary to Selangor state executive councillor, Ean Yong Hian Wah, the late Teoh Beng Hock was found dead at the premises of MACC, all for a RM2,400 transaction involving the purchase of Malaysian flags.br /br /A new Chief Commissioner should be appointed to ensure that MACC stops being a political tool of the Barisan Nasional government to harrass DAP and Pakatan Rakyat MPs and state assemblymen whose total combined allocations does not exceed RM20 million while completely neglecting the real corrupt sharks which have fleeced the country of billions of ringgit./spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/37045477-5012425459320675318?l=tonypua.blogspot.com'//div

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A new thought on blacks and Prop. 8

2009-08-12T05:54:00.001-07:00

Yes, we can also blame the Mormons, or the Christian Right, but in regards to last November’s vote on Proposition 8 in California, Michael Lind reminds us that, nationally, only 31 percent of black Democrats are a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/08/11/south/index1.html"OK with gay marriage/a, combined with 61 percent of white Democrats. Quoting the AP, via Lind:br /blockquoteCalifornia's black and Latino voters, who turned out in droves for Barack Obama, also provided key support in favor of the state's same-sex marriage ban. Seven in 10 black voters backed a successful ballot measure to overturn the California Supreme Court's May decision allowing same-sex marriage, according to exit polls for the Associated Press. More than half of Latino voters supported Proposition 8, while whites were split./blockquotebr /It’s part of a Lind story about warning against demonizing Southerners, and a good warnig.br /blockquoteBlacks and Latinos, it appears, are allowed to hold conventionally conservative social views about gay rights, abortion and (in the case of blacks) immigration without being mocked and denounced by elite white liberals in the pages of the Washington Post and Mother Jones, as long as they vote for the Democratic Party on the basis of other issues./blockquotebr /All worth remembering.br /-END-div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-1551869112919935861?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Southwest Airlines could have a winner in Frontier

2009-08-12T04:39:00.001-07:00

Besides getting Frontier’s gates and routes at Denver if Southwest a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-swroutes_12bus.ART.State.Edition1.3cf6b00.html"buys the carrier out of bankruptcy/a, it gets more.br /br /That “more” includes the possibility of changing its business model.br /br /Could Southwest move at least somewhat more in a hub-and-spoke direction? Could it keep Frontier’s regional line, Lynx? Unthinkable as those ideas might have been just a couple of years ago, maybe so.br /br /If Southwest stayed with the one-plane model for its main line, and put a “one-plane” model at work for Lynx, too, just a different one plane, and just tweaked its current modified hub system, it could stay in the clover.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-4698938062631304434?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Gumley's cricket field

2009-08-12T00:52:00.001-07:00

a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoHQZLbWJcI/AAAAAAAAC8E/gFvAAlkm9yw/s1600-h/gumley5.jpg"img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368801361785136578" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoHQZLbWJcI/AAAAAAAAC8E/gFvAAlkm9yw/s400/gumley5.jpg" //aAt the top of a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2009/08/contradictions-of-gumley.html"Gumley village/a the road curves around the mysterious mound and then takes you to one of my favourite cricket grounds.br /br /It stands in open country with a single farmhouse in sight and merges into the surrounding fields. The fence most in evidence is the electric one keeping livestock off the square. That, as I remarked to a member of the family group who were playing on the outfield as he stepped gingerly over it to retrieve the ball, is not something you see on many cricket grounds.br /br /To the south are open views across the Welland valley to the Northamptonshire Uplands. It reminds me very much of David Inshaw's a href="http://www.redraggallery.co.uk/showInventoryHQ.asp?iId=4389amp;title=Cricket" artist="David""Cricket Match III"/a, but I gather that print shows Little Bredy in Dorset.br /br /From the picture above you have probably concluded that Gumley is a pleasant rural ground and a rather better appointed one than most villages boast because it has sightscreens. But there is more to it than that.br /br /Gumley's cricket field shares the top of the hill with the village war memorial. And there is a road across the outfield, cutting off the square from the pavilion. I gather it is the done thing to wait until the end of an over if you want to use it.br /br /It struck me that the ground at Bonkers Hall must be very like this.br /br /And then I wished that a car would come along to allow me to take a photograph to show the road and the wicket. When it turned up, I felt very close to Bonkers Hall indeed.br /br /a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoHPgHjIoSI/AAAAAAAAC70/H1dLl8oh_6A/s1600-h/gumley8.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 320px; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368800381491519778" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoHPgHjIoSI/AAAAAAAAC70/H1dLl8oh_6A/s320/gumley8.jpg" //a a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoHPfiKOTYI/AAAAAAAAC7s/1EIW3Z4joic/s1600-h/gumley6.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 320px; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368800371454922114" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoHPfiKOTYI/AAAAAAAAC7s/1EIW3Z4joic/s320/gumley6.jpg" //a a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoHPuIp_OpI/AAAAAAAAC78/w-yRRtuEniA/s1600-h/gumley7.jpg"img style="WIDTH: 320px; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368800622306867858" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1DJYJashoT0/SoHPuIp_OpI/AAAAAAAAC78/w-yRRtuEniA/s320/gumley7.jpg" //adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-1997103821775387658?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Two for One - Pat Martino Lee Fields

2009-08-12T00:02:00.001-07:00

span style="font-weight:bold;"Lee Fields - Honey Dove/spanbr /object width="505" height="335"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/osuRSojNFk4hl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/osuRSojNFk4hl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="505" height="335"/embed/objectbr /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Pat Martino doing "Sunny"/spanbr /object width="505" height="335"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/M7kNKDmrT20hl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/M7kNKDmrT20hl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="505" height="335"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-2974512272699977479?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Fast Food Chefs Like

2009-08-11T23:36:00.003-07:00

Even though I generally make an annual sojurn to Vegas with some co-bloggers without current or imminent parental responsibilities, I've never tried In-N-Out. But an unscientific survey of chefs -- including Thomas Keller! -- a href="http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/fast-food-reviews-0909"ranks it as America's best fast food chain./a I'm sure some commenters will be willing to weigh in on the topic...div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-7167105280958081494?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Good Luck With That

2009-08-11T23:36:00.001-07:00

a href="http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2009/08/11/politico-report-add-santorum-to-potential-presidential-candidate-list/"This could be a chance/a for some profitable InTrade arbitrage.br /br /Although, in fairness, he has a more plausible path to the nomination that Guiliani did...div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-8614316703354303081?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Rescission - Why We Need a Public Option

2009-08-11T22:46:00.001-07:00

NPR covers a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105680875ps=cprs"the span style="font-weight:bold;"real death panels that we already have/span... those that are run by private insurance companies./a How do they do it? Through rescission....a process that allows insurance companies to abandon patients when they need coverage the most. br /br /Why isn't Obama telling these stories more often? Why won't he hold a national Town Hall on Healthcare Reform where he can highlight the real death panels, and dispel the Republican propaganda? The major networks have barely mentioned this issue. The fake death panel story put out by Right wing groups gets covered...but the fact that we have actual death panels right now hardly gets any attention from the major news networks. Unreal!br /br /Also hear a story about what Canadians are saying about U.S. Healthcare Reform. Apparently, a href="http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/07/24/03"Canadians are bewildered about the way their Healthcare system has been characterized by Republicans./a Again...the major U.S. news outlets aren't telling this story. Instead of sending investigative reporters into Canada to find out what is really going on.... to find out what the people really think about their Healthcare system, the lazy U.S. media chooses, time and time again, to use Right wing talking points as the baseline for any Healthcare debate. It has basically been accepted as fact in this Country (according to U.S. mainstream media) that the Canadian Healthcare system is far worse than the Healthcare system in the U.S.br /br /span style="font-weight:bold;"Separate Fact from Fiction:/spanbr /br /Dispel the Right Wing/Corporate propaganda about Healthcare by keeping track with fact finding websites such asa href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/subjects/health/?page=1" Politifact/a and a href="http://www.factcheck.org/"Factcheck.org./a br /br /Both sides get their information mixed up or bend the truth.... but the Republican spin machine simply has no shame.... they have been lying their asses off, especially on Healthcare...and their lies are so outlandish that it scares me that there are American citizens who have fallen for this stuff. A large portion of the American populace is incredibly uninformed.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-5488433416627592693?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Tricky Ricky Perry has to borrow $1.5 Billion

2009-08-11T22:21:00.001-07:00

That’s the latest pricetag a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/081209dntexunemployment.3d1078e.html"for his cheap-ass anti-stimulus stinginess/a on unemployment compensation funds.br /br /Kay Bailey Cheerleader will have fun with this issue, especially if GOP suburban areas such as Collin County continue to struggle.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-7219376798494915212?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Republican Right Wing Nuttery Encouraging More Extremism

2009-08-11T21:31:00.001-07:00

Another potential right wing terrorist has been arrested. This time it was a Woman, Nancy Genovese, from New York. Genovese apparently had an arsenal and was preparing to use it. Her target was an Air National Guard Base in the Hamptons. Luckily, she was apprehended before she could do any harm.br /br /What drove her to this? What inspired her? Do I really have to ask?br /br /a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/2/760870/-Glenn-Beck-Fan,-Highly-Armed,-Busted-For-Casing-National-Guard-Base,-Thinking-It-Was-A-FEMA-Camp-"span style="font-weight:bold;"Read more here./span/abr /br /What I want to know is when will the FCC and the Justice Department intervene to stop some of this madness? When will the government act to stem the propaganda that is feeding this kind of domestic terrorism? Because if it is ignored...it is only going to get worse. These right wing extremists, and those who are inspiring them (Glenn Beck et al) aren't going to stop.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-2406845427343497887?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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The GOP is Milking Kenneth Gladney For All He's Worth

2009-08-11T20:16:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I3Q1kT0tz2A/SoIxR8jNUtI/AAAAAAAADAg/pRFpOiA9NOo/s1600-h/kennethgladley.jpg"img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 151px; height: 229px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_I3Q1kT0tz2A/SoIxR8jNUtI/AAAAAAAADAg/pRFpOiA9NOo/s320/kennethgladley.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368907890160390866" //a Most have heard about Kenneth Gladney by now. The so-called Black Conservative from St. Louis who a href="http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics/story/1373035.html"got into a little scuffle with idiots from the SEIU at a recent Town Hall event on Healthcare,/a hosted by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO).br /br /Keeping up with the protests over the past few weeks, and seeing the way things were escalating, it came as no surprise that scuffles were beginning to break out. I lay a lot of the blame on Obama for his lack of leadership, because he failed to calm the fears of those who have been brainwashed over the past few weeks.... and for his Administrations lack of action to change the strategy once it became clear that it had become a train wreck. Obama lost the propaganda war long before any real debate had a chance to begin....which means the Town Hall meetings were a joke. Yet...even today... these idiot Democrats continue to hold these meetings...despite the fact that they are useless at this point and are in fact only making matters worse.br /br /What Obama should do is instruct his Democratic colleages in the House and Senate to cancel any future Town Halls. Instead, there should be a series of nationally televised Town Halls (just like the Presidential Debates) where the shouters are not allowed in to disrupt the event....and where a real debate and discussion could take place. There could also be a panel of experts at these events, and debunkers (like Fact Check and Politifact). This would be a chance for Obama to clear up much of the propaganda that has been allowed to go unchallenged by his Administration over the past few months. br /br /But these dummies are still having these meetings. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri held one today and was lucky to have gotten out alive. The Town Halls are nothing more than platforms for Right Wing Protests.... there is no vigorous debate or discussion taking place. It's a farce. br /br /And the SEIU should stay home if their people are not smart enough not to be suckered by the Right. By getting involved in a scuffle (and I don't know who started what.... the video does not show the beginning of the incident) they are giving the Republican media machine exactly what it wants. That's what the Right Wing was hoping for by attending these events hosted mostly by Democrats. Thus the Republicans now have their newest Joe the Plumber... and he's just as phony as can be IMO. He's playing up his "brutal beating" as much as possible, and he's allowing himself to be used by the Republican spin machine.br /br /The biggest irony is that he's a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_08/019423.php"reportedly asking for help with medical bills./a Why? Because he's a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/10/gladney-uninsured/"unemployed and whatever Health coverage he has apparently isn't enough/a (the whole purpose of the Healthcare Reform that he was protesting against). br /br /There are also some things fishy about this entire incident. I don't doubt it happened...but the more I look into the situation....the more fishy it smells. I won't go as far as some bloggers who suggest that the whole incident was faked.... I believe it happened.... I just believe that the SEIU idiots fell for something that the Right Wing wanted in the first place. Apparently Gladney, who was selling Right Wing shirts, flags and buttons for someone, became the bait that the Right Wing needed. And the dummies from the SEIU fell right into the trap.br /br /The SEIU shouldn't have even been there.... certainly not to cause trouble and definitely not in their stupid shirts, identifying their union. Just stupidity all around. br /br /But it gets worse... I found an even bigger tidbit about Gladney... and I was reminded of one of the TV commercials where you are told about criminals who engage in insurance fraud by staging phony car accidents and by having their own eye witnesses conveniently placed to tell Police what happened...so that everyone can get paid. Again, I don't think this incident at the Town Hall was staged...but the circumstances...and the stage props seem to have been created and placed in a way that the Republican Party could benefit. Why else would part of Gladney's legal representation a href="http://washingtonindependent.com/54511/gladneys-lawyer-hes-unemployed-insured-and-making-money-from-the-alleged-attack"just happen to be at the Town Hall incident as a witness? Convenient./a And seeing the video of his attorney at a protest a few days later, he seemed more like an activist than a personal injury lawyer. Those who are pushing this story don't seem to be making any bones about the fact that Gladney and Republican interests want to milk this incident to get all they can out of it. br /br /It just seems to me that Republicans are taking advantage of this unemployed guy (remember how old phony "Joe The Plumber" had odd jobs...and now he's making big money for the Republican propaganda machine?). It annoys me that they (the Republican Right) are probably partly responsible for his job loss.... then they turn around and recruit him to protest against his own Health care. Amazing! But there's a sucker born every minute.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-6980958977849800148?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Welcome to the New Dark Ages.

2009-08-11T18:36:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_78ZrJuZ3q5g/SoISM45EGxI/AAAAAAAACT0/fzQDBA1fEas/s1600-h/mike_heath_10_commandments.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 288px; height: 235px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_78ZrJuZ3q5g/SoISM45EGxI/AAAAAAAACT0/fzQDBA1fEas/s320/mike_heath_10_commandments.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368873718418512658" border="0" //aIt was the Fall of 1977; hard to believe so much time has passed. But I remember the event well. I was working for a newspaper at the time and was sent to Indianapolis to cover a so-called “Right to Decency Rally” that was sponsored by members of the lunatic Religious Right. Rev. Greg Dixon, a bigoted fundamentalist of the worst kind, organized the rally. Keynote speakers were Jerry Falwell and Anita Bryant.br /br /The rally was called to push legislation that would allow the state of Indiana to arrest people for being gay and put them in prison. The bill in question specifically called for making homosexuality into a felony. And that means a serious offense against the law, even though no rights are violated.br /br /Prior to the Rally the Falwellians rallied their troops of religious Neanderthals and had them march through the streets of Indianapolis. I marched with them, tape recorder in hand, and interviewed participants, writing notes and taking photographs. I remember one of the photos I took. It was a cherubic young girl, perhaps six-years-old at most. She was standing holding a sign calling for the execution of gay people. In fundamentalist circles they call that “family values.” I guess it is along the line of: “The family that preys together, stays together.”br /br /That year California, and I guess much of the West, was in a drought. No surprises there. California and the West have experienced droughts for as long as history has been recorded. I mention this because of one couple I interviewed. The woman was standing there in her very long dress (anything above the knees was immodest to them). She had a Bible clutched in her hand and pressed up against her breast. Any one in public, with a Bible clutched in full view, is almost always bad news. And, in a sense, so was she. But she was far more amusing that deadly, though I have no doubt she would have happily joined in a stoning of a homosexual or, in times past, happily provided some wood to burn a witch or two.br /br /I asked her why she was participating in this march. She explained that God hates homosexuals and God wants homosexuals punished. If man won’t punish homosexuals then God will punish man. In the deep theology of fundamentalism if you don’t hate the people they hates then their God will beat up your God and hurt you. She then went on to explain that the drought in California was the result of the state being more tolerant of homosexuals than other places in the country. Apparently the drought had nothing to do with the typical climate of the region; it is all based on the whims of her deity.br /br /I asked her: “Are you saying that the presence of homosexuals causes droughts?”br /br /Without hesitation she said: “Yes.”br /br /I couldn’t resist a follow-up question. “Then, if a region is experiencing floods, would it be possible to stop the rain by busing in a lot of homosexuals?”br /br /All right, I knew the question was absolutely ludicrous. Who in their right mind would think you could control the weather by moving gay people around the country? She paused momentarily and then said, “Yes, that would work.” To say the least, I was gobsmacked. I simply didn’t know how to respond to such explicit, utter and total stupidity. But, as I’ve said, when there is no reasonable explanation for what someone does or thinks, then there usually is an unreasonable explanation, and it is usually religious.br /br /That was thirty years ago and society has evolved. But fundamentalist Christians don’t believe in evolution, so they stagnate.br /br /Let us move to modern day Maine. By all standards Maine is relatively civilized place. Of course, there are still some mental antiques wandering around, stuck in some previous, dark age. One of them is Michael Heath, of an outfit called the Christian Civic League. As might be surmised Mr. Heath is a committed religionist who believes that supernatural powers are at work in the world. That would include, not just a deity, but devils and spirits—the sort of images that small children have about existence until they become more intelligent about the reality of life.br /br /Heath is in a panic because Maine allows same-sex marriage. Add to that a spell of bad weather and you have 1977 all over again. In the jungles of the most primitive parts of the world there are people who blame every unfortunate turn of events on some scapegoat. They believe, that if you find the scapegoat, and if you kill it, or drive it out, then you will end the problems you experience. Mr. Heath is a mentally sophisticated as these savages.br /br /In a newspaper a style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);" href="http://www.timesrecord.com/articles/2009/08/07/opinion/commentaries/doc4a7c5f23ccbf5201259148.txt"column/a he laments the fact that Maine has had a rather wet summer. As he, rather badly, writes:br /blockquoteOur gardens droop low as if worn out and saddened. Bird and beast stay close to home, and when they do venture out, they too, seem peevish and sullen.br /br /What is missing is the sun. God’s emblem of cheerfulness and benevolence.br /br /Our crops are faring like our moods. The potato crop is blighted, and corn and fruit fields wither. In one historic building in Augusta, rain flood the basement…/blockquotebr /And what is the cause of this rain:br /blockquote…Maine voted in homosexual ‘marriage.’br /br /In May, our elected officials overturned a law of nature, and in its place paid honor to evil and unnatural practices. Our leaders allowed a cloud of error to hide the light of reason, and then the rain began. How fitting that this eclipse of human reason is mirrored by the disappearance of the sun!/blockquoteHeath admits” “Few people would be bold enough to suggest the cause of the endless rain and gloom, that the moral climate of Maine has caused the sun to hide its face in shame.” He is bold enough. It is raining too much in Maine because gay people were granted equal marriage rights.br /br /Heath says that he doesn’t blame gay people per se, for the rain. “Far from it. The fault lies with a refractory governor and Legislature who imposed an immoral law on our people.” Instead he says the weather is lousy because the state gave gay people equal rights before the law. And he tells his readers, most of whom I suspect were rolling on the floor in hysterical laughter, that worse is to come: “America has seen nothing comparable to Stalin’s show trials… yet. But we are experiencing one long, interminable dark and dreary summer.”br /br /So, even though three decades have passed, the morons that make up Christian fundamentalism have not improved one iota. Notice the conflict between these two cases. When there was too little rain in California, it was God withholding the life-giving rain to punish the sin of homosexuality—a punishment God ended shortly after when he allowed it to rain again, thus sending conflicting messages. Today, in Maine, there is too much rain. So another Village Idiot from Bibleland wanders out to blame the surplus of rain on homosexuality, or at least on the tolerance of homosexuality. Too much rain, blame the homosexuals. Too little rain, blame the homosexuals. Hell, all this time I thought we were supposed to blame global warming for all the unpleastantries of weather.br /br /I don’t get this Christian deity at all. Am I to understand that he sends rain to punish homosexuality and he also withholds rain for the same reason? Jehovah appears a tad bit schizophrenic. He can’t make up his holy mind. Or, is does the impact homosexuals have on the weather different depending on the region in question? If gay marriage is ruining the summer in Maine thwn what happened to the summer in Iowa, which has gay marriage as well. Unfortunately for Mr. Heath the weather in Iowa as been pretty good, with it raining only 9 days out of the month, and three of those days with just trace amounts. There is enough rain to water the crops and enough sun to nourish them, all in all a pretty good balance.br /br /Just think, for a second, how primitive the level of reasoning that is necessary for Heath to draw the conclusions that he does. One has to be practically lobotomized to think this way.br /br /When the Catholics of the Dark Ages faced bad crops, or disease, they routinely blamed Jews and “witches” for the situation. But they were illiterate and uneducated, living in a world where the fundamentals of science had yet to be discovered. Mr. Heath has no such excuse. His ignorance is self-induced. It may well be that he is not a particularly bright man, after all the dumb of the world flock to fundamentalism pretty much the way flies flock to shit. But, neither is there a shortage of people who use religion to close down their critical thinking faculties.br /br /To repeat: when there is no rational explanation for what people think or do, there is probably an irrational one. And when there is, the likelihood is that religion will be involved.br /br /Photo: The grinning moron in the photo is Mr. Heath.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/23782041-7597866335581930227?l=freestudents.blogspot.com'//div

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Stop Calling It a Fringe Movement - Most Republicans Don't Even Accept Obama as a Citizen

2009-08-11T18:11:00.001-07:00

object width="500" height="335"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qOpDw70s54grel=0color1=0x2b405bcolor2=0x6b8ab6hl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qOpDw70s54grel=0color1=0x2b405bcolor2=0x6b8ab6hl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="500" height="335"/embed/objectbr /br /For months the major news media has been characterizing the "Birther Movement" as a harmless fringe element of the Republican Party. But a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0709/58_of_GOP_not_suredont_beleive_Obama_born_in_US.html"a poll from last week/a indicated that the majority of Republicans (58%) either don't believe that Barack Obama is a citizen or aren't sure.br /br /And even after a vote in the House of Representatives last month a href="http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/07/27/hawaii_resolution/index.html"recognizing Hawaii as a State and acknowledging that it was in fact the birthplace of the 44th President,/a the wacky Birthers still aren't convinced. Thanks to Representative Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), the ceremonial resolution (which was written long before the Birther Controversy really heated up) was brought to the floor for a vote. House Resolution 593 a href="http://blog.reidreport.com/2009/07/the-birther-buster-bill/"passed with a vote of 378-0./a 220 Democrats and 158 Republicans voted in favor. br /br /See the a href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll647.xml"Roll Call Results/abr /br /a href="http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_billsdocid=f:hr593ih.txt.pdf"Read the Resolution/abr /br /br /The U.S. Senate followed a few days later with a href="http://senatus.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/senate-adopts-resolution-honoring-hawaii-affirming-obamas-citizenship/"a similar ceremonial vote, with Senate Resolution 225. /abr /br /Yet the "Birthers" continue to press on. Why? Because as I mentioned before, it's really not about Birth Certificates or citizenship for those who are making these wacky claims. It's about prejudice and xenophobia....especially this sort of White rural xenophobia. This is all about race, and this non-issue provides these people with an excuse ....or a cover to support their racism. That is why all the proof in the World wouldn't matter to these people because Citizenship and Birth Certificates really aren't the issue for them. br /br /I wish the media would stop calling them "Birthers" and start calling them the racists and xenophobes that they really are. br /br /I have never seen so much willful ignorance in my life.br /br /________________br /br /a href="http://mirroronamerica.blogspot.com/2009/07/right-wing-conservative-loonies-and.html"Related Post on Birthers/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-2238528114282885798?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Levi Johnson confirms Palin marriage trouble rumors

2009-08-11T17:21:00.001-07:00

Former Bristol Palin fiancé Levi Johnson said former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former First Dude Todd have had a href="http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2009/08/exclusive-interview-sarah-palin-resigned-due-marital-troubles-says-levi-johnston"a long history of problems/a, in fact. That said, he added that he does not believe it’s an issue of extramarital affairs.br /br /And, although Levi says it no affair was involved, supposedly, the National Enquirer’s a href="http://www.nationalenquirer.com/national_enquirer_world_exclusive_sarah_palins_secret_lover_revealed/celebrity/65481"reporting of late last summer/a about a former Sarah Palin affair with Todd’s best friend, led to the marriage going on the skids. (The stories were never officially denied by the Palin Veep campaign after the Enquirer story hit the stand, and the mag has never been sued over the story.)br /br /The story was broken by Gryphen, the interesting, more than sometimes right, sometimes speculative Alaskan blogger, who since has been a href="http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2009/08/was-it-somethng-i-said.html"threatened with libel papers/a over his Palin divorce story.br /br /That said, the Alaska Report notes a href="http://alaskareport.com/news39/x71284_flien.htm"this is the fourth time in a month/a Thomas Van Flein, Sarah Palin's lawyer, has made such a threat. Never delivered on the previous ones.br /br /So, will Van Flein now threaten Levi?br /br /To speak from the language of the police and criminal trial world:br /1. Divorce “goes to motive” on why Palin quit;br /2. Per the Immoral Minority post, marital stress would explain Sarah’s weight loss;br /3. Todd Palin, beyond any affairs, might just really be First Dude for Alaska, and tired of the 50-state limelight, political chase, etc.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-1066778185279021599?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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But..but..but...I thought the GOP said there was no healthcare issue

2009-08-11T16:56:00.003-07:00

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Now answer this question for me..what would happen to a BLACK MAN that brought A GUN IN PLAIN SIGHT of the President of the United States?

2009-08-11T16:56:00.001-07:00

diviframe height="339" width="425" src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/32378192#32378192" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"/iframep style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;"Visit msnbc.com for a style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com"Breaking News/a, a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032507" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;"World News/a, and a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032072" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;"News about the Economy/a/p/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-4905021364400069742?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Mexico v USA

2009-08-11T16:05:00.003-07:00

Wednesday, August 11. 13:00 PDT, and other times. Google isn't new, and for the love of god, don't rely on me.divbr //divdivThis one is being somewhat a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/sports/soccer/09soccer.html?hpw"blown out of proportion/a. While Mexico are uncharacteristically struggling in the qualifiers for 2010, the 5-0 stomping of the USA in the Gold Cup final doesn't matter, and their a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_rankings"FIFA ranking/a is a near historic low 30th (the USA is 12th), the USA do not win this match. Sorry.br //divdivbr //divdivWhy? Sure, the USA beat Spain, and played respectably against Brazil. However, in their last 23 matches in Mexico City, they are 0-22-1. No wins, one draw, and 22 defeats. Additionally, I tend to put more faith in the Elo rankings over the FIFA rankings. For example, the USA were ranked something silly like 4th for a while according to FIFA. Indeed this is true: a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_men%27s_national_soccer_team"4th in May of 2006/a. And didn't the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_FIFA_World_Cup_Group_E"USA look just great/a in Germany that summer? Elo have the USA 16th, Mexico 11th, though it should be said that this, too, is not 100% reliable, as I think Elo was overly affected by the Gold Cup performance; the previous month the USA were 9th according to Elo./divdivbr //divdivWhile the US players are a href="http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=666468amp;sec=usamp;root=usamp;cc=5739"talking the good talk/a, I like the resurgent a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/sports/soccer/12soccer.html?_r=1amp;hpw"Giovani dos Santos/a, (shame he plays for Spurs however), and the US have had problems playing at strike35,000/strike 7,350 feet in front of strike18,000,000/strike 105,000 hostile fans./divdivbr //divdivSpeaking of altitude, I'm off to hike part of the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Crest_Trail"Pacific Crest Trail/a for a week or so in about half an hour, with my lovely partner, her father and a couple of her brothers (one of whom I understand is a fan of LGM). We'll be somewhere between 5,000 and 6,500 feet over our route, if I know how to read the map. Hence, I'll be off the grid for a spell, which means I'll miss this match, but at least I've got a fifth of Sazerac Rye Whiskey packed away in my provisions. I suspect it will come in handy./divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-8744720065400662120?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Healthcare blowback after Obama town hall

2009-08-11T16:05:00.001-07:00

First, Sam Stein notes that President Barack Obama a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/10/white-house-frustrated-co_n_255927.html"just doesn’t get/a Sarah Palin and other wingers.br /br /Here’s the problem, Barry. Not everybody’s hymnal has “Kumbaya” in it. Second, to mash up Nazi Germany and cognitive science, to tell the Big Lie convincingly, you have to tell it to yourself enough, and convincingly enough, that you first believe it for yourself.br /br /That said, ABC’s Kate Snow notes that, on the end-of-life consultations that Palin et al say would be “government-forced euthanasia, a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8298267page=1"hospitals do them right now/a. Hospice does in a sense. And, if that hospital or hospice is paying that patient’s bill with Medicare, well, then we right now have the government involved with end-of-life issues and no euthanasia.br /br /Finally, Michael Lind says that progressives/liberals need to a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/08/11/south/"stop bashing stereotypical Southerners as a class/a, whether over national heathcare, or over other issues.br /br /Taking direct aim at Kevin Drum, Texas native Lind says his state produced LBJ (set Vietnam aside, please), Barbara Jordan, Anne Richards and Maury Maverick, among others, while Drum’s California was the home of Nixon, Reagan the John Birch Society, Prop. 13 and as late as last year, Prop. 8:br /blockquoteAccording to Drum: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Southern whites who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Southern white culture is [redacted]. Jim Webb can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." …br /br /Drum's creepy bigotry becomes clear when other groups are substituted: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual blacks who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, black culture is [redacted]. Barack Obama can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." Or maybe this: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Jews who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Jewish culture is [redacted]. The late Irving Howe can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]."/blockquotebr /From there, he goes off on Prop. 8, and how stereotypes aren’t always put into place:br /blockquoteBlacks and Latinos, it appears, are allowed to hold conventionally conservative social views about gay rights, abortion and (in the case of blacks) immigration without being mocked and denounced by elite white liberals in the pages of the Washington Post and Mother Jones, as long as they vote for the Democratic Party on the basis of other issues./blockquotebr /Beyond that, there’s always the “why” behind non-stereotypical anger, which is the bottom line of what Obama doesn’t get. After all, besides “Kumbaya,” hymnbooks also contain “Onward Christian ISoldiers./I”div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-2646059661264516423?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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UMNO Abandons Multi-racial

2009-08-11T15:40:00.001-07:00

I thought this editorial commentary by The Malaysian Insider entitled "a href="http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/34802-umno-bets-on-race-appeal-to-bury-pakatan"UMNO bets on race appeal/a" a few days ago best encapsulates what is happening in Malaysian politics at the moment. Excerpts are quoted as follows:br /blockquotespan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"Umno appears to have discarded plans to widen the party’s appeal and speak for all Malaysians. Facing pressure from its rank and file, and concerned that its mantle as defender of Malay rights is under threat from PAS, the ruling party is retreating into its own cocoon.br /br /Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin gave a sneak peek of this insecure feeling during yesterday’s Barisan Nasional (BN) supreme council meeting.br /br /During the meeting, Gerakan president Tan Sri Koh Tsu Koon highlighted a series of incendiary commentaries in the Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia and said he was troubled by the effect it was having on race relations.br /br /Responding to this, Muhyiddin, who is shaping up to be a hawk in the administration, justified the pitch taken by saying that Malays believe that Umno is weak and giving in too much to the demands of non-Malays. It is understood that /spanspan style="font-weight:bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"none/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;" of the leaders of BN component parties challenged this view.br /br /A BN leader told The Malaysian Insider: “There is a hardening of Umno’s position. The openness and willingness to become more inclusive is not evident.”br /br /In the aftermatch of Election 2008 Umno leaders publicly said they could no longer only speak for one race.br /br /But not anymore.br /br /Senior party officials and a think-tank set up to rejuvenate the party believe that the Malay vote has to be secured above everything else.br /br /In addition, the party officials feel that non-Malays have become too vocal and demanding since the general elections.br /br /In recent weeks, Umno leaders and Utusan Malaysia have become more strident in their remarks in what is a palpable attempt to shore up its position as the defender of Malay interests.br /br /The DAP has been the subject of heavy bombardment of late, with Umno and Utusan accusing the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) party of being anti-Malay and anti-Malay rulers.br /br /A minor dispute over the illegal seizure of beer in Selangor has been turned into a major affront to Muslim rights.br /br /And Muhyiddin appears to be at the forefront of a campaign to restore Umno as the ultimate defender of the Malays and Islam.br /br /Last week, he accused Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim of being a traitor of the Malays, and despite the threat of a RM100 million lawsuit, the deputy Umno president has refused to retract his remarks or apologise.br /br /Yesterday, he also pointed out that the BN government’s priority would remain the Malays./span/blockquoteFull article available a href="http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/34802-umno-bets-on-race-appeal-to-bury-pakatan"here/a.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/37045477-5479897395887474578?l=tonypua.blogspot.com'//div

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When everyone wants freedom.

2009-08-11T14:00:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_78ZrJuZ3q5g/SoHUm0uOVxI/AAAAAAAACTs/hmwPgPcmSm4/s1600-h/biggovernment.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 261px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_78ZrJuZ3q5g/SoHUm0uOVxI/AAAAAAAACTs/hmwPgPcmSm4/s400/biggovernment.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368805994254980882" border="0" //abr /At times you will find political figures who are willing to fight for freedom. Those, unfortunately, are rare occasions. Few individuals are willing to do this consistently. Most are, at best, sunshine libertarians —those who advocate freedom when it is safe and bright and appealing; when it has the sanction of the majority; when even the mob can applaud the virtues of liberty.br /br /There are some trends that we can discern regarding support for freedom. And I should state that by freedom, I mean the right of the individual to control their own life, liberty and property, restricted only by the equal rights of others. This is classical liberalism, which is not the same thing that the illiberal Left promotes. And by illiberal Left I refer to such people as Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.br /br /On the Right we saw figures like Goldwater and Reagan, who were more liberal than not, and certainly more liberal than most on the Right. George Bush and the advocates of the Religious Right were part of the illiberal Right. Liberals want to expand freedom not restrict it. And there are people on both the Right and the Left who wish to do that.br /br /In my view liberals on what is called the Left, and what is called the Right, are inconsistent liberals. They are advocates of freedom sometimes, and advocates of authoritarianism other times. These are liberals who fail to live up to their own principles.br /br /Most politicians, however, lack principles. They are not advocates of great principles at all, just advocates of power, particularly power in their own hands. They are the people who see humanity as a great lump of clay and themselves as the God-chosen sculptors, with the vision and the right necessary to beat that clay into shape. And “beat” is the operative word when political power is wielded.br /br /Most politicians, like most people, are of mixed premises. More importantly, they are people of contradictory premises. Your typical human holds political values that conflict with one another. They neatly compartmentalize these issues so as to avoid the cognitive dissonance that comes from holding conflicting values. In other words, they avoid thinking about how their own politics is a conflicting jumble of values that ultimate undermines the good values that they do hold.br /br /Take the so-called “Tea Bag” meetings as an example. Many of these people, while shouting wildly about freedom, advocate Big Brotherism in the bedroom. They are not advocates of freedom in principle; they are advocates of their freedom, not your freedom.br /br /That most politicians hold conflicting values of freedom is no surprise. In fact, I should not say most, I should say all. I honestly don’t know of one single prominent politician who consistently advocates freedom—not one. Some do so more than others but all apply their principles inconsistently and often, incoherently.br /br /But there are times when most people, and most politicians, are quite libertarian, or quite liberal in the true sense of the word. When are those times? Is there a consistent pattern of activity that allows us to predict when and where someone is more likely to be libertarian? In one word: Yes.br /br /There are two times when we know that someone will take a more libertarian position than usual. (There may be more, but there are two such occasions that I have identified and perhaps others that others would identify that I have not thought of.)br /br /The first is what I called the gored ox issue. When an individual’s ox is the one being gored they are most likely to demand it stops. Individuals who are authors, or who like books, erotica, etc., will demand the end of censorship more than individuals who have no such interests. Farmers want the freedom to farm their land as they see best. Business owners want the right to hire the employees they think best suited for their company.br /br /Everyone wants freedom for himself or herself. That is never the controversy. What they have problem with is freedom for others. So many authors of more erotic material may advocate hate speech regulations because they don’t write such material. Certainly the purveyors of hate typically want censorship of erotic material while demanding the absolute right to prove their own stupidity in public.br /br /The farmer who demands the right to farm his land as he see fits may well advocate protectionist barriers to prevent the farm products of others from entering the country. The business owner who staunchly defends his own freedom of association may be quite willing to restrict your freedom of association.br /br /Consider the misnamed book, span style="font-style: italic;"The Conscience of a Libertarian/span, as an example. Author, Wayne Root, a social conservative for sure, has an entire chapter on the dangers of prohibition. Yet the chapter is not about the war on drugs, but about gambling. Mr. Root made his living convincing gamblers that they should purchase his advice—advice that many of them says is no better than average. Root’s salesmen would use high-pressure techniques to convince people to “subscribe” at high fees to Roots advice service.br /br /A side note: I put these handicappers in the same category as many investment newsletters. When someone is making his money selling you advice on how to make money, be suspicious. If their advice were of real value then they would be getting rich, not by selling their advice, but by implementing it themselves.br /br /The second time that we find individuals more actively promoting libertarian principles is when they are out of power. Everyone wants to deny power to his or her opponents but grab power for him or herself. Consider the perfect example of modern conservatives in the form of the Republican Party. Out of power they wail about small government.br /br /When Big Brother Georgie was in power, over the last two terms of office, these Republicans rolled over, dropped their drawers and shouted: “Give it to me Big Boy, give it to me!” Unfortunately for us, when they got screwed, so did we. At no point did the Republicans find the guts to stand up for a single one of those “limited government” principles that they claimed to support.br /br /The moment George Bush was consigned to the trash heap of history, and the Republicans lost control of government to the authoritarian Left, they started screaming about out-of-control government. Basically these Republicans took the government, severed the brakes completely on the downhill drive, handed the wheel to Obama and then started whining about the speed.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/23782041-6754898491745435892?l=freestudents.blogspot.com'//div

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A new discussion group for Lib Dem bloggers

2009-08-11T12:19:00.003-07:00

Ryan Cullen - the man behind the invaluable LibDemBlogs aggregator - has set up an a href="http://lists.libdems.org.uk/wws/info/libdembloggers"email group for Liberal Democrat bloggers/a.br /br /There was a bit of a false start today as Ryan subscribed lots of people himself and there were some ructions - not unconnected with a href="http://liberalprovocateur.vox.com/library/post/ha-ha-ha-lib-dem-bloggers-in-technically-illiterate-shocker.html"this gentleman/a.br /br /Having gone off in a huff, I shall wait a couple of days and quietly resubscribe from my Gmail address. That will automatically sort the individual threads and may it more like a newsgroup where you can easily avoid topics that do not interest you.br /br /This discussion group, where people will be able to discuss technical, legal and other questions about blogging, is obviously a Good Thing. But are there other things that can be done to help nourish the Lib Dem blogosphere?br /br /Yesterday I entered some tentative doubts about how far the a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-liberal-democrat-voice-eating-lib.html"Blog of the Year Awards/a help, but maybe there is scope for a different event at Conference? One idea that attracts me is a blogging clinic where people can come along and ask advice or share ideas in person.br /br /It is obviously too late to do anything for this year, but perhaps another year?div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-723725364267756144?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Look out for the Perseids tonight

2009-08-11T12:19:00.001-07:00

From the a href="http://www.imo.net/news/perseids2009"Daily Telegraph/a:br /blockquotepThe Perseids happen every year in August when the Earth passes through rock and dust fragments left behind by the Comet Swift-Tuttle./ppAs these small particles collide with the Earth's atmosphere, they burn up, creating up 80 streaks of light an hour across the night sky./ppThe meteor shower will peak in the early hours of Wednesday morning, according to the International Meteor Organisation, which predicted a better than average display./p/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-4523612313593092686?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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Eunice Kennedy Shriver Dead at 88

2009-08-11T11:04:00.001-07:00

img src="http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/eunicekenshriver.jpg" alt="eunicekenshriver" title="eunicekenshriver" width="237" height="300" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13963" /br /br /From a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/11/eunice.kennedy.shriver/"CNN.com/abr /br /blockquotestrongEunice Kennedy Shriver dies at 88br /By Emanuella Grinbergbr /CNN/strongbr /br /br /(CNN) -- Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of President John F. Kennedy and a champion of the disabled who founded the Special Olympics, died Tuesday, the Special Olympics said. She was 88.br /br / Born on July 10, 1921, in Brookline, Massachusetts, Shriver was the fifth of nine children to Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She emerged from the long shadow of siblings John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as the founder of the Special Olympics, which started as a summer day camp in her backyard in 1962.br /br /Today, 3.1 million people with mental disabilities participate in 228 programs in 170 nations, according to the Special Olympics.br /br /"She was the light of our lives, a mother, wife, grandmother, sister and aunt who taught us by example and with passion what it means to live a faith-driven life of love and service to others," the Shriver family said Tuesday in a statement.br /br /"For each of us, she often seemed to stop time itself -- to run another Special Olympics Games, to visit us in our homes, to attend to her own mother, her sisters and brothers, and to sail, tell stories, and laugh and serve her friends."br /br /No final decision has been made on funeral arrangements, a source close to the family said.br /br /Shriver's husband, R. Sargent Shriver, and her five children and their spouses and all of her 19 grandchildren were with her when she died, the Special Olympics said in a statement. Video Watch a look at Eunice Kennedy Shriver's life »br /Don't Missbr /br / * Special Olympics a lasting legacybr /br /"We are tremendously grateful for the extreme outpouring of support and prayer from the public as we honor our beloved founder," Brady Lum, Special Olympics president and chief operating officer, said in a statement Tuesday.br /br /"Today we celebrate the life of a woman who had the vision to create our movement. It is an enormous loss, but I know we can rest assured that her legacy will live on through her family, friends, and the millions of people around the world who she touched and transformed."br /br /Even before launching the Special Olympics in 1968, Shriver had established a reputation as an advocate for the disenfranchised and a trailblazer for the rights of the disabled through a variety of roles in the private and public sector.br /br /She also persuaded the Kennedy family to go public with one of its most guarded secrets. In September 1962, Shriver wrote an article about her mentally disabled sister, Rosemary, which was published in The Saturday Evening Post.br /br /At an event honoring her in 2007, Shriver spoke of her life: "Most people believe I spent my whole life really interested in only one thing and that one thing is working to make the world a better place for people with intellectual disabilities.br /br /"As important as it has been, it is not the whole story of my life. My life is about being lucky as a child to be raised by parents who loved me and made me believe in possibilities. It is also about being lucky to have had these extraordinary children. ... It is also about being especially lucky to have a wonderful husband." br /br / At the same event, Edward Kennedy paid tribute to his sister, saying she had inherited the best qualities from his parents, including compassion. "She had that sense no one should be left out or left behind. She picked this up, obviously, at a very early age. All of us could see that special relationship that Eunice had with Rosemary."br /br /After receiving a degree in sociology from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, Shriver worked for the U.S. State Department in the Special War Problems Division from 1943 to 1945, helping former prisoners of war readjust to civilian life.br /br /From 1947 to 1948, she worked for $1 at the Department of Justice as executive secretary for the National Conference on Prevention and Control of Juvenile Delinquency. See highlights of Shriver's public and private life »br /br /In the early 1950s, she was a social worker at a federal prison for women in West Virginia and in juvenile court in Chicago, Illinois.br /br /She married Robert Sargent Shriver Jr., a World War II veteran who was building his career as a lawyer and lifelong public servant, in 1953. The couple's five children include California's first lady, Maria Shriver.br /br /Sargent Shriver had roles in many top government initiatives of the 1960s, including Head Start and the Peace Corps. He also worked with his wife on the Special Olympics. He ran President Johnson's War on Poverty and was U.S. ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970. He was Democrat George McGovern's running mate in the 1972 presidential election.br /br /In 1957, Eunice Shriver became executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, which was established in 1946 to honor the family's eldest son -- who was killed in World War II -- to research the causes of disabilities and to improve the treatment of disabled people. Video Watch Shriver receive a special honor »br /br /Her work with the foundation paved the way for a number of initiatives furthering the cause of disability advocacy. In 1962 she helped establish the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a government agency that conducts research on topics related to the health of children, adults and families that was named after Shriver in 2008.br /br /Disturbed by the treatment of disabled people in institutions across the country in the 1950s and 1960s, Shriver began inviting disabled children to a summer day camp, called Camp Shriver, on her farm in Maryland. Her vision expanded over the years, and in July 1968 the first International Special Olympics Games were held in Chicago.br /br /She also assisted in the establishment of a network of university-affiliated facilities and intellectual disabilities research centers at major medical schools across the United States, including centers for the study of medical ethics at Harvard and Georgetown universities in 1971.br /br /In 1981, Shriver began the Community of Caring program to reduce disabilities among babies of teenagers. That led to the establishment of Community of Caring programs in 1,200 public and private schools from 1990 to 2006.br /br /Along the way, Shriver earned worldwide accolades and awards, including the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame's Founder's Award and nine honorary degrees.br /br /In 1995, the U.S. Mint issued a commemorative coin with her portrait. The Mint says that made her the first living woman to be depicted on an American coin.br /br /In 2009, a painting of Shriver with several Special Olympians was added to the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Photo See images from Shriver's life »br /advertisementbr /br /Her health began to fail in recent years, landing her in the hospital in 2005 after a minor stroke and hip fracture. She was hospitalized again in 2007 for an undisclosed ailment.br /br /In addition to her husband and daughter, Shriver is survived by her sons Robert Sargent Shriver III, Timothy Perry Shriver, Mark Kennedy Shriver and Anthony Paul Kennedy Shriver. /blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-2519080008389384429?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Dick Durbin Needs to Hear FROM YOU

2009-08-11T10:39:00.003-07:00

From a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/9/764204/-PUBLIC-OPTIONDick-Durbin-Needs-to-Hear-It-First-Thing-Monday-Morning"DailyKos/abr /br /blockquotestrongPUBLIC OPTION--Dick Durbin Needs to Hear It First Thing Monday Morningbr /by Buck Powerbr /Sun Aug 09, 2009 at 12:11:29 PM PDT/strongbr /br /Sam Stein over at the Huffington Post details Senator Dick Durbin's appearance today on CNN's "State of the Union". br /br / One of Barack Obama's chief allies in the United States Senate hinted on Sunday that a public insurance option could go by the wayside as Congress hammers out its health care legislation.br /br / Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), one of the chamber's foremost progressives, said that while he supported a government-run option for insurance, he was "open" to alternatives.br /br / "Just understand that, after we pass this bill -- and I hope we do -- in the Senate, it will go to conference committee," said Durbin. "We'll have a chance to work out all of our differences."br /br /There can be no meaningful health care reform without a public option. Senator Durbin needs to be reminded of this. We need to flood his office with our views first thing monday morning. Very simple. br /br /br /br /You can use Senator Durbin's online US Senate contact page:br /http://durbin.senate.gov/...br /br /Or (PREFERABLY!) you can give his office(s) a call:br /br / strong WASHINGTON, D.C. Officebr / 309 Hart Senate Buildingbr / Washington, DC 20510br / 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.br / Phone: (202)224-2152br / Fax: (202)228-0400br /br / CHICAGO Officebr / 230 South Dearborn Streetbr / Suite 3892br / Chicago, IL 60604br / Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.br / Phone:(312) 353-4952br / Fax: (312) 353-0150br /br / SPRINGFIELD Officebr / 525 South 8th Streetbr / Springfield, IL 62703br / Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.br / Phone: (217)492-4062br / Fax: (217)492-4382/strongbr /br /Senator Durbin is one of President Obama's strongest allies in the senate. Bottom line: we cannot afford to lose him. We must overwhelm him with responses to this, and remind him of his mission. It'll take just a few minutes of your time monday morning to give him a buzz!br /br /Anyone with additional means of contacting the senator, please post it up and I will include it. I admit this was hastily compiled. I wish we could send him cartons of band-aids or something. Because "reform" without a public option is just that--a band aid on a gunshot wound!/blockquotebr /br /br /I'm tired of these MOFOS thinking that we're going to just sit back and take while they SELL US OUT and then tell us that we don't see what they're doing.br /br /FUCK THAT. br /br /strongCALL CALL CALL/strongdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21083673-6226201200803868290?l=mirroronamerica.blogspot.com'//div

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Law Enforcement catching another hardened criminal

2009-08-11T10:39:00.001-07:00

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Most Demanding?

2009-08-11T09:48:00.001-07:00

I have to agree with a href="http://volokh.com/posts/1249645755.shtml"David Bernstein/a when it comes to the a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/us/politics/07scotus.html?_r=1hp"assertion/a that Sotomayor "will soon take on one of the most demanding jobs in the land." Granting that the job has some high-level intellectual demands and pressures, I would say that in fact being a Supreme Court justice is relatively undemanding for a job of its prestige and influence. I would note, for example, that one year Sandra Day O'Connor a href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/11/oconnor_is_most_traveled_justice/"was reimbursed for span style="font-style:italic;"28/span trips./a I think it's safe to say that there are a lot of more demanding jobs out there.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-5884959694738486870?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Pointless Rant: East Coasters Drive Like this...

2009-08-11T08:33:00.001-07:00

Having grown up and spent most of my formative years on the West Coast, I am constantly befuddled by the aversion of East Coasters to drives of even moderate distance. Easterners seem, in my experience, largely incapable of conceiving of any drive that takes longer than 45 minutes. Baltimore to Philly? Might as well be the Bataan Death March. New York to Boston? I heard about a guy who tried it once, but I think he was eaten by wild animals near Providence, wherever that is. To be sure, there are good reasons why people should shun long drives, including environmental concerns and the relatively high accident rate of automobile travel. These are not, however, the concerns that my Eastern interlocutors most often invoke. Rather, they just can't seem to imagine sitting in a car long enough to get from one place to another. br /br /It is not this way in the West. You wouldn't want to do it everyday, but it was not uncommon for myself and my friends to drive from Seattle to Portland for a day trip, returning the same evening. That's 170 miles, give or take. Hell, while I was at UO it wasn't even that unusual to do a Eugene to Seattle round-trip in a single day. Mention to an urbanite from the Boston-DC corridor that you're considering a trip that might take an hour (time spent in traffic doesn't count, for some reason), and they'll respond with a blank, stunned stare. Let me illustrate this point with a short play:br /blockquotespan style="font-weight:bold;"Cast:/spanbr /Hans- Stasi Interrogatorbr /John- Captured CIA spy hailing from Bostonbr /br /font style="font-weight: bold;"Hans:/font Ve have vays of making you talk. Ve shall drive you to ze place of torture vere ve shall find ze location of your nuclear bomb.br /font style="font-weight: bold;"John:/font (meekly) How long of a drive?br /font style="font-weight: bold;"Hans:/font Four hours, but do not vorry. Ve give you a nice New York Review of Books and a thermos coffee-br /font style="font-weight: bold;"John:/font (whispering) Four.... hours? (shrieking) OH GOD, GOD NO! I'LL TALK! I'LL TALK! /blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-6428086270288486890?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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Previewing Obama’s healthcare town hall

2009-08-11T07:18:00.001-07:00

First, the always-insightful Dan Froomkin says he won’t be surprised at all if we eventually see a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/10/our-fuzzy-president-is-ab_n_255524.html"Obama the pushover/a on national healthcare. House-Senate conference committee serving as the ultimate smoke-filled room to put new life into the current dysfunctional system, thereby pushing real reform even further away.br /br /Froomkin’s old employer, the Washington Post, more circumspectly talks about Obama a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/health/policy/11health.html"being driven to the defensive/a on national healthcare.br /br /But, the GOP shouldn’t exult in any of this. New polling shows the Congressional GOP a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/10/cnn-poll-dems-becoming-less-popular-but-no-gains-for-gop/"getting zero traction/a from Congressional Democrats’ slide.br /br /Meanwhile, George Soros is reportedly ready to a href="http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/health-care/george-soros-pledges-5-million-to-bankroll-health-care-reform-push-group-says/"pony up $5 million/a to make national healthcare happen. Of course, we saw what that did for John Kerry in 2004.br /br /Finally, Stephen Hawking, still alive in Great Britain and with its single-payer healthcare system a href="http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2009/08/10/it-doesnt-take-stephen-hawking-to-figure-this-one-out/"after more than three decades with ALS/a, refutes ’wingers’ claims of “government-mandated euthanasia.”br /br /That said, back to a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/10/our-fuzzy-president-is-ab_n_255524.html"Froomkin/a. I suspect he’s right. And, the question is, will this be a “failure” from Obama’s failing to take the lead on this issue, from Congress, early on, like LBJ on Medicare? Or will this be “reality,” because Obama wasn’t behind this, except for verbiage, all along?div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-7311423277276238881?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Taliban winning much of northern Afghanistan

2009-08-11T06:03:00.003-07:00

The Wall Street Journal a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124986154654218153.html"has plenty of details/a, including noting that U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s predecessor, Gen. David McKiernan, had a request outstanding for 10,000 more troops, and that McChrystal will probably eventually ask again for them himself.br /br /That would probably explain a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6789136.ece"a renewed round of drumbeats/a for more Western troops in Afghanistan, this one actually writing for the British outpost of the U.S. bipartisan foreign policy establishment.br /br /Meanwhile, the British have agreed with the U.S. on the alleged need a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/10/afghan-drug-traffiker-hitlist" to target Afghan drug lords/a, while the Pentagon a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/world/asia/10afghan.html "now has a hit list of them/a.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-1720164577440735097?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Dan Froomkin pulls no punches at Huff Post

2009-08-11T06:03:00.001-07:00

And, it’s good to see. He’s got some in-depth analysis on the likely unveiling of a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/10/our-fuzzy-president-is-ab_n_255524.html"Obama the pushover/a on national healthcare.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-5116865929165991464?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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Amazing. Simply Amazing

2009-08-11T05:12:00.003-07:00

Did Speaker Pelosi really call the protesters at Townhall meetings "Un-American"? I heard it on Joe Scarborough this morning so, you know, it has to be true.br /br /Except it's not.br /br /Then there's Richard Mellon Scaife's braintrust at the Tribune-Review. Unbelievable what they did today.br /br /But let's start with Pelosi. Here's exactly what she wrote at a href="http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/08/unamerican-attacks-cant-derail-health-care-debate-.html"USAToday/a:blockquotesubhed pstrongLet the facts be heard/strong /p/subhed pThese disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves.span style="font-weight: bold;" Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American./span Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades. [emphasis added]br //p/blockquote You see that? span style="font-style: italic;"Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American./span Not span style="font-style: italic;"protesting the debate /spanbut span style="font-style: italic;"making sure the debate doesn't happen/span - that's the "un-American" part. Keep that in mind whenever you read or hear that she called span style="font-style: italic;"protesters/span un-American. She didn't.br /br /And yet a href="http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_637637.html"here's how it shows up/a on the editorial page of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:blockquoteAnd utterly despicable is that they characterize as "un-American" average citizens who are rising up in outrage to protest perhaps the greatest attempted shafting in America's history./blockquoteBut that's par-for-the-course for the Scaife braintrust. But the fun part starts with the next paragraph:blockquotePrior to Monday, Mrs. Pelosi had even intimated that those opposed to the government takeover are Nazis. So much for the "civility" for which she wails./blockquote Really? She called them Nazis?br /br /Of course not. a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaC-uMzvKKMamp;feature=player_embedded"Here's the clip/a. She was making the point that the protests are "astroturf" (ie "fake" grassroots) and then says that the protesters are bringing "swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care."br /br /Heck, even Rush Limbaugh found a photo of a swastika at a health care debate. Give a listen:br /br /centerobject width="320" height="260"param name="movie" value="http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/mediaplayer316.swf"param name="flashvars" value="config=http://mediamatters.org/embed/cfg?flv=http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/video/2009/08/10/limbaugh-20090810-pelosi.flv"embed src="http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/mediaplayer316.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="config=http://mediamatters.org/embed/cfg?flv=http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/video/2009/08/10/limbaugh-20090810-pelosi.flv" width="320" height="260"/embed/object/centerbr /Perhaps it was this photo:br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xeewKZ2fD0Q/SoFWLPlPGEI/AAAAAAAAAiA/PRzVK-pW-mk/s1600-h/s-FTCOLLINS-large.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 260px; height: 190px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xeewKZ2fD0Q/SoFWLPlPGEI/AAAAAAAAAiA/PRzVK-pW-mk/s400/s-FTCOLLINS-large.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368666981963601986" border="0" //aBut obviously Rush doesn't get the symbolism. By crossing out the swastika, what do you think the protester was saying? She was protesting against what she saw as Nazism - in the health care plan. She was calling the plan Nazism.br /br /And yet it's charged that Pelosi is calling the protesters Nazis, when in fact (at least according to the photo Rush describes) it's the protesters who are calling the health care plan Nazism.br /br /But here's the kicker. What do you think Scaife's braintrust does after (incorrectly) ridiculing Pelosi for calling people Nazis? That's right, they call her and the Obama administration Nazis:blockquoteHere's a quotation for Pelosi and Mr. Hoyer to contemplate:br /br /"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."br /br /These are the words of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Sounds a lot like what Obama amp; Co. and all its thugs are engaged in, doesn't it? /blockquote Amazing. Simply amazing.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8213262-1156160108223643815?l=2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com'//div

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