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hedgehog days…. 28 October 2008

Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, Divertissements, Germany, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.
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A rare white hedgehog curls up on a leather glove during its presentation at a hedgehog breeding home in Heinsberg, Germany. The color occurence is caused by depigmentation on the animal’s thorns and fur. (Horst Ossinger / EPA)

I used to have what I called “hedgehog days” – meaning it was harsh out there, full of little, sharp edges.  Seems to suit the days we are in the midst of…

And, what an amazing looking creature!  A ball of champagne prickles… I’d like to reach thru and touch his or her toe pads or foot pads or paw pads or whatever those pink pillowy pads are…

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Comments»

1. liberalcatnip - 28 October 2008

It looks like he’s trying to gird his loins. Obviously a Joebama fan.

In other animal news, my Obamacat waited and waited for it – a promise from The One that he would get some treats out of this sordid affair. He’s decided to vote communist instead. Free tuna for all!

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2. liberalcatnip - 28 October 2008

From The Independent: Johann Hari: The Republicans’ dirty secret… torture

So what will be left of the Republican Party after next week’s US election? The answer lies in the sands of Florida, where the sunshine-state Republicans have nominated an unrepentant torturer as their candidate for Congress. They view his readiness to torture an innocent Iraqi not as a source of shame, but as his prime qualification for office. This is American conservatism in the dying days of Bush – and it points out the direction that Sarah Palin would like to take it in 2012.

In August 2003, Colonel Allen West – commanding a US unit in Baghdad – heard a rumour that one of the Iraqi policeman he was working with was a secret insurgent. He ordered his officers to go and seize Yehiya Hamoodi, a thin, bespectacled 31-year-old, from his home. They dragged him into a Humvee, beat him, and then handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded him. In a dank interrogation room, they told him he had better start talking.

Perplexed and terrified, Yehiya explained he didn’t know what they were talking about: why was he here? So West was called in. He told Yehiya he was going to be killed. While his men beat him again, he explained he had one last chance to save his life – by talking.

Yehiya protested: I am innocent! What are you talking about? So West took him outside, had him pinned down, and began to shoot. First he fired into the air. Then he ordered his men to ram Yehiya’s head into a barrel used for cleaning weapons – and fired right next to his head. Then he began to count down from five. Finally Yehiya began to scream out names – any name he could think of, just to make it stop.

The men he named were seized and roughed up in turn. No evidence was found of any plot, and after another 45 days of terror, Yehiya was released. Today, he is severely traumatised, and collapses when he sees a Humvee approaching. The story only came to light after one of West’s soldiers began to protest against these practices, and the Pentagon launched an investigation. At a pre-trial hearing, West was fined $5,000, and now concedes grudgingly: “It’s possible I was wrong about Mr Hamoodi.” But he says he would do it again, and again, and again.

West has even taken to joking about it, gaining applause for telling Republican audiences: “It wasn’t torture. Seeing Rosie O’Donnell naked would be torture.”

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3. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2008

1 – Tuna is the opium of the litter: Karl Manx

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4. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2008

4 – Jeebus Hairy Christ in a Pickup Truck.

Those people disgust me.

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5. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2008

From Catnip’s piece:

And if he’s so focused on helping the middle class, what will happen to those who are already living below the poverty line? They seem to have been lost in all of this. Many of them have bought the “hope” and “change” messages and will cast their votes for Obama. But it seems, at this point, that’s really all they have left. Frankly, it’s just an insult to think that that’s enough when the man they’re voting for blows another $3 million to promote himself.

That made me think of some folks I heard interviewed on NPR:

Battle, 29, has four children. She ended up on welfare and was steered to this manufacturing class.

When asked about the U.S. economy, Battle sighs and shakes her head.

“I’ve never seen so many people have their utilities cut off ever in my life,” she says. “I’ve never seen so many people without lights, without gas, without water. People struggling — they losing their jobs, they losing their houses. That’s serious to me, because if I don’t have to do nothing else, I have to put food on the table, put a roof over a few heads and clothes on a few backs.”

Hatchett says that because he was incarcerated, he had “little or no opportunity” to advance himself financially.

“Being out here, it’s like a difference between day and night,” Hatchett says. “I know if I do the right thing and I continue to do what I need to do, then people are more willing to help me. I think that Barack Obama will get into office, and I think that he will be good for the economy. I think that he will bring a fresh look for things that are going on.”

I hear people with so little hope finding it in his campaign, and I get really sad. I’m pretty damned certain, looking at his advisors, that he isn’t going to do shit for people struggling at the bottom. He’ll wag his finger at them, lecture them, demand they sacrifice more … I seriously suspect he’ll start drafting their children. All of that hope in their voices, and their pride in finally seeing and African American in the White House … all of it likely to be used and taken for granted by yet another Donk con.

Newberry says she’ll cry, too, but that she’s worried about Obama’s safety.

“And then I always say prayers for him, because you got so many people who just are so wicked,” she says. “No matter what, and how qualified a person is, they have a negative feeling about a black person, and I pray for his safety.”

Several of the trainees say they plan to vote for the first time ever. Roberts says he refused to vote in the past because he didn’t think his vote would count — but now that Obama is running, he’ll go to the polls. Wright says she feels the same way.

“I, before today, didn’t feel like my vote really did count,” she says. “But this will be my first year. You know, my mama, we’re going together. I’m going to get up, wake her up, let’s go. I’m taking my brother. He’s never voted — he’s 32. It doesn’t make a difference, we’re going to make it a family affair. We’re all going together to the polls.”

The trainees’ instructor, Ed Welch, was listening to the conversation; he mentions a text message he got from a friend urging him to vote.

The message read: “Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked, so Obama could run. Obama is running so our children can fly.”

Just another preacher gonna buy himself nice suits and gold and big cars, leaving them where they are.

I only wish there was enough of a movement in this country to support someone who was really like that.

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6. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2008
7. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2008

Boing Boing highlights a paragraph from a Palin profile in the New Yorker:

The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.

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8. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2008

oops, forgot to single out the link to the actual piece: go here.

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9. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2008

I’m not on board, but I have to say that this is a great Obama remix.

When Allain Toussaint wrote Yes We Can for Lee Dorsey in 1970, both men obviously knew what was to come in 2008, and felt the need to pave the way for young Barack Obama. The recording is funky, political, and unapologetically optimistic. Surprisingly little editing was needed to couch Obama’s famous Yes We Can speech into the song.

Although no evidence has surfaced of a small box or other audio equipment under Barack’s jacket, clearly this song was being fed into his ear as he made this address.

The song also became the first hit for The Pointer Sisters in 1973, which is a recording worth looking for.

Link via boing boing.

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10. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2008

Frank Breaks Taboo on Military Spending

I haven’t been a fan of Congressman Frank. He helped engineer the theft of $700 billion by Wall Street tycoons from my unborn grandkids, and guilt may be part of the explanation for his sudden fit of honesty. Frank has been a bitter opponent of impeaching Bush and Cheney, and has generally gone along with every outrage Congress has created or permitted in recent years. But when you’re right, you’re right, and Frank is 100 percent dead on.

Frank told the editorial board of the Standard-Times that “the Pentagon has to start choosing from its many weapons programs, and that upper-income taxpayers are going to see an increase in what they are asked to pay. The military cuts also mean getting out of Iraq sooner, he said.” Frank told the Politico that “the Pentagon is probably the most wasteful organization in the federal government and people have given it a pass for years.”

McCain quickly hid behind the poor kids he’d like to see continue killing and dying for his deteriorating ego: “Yesterday, Barney Frank again previewed the Democratic congressional agenda, when he proposed … cutting defense spending by a quarter — slicing defense funding while our troops are at war and our ground forces are already too small. My friends ….”

It’s pretty clear that McCain hurts his already hopeless electoral chances with these comments, while Frank helps those of Democrats. In a March 2005 report called “The Federal Budget: the Public’s Priorities,” the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) told people the basic distribution of funds in the federal budget and asked how they would rearrange the funding if they could. Americans from across the political spectrum, on average, said they would cut the military budget by 31 percent. That’s more than Frank’s 25 percent. Congressman Dennis Kucinich has in the past proposed a 15 percent cut. Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey has proposed a shift of resources away from the military but has never named a specific number.

NOt that I expect the donks to actually do anything about it.

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11. Intermittent Bystander - 28 October 2008

Spike! Cooochie-coochie coo, little critter!

West has even taken to joking about it, gaining applause for telling Republican audiences: “It wasn’t torture. Seeing Rosie O’Donnell naked would be torture.”

Every day brings a new reason to renew the reminder to self that some people are – and always, always will be – sick fucks.

Switching from heavy rain to actual-factual snow here tonight. A foot or more in the hills, expected. Another October quill!

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12. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2008

Gore Vidal On McCain

So October (my natal month) was no joy for me, as the degradation of our democratic process was being McCainized. McCain is a prisoner of the past. Later, in due course he gave us the old address book treatment: names from Obama’s past, each belonging to a potential terrorist. Even from the corpse of the Republican Party, which Abraham Lincoln left somewhat hastily in the 19th century, this was an unusually sickening display.

Happily, physicists assure us that there is no action without reaction.

There were still a few bright glimmers of something larger than a mere candidate of the Republican Party, but Mr. McCain seems to be in the terminal throes of a self-love that causes him to regard himself as a great American hero. From time to time, he likes to shout at us, “I have fought in many, many wars,” and, “I have won many of them,” but he has, so far, never told us which were the ones that he has actually won, since every war that he has graced with his samurai presence seems to have been thoroughly lost by the United States. Consistency is all-important to the born loser as well as to the committed liar.

So what little fame he has rests on the fact that he was taken a prisoner of war by the Vietnamese – hardly a recommendation for the leadership of the “free world” – and thus aware of the meagerness of his own curriculum vitae, for his vice presidential choice he then turned radically, in the age of the awakening to power of women, to an Alaskan politician; a giggly Piltdown princess out of pre-history.

Her qualification? She has once been mayor (or was it “mare”?) of an Alaskan village and later governor of what had been known as “Seward’s Icebox,” named for Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Seward, who had over the misgivings of many bought all that ice from Russia.

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13. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2008

Cindy Sheehan: “The Party’s Over?”

The title for this piece was a very unfortunate statement that Nancy Pelosi made after she handed the banksters on Wall Street 700 billion dollars of our money. This was a whopper of a crime that bailed out fabulously wealthy people who took risks that made them rich on the way up and now again on their ways down. I don’t know about you all, but I could have a heckuva party with 700 billion dollars!

One of the corporations that has now received around 100 billion dollars in federal bailout funds is AIG. This firm has continued to party all over the country: treating its associates to fabulous retreats at taxpayer’s expense. Not only is AIG still partying hardy, but according to the Pelosi’s recent financial statement, they own between 250-500 thousand dollars in AIG stock. Can we all say, conflict of interest?

I think it’s about time that the establishment media here in San Francisco quit giving Ms. Pelosi a free pass on her unethical and non-progressive values and actions and start asking her some relevant questions. I think the new paradigm can begin this week when Nancy is on The Forum with Michael Krasny on KQED. We brainstormed a few questions that Michael could ask Pelosi…well more than a few!

• Why do you say that you are against the occupation of Iraq when you have given George Bush billions of dollars of “blank checks” to wage it?
• Why did you vote to give Bush the authorization to attack Afghanistan, when Afghanistan never attacked the US? Why did you vote for the freedom and Orwellian named stealing USA PATRIOT Act?
• What did you know about the administration’s inhumane and grisly policy of torture and when did you know it? Why did you allow it to continue?
* Why do you support the No Child Left Behind Act that is effectively destroying our education system and allows for the active recruitment of our young people by military recruiters?
• Why did you give telecoms and BushCo immunity from warrantless wiretapping? Why did you destroy our 4th amendment by the FISA Modernization Act?
• Why did you give the banksters on Wall Street 700 billion dollars when people are starving and sleeping on our streets?
• What is your plan to pump liquidity into the people’s economy to allow prosperity to gurgle up and no longer trickle up?
• Why did you take impeachment off the table when the Bush Administration have clearly committed high crimes and misdemeanors and why did you say on The View that you didn’t know of any crimes Bush had committed after Congressman Dennis Kucinich charged him with 35 impeachable offenses? What are and what will the implications be for allowing BushCo to slink off unpunished?
• Why did you cave into the Republicans and allow the ban on offshore drilling to expire?
• Why do employees in your companies not belong to labor unions? Why do you support free trade agreements that oppress workers and destroy the environment?
• Why are you claiming in campaign literature that you obtained federal funds to clean up the Hunter’s Point Naval station to help the community of Bay View, when the funds were to be used to decontaminate the area where you hope the new stadium for the 49ers will be placed?
* Why did your Congress not work to protect our elections from fraud and tampering of voting machines that can be easily compromised?
• Why haven’t you held a town hall meeting in the district since 2006 but you have the time to sell books and fund raise all over the country?
• Why won’t you debate your Congressional opponents? What are you afraid of?

I would love to tell Nancy Pelosi that her party is over, but I highly doubt that the establishment media here in San Francisco will suddenly grow some journalistic integrity and actually hold her feet to the fire where they belong.

I would also love to tell her this to her face, but like her best buddy, George Bush, she won’t face me and answer questions about issues that truly affect us all.

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14. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2008

Naomi Klein: Obama and the Dangers of the Economic Crisis

Liberal author and journalist Naomi Klein warns Obama supporters on how the current economic crisis could serve as Republican “insurance” against the goals of an Obama administration.

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15. marisacat - 28 October 2008

I remember the day Nancy said “The party’s oh-ver“… It was a loser day as she was just shoving out the pabulum. Which seems to work just fine.

I think the new paradigm can begin this week when Nancy is on The Forum with Michael Krasny on KQED. We brainstormed a few questions that Michael could ask Pelosi…well more than a few!

Krasny would find his ass strapped to a broken down horse, on a ride out of town.

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16. diane - 28 October 2008

What a cutie that little critter is, had the same response about touchin the little foot padsies

Loved the Dust My Broom Intermittent…and I need all the assistance I can get lately to clean…….

Great to see Boohoohoo Man posting!

Last, and I sure wish it was, least…regarding what look to be Cheney DNA’d missions: I think if something doesn’t change drastically…we’re going to witness the same murders of innocent bystanders in selected neighborhoods in our own back yard fairly soon, by our own government …So pathetic that too many in the US can’t or won’t acknowledge that: in addition to pre-emptive bombing at whim, it is in fact murder when you take out the whole group or neighborhood to kill a criminal, even more horrific if you don’t have proof they’re even in the neighborhood, or are even bullies for that matter…..It will be too late for folks to wonder why they turned that blind eye to another country if that happens.

A perfect example of where we’re heading, and ya just have to ask here, was this poor young newlywed man handcuffed before he was mortally shot?……or after: Calif. man killed by police in mistaken identity

” ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — A newlywed killed by police after he stepped outside his home to confront suspected burglars was shot in a case of mistaken identity, police said.

Julian Alexander died after being shot twice in the chest by a police officer who was chasing four burglary suspects early Tuesday morning.

Police Chief John Welter said the officer ran into Alexander, mistook him for one of the four juvenile suspects and shot him.

snip

Alexander’s wife and mother said they heard the gunshots and tried to go into the yard, but the officer told them to stay inside. They saw Alexander handcuffed and bleeding in the front yard, they said.

The four burglary suspects were detained and interviewed, but no arrests were made. [Guess it wasn’t much of a burglary was it…..]
….”

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17. marisacat - 29 October 2008

LOL Be there or be square! Very much a BYOB event, is my take:

Rutenberg: “The trailer is heavy in strings, flags, presidential imagery and some Americana filmed by Davis Guggenheim, whose father was the campaign documentarian of Robert F. Kennedy. As the screen flashes scenes of suburban lawns, a freight train and Mr. Obama seated at a kitchen table with a group of white, apparently working-class voters, Mr. Obama says:

‘We’ve seen over the last eight years how decisions by a president can have a profound effect on the course of history and on American lives; much that’s wrong with our country goes back even farther than that.’ ” Obama continues, “We’ve been talking about the same problems for decades and nothing is ever done to solve them. For the past 20 months, I’ve traveled the length of this country, and Michelle and I have met so many Americans who are looking for real and lasting change that makes a difference in their lives.”

…the sort of movie one wishes never ends…………

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18. marisacat - 29 October 2008

worth missing:

KATIE COURIC, anchor and managing editor of the ‘CBS Evening News,’ tonight presents the latest installment of ‘Presidential Questions,’ identical questions to each of the nominees: ‘When was the last time you fire someone, and why?’ and ‘What would you like to have on your tombstone?’

SNEAKER — Katie also asks their favorite books. Senator McCain: Ernest Hemingway’s ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’ Senator Obama: Toni Morrison’s ‘Song of Solomon.’

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19. lucid - 29 October 2008

Well, give Ob some credit… at least he has decent taste in literature.

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20. NYCO - 29 October 2008

Beneficial side effect of having a legally blind governor: Sometimes he dials the wrong number.

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21. marisacat - 29 October 2008

Actually I think he was promoting her book in return for this.

She was out distanced recently by the Walker slobber, I mean endorsement… LOL. But other than that…

I really think it is all abut marketing. Inter-dependent marketing.

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22. bayprairie - 29 October 2008

18.

ms. couric should also ask both candidates if they’re enjoying CBS news’ softball season.

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23. lucid - 29 October 2008

21…true, but it’s one of my favorite books, so I’ll give him a soft pass on it. ;)

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24. marisacat - 29 October 2008

Honestly it was the tombstone question that got me. Let’s bring up death again.

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25. marisacat - 29 October 2008

Party hardy… Fed cuts rate to 1%

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26. marisacat - 29 October 2008

2. We also need help with our Faith Outreach Program — people who will be here before Sunday morning to attend services, possibly speak on behalf of Barack Obama and help with GOTV churches and African American voters in general. We also need help with Hispanic churches, progressive denominations like Episcopal, United Church of Christ, etc.

3. We need experienced people who can help with inner-city GOTV efforts – mostly African American and Hispanic.

Hurry hurry help help memo to Dem operatives from Ob Camp, w/r/t GOTV for Florida….

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27. liberalcatnip - 29 October 2008

Canuckian member of the peanut gallery reporting for duty to watch Obamalama try to sell off some of the voters in his infomercial to unsuspecting buyers to raise yet more money for his campaign.

Call now and you’ll get this lovely 44 year-old woman with 2 kids! As a bonus, we’ll include a George Foreman Grill. But wait! There’s more! If you order within the next half hour, we’ll also send these charming, handmade sockpuppets, affectionately named Nancy and Harry. Your kids will love them! So, call now. Don’t delay! (Visa, Mastercard and your first-born son accepted as payment).

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28. marisacat - 29 October 2008

LOL

yes I plan to drag myself thru the testimonial as well.

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29. liberalcatnip - 29 October 2008

Here we go…amber waves of grain-like nausea.

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30. liberalcatnip - 29 October 2008

I wonder if he’ll show condiment sandwich girl.

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31. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 October 2008

how about eliminating all the money we spend murdering people?

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32. liberalcatnip - 29 October 2008

31. Commie!

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33. Gayle - 29 October 2008

I love the hedgehog!

I thought this big media buy was so he could speak directly to the nation. This a craptastic 30 minute commercial and I’m turning it off.

I wish someone had the cute hedgehogs on TV right now. I’d much rather watch them.

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34. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 October 2008

that’s pansy wimp ‘Merica-hatin’ commie to you!

LOL …

Sen. Lieberman likely to lose his gavel in massive reshuffle being discussed

Democratic leaders are discussing a major reshuffling of Senate committee chairmanships, according to multiple sources, and the proposed changes include ousting Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) from his coveted chairmanship.

Lieberman, a former Democrat who supports Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president, is likely to lose his gavel on the Homeland Security Committee he has chaired since January 2007, say the sources who see him being replaced by Sen. Daniel Akaka (Hawaii), the committee’s third-ranking Democrat.

Lieberman spokesman Marshall Witmann dismissed the speculation, saying Lieberman “is focused on doing all he can to elect John McCain as president rather than post-election Washington politics.”

One Democratic source said Lieberman is not likely to lose his position in the Democratic caucus, even if the party picks up several seats in next week’s election. While Democrats could approach or exceed the filibuster-proof threshold of 60 votes, they may still need Lieberman’s vote often.

“There’s no sense in cutting off our nose to spite our face,” one source said.

The proposed shakeup is hardly final, but it has begun to be sketched out on paper. It depends largely on a victory by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in the presidential election, which would result in Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), Obama’s running mate, giving up his chairmanship on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The shift also hinges on Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) stepping down as chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, which aides say is included in the proposed changes. Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) would replace him. Byrd, who turns 91 in November, has been hospitalized three times this year and some have questioned if he is capable of leading the committee.

Other moves include Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) taking over the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) taking over the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) moving to the helm of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

There is no set plan to replace Biden, but one source cited Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) as a possibility.

OOOO, you can just FEEL the CHANGE, can’t you!?!?!

After 15 minutes of this Obama thing I think I now have diabetes.

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35. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 October 2008
36. marisacat - 29 October 2008

33

the hedgehog really is great… ;)

I guess there was no hope, this ponderous half hour infomercial was bound to be a dud. Scud dud.

***

34

Anything that gets rid of Liebchen…. my motto: 61 in the senate!

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37. liberalcatnip - 29 October 2008

That was depressing. I think I’ll slit my wrists now.

Oh, wait…I’m Canadian.

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38. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 October 2008

LOL … Tweety thought it was “Hollywood” … felt like Hallmark.

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39. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 October 2008

Oh, wait…I’m Canadian.

Living next to us would make me suicidal.

One of the best things about the approaching end of this campaign is the end of “average Americans” being interviewed on the various infotainment programs on radio and the glass teat. What a god-forsaken land of halfwits and uneducated morons this country is.

Oh, and speaking of scary, halfwit morons: ‘Personhood’ Amendment On Colorado Ballot

The first of its kind in the U.S., the amendment is the brainchild of 21-year-old Kristi Burton, who says she wants to establish a concrete definition of when life begins to protect unborn children. On a Sunday in October, Burton drove three hours from her home near Colorado Springs to speak at Life Church, an evangelical congregation in Fort Collins.

“Basically we’re then directing our courts and our Legislature to say now that an unborn child is defined as a person; you need to look at that when making your laws,” Burton said. She had set up a table displaying pictures of babies, along with bumper stickers and promotional DVDs to support her initiative. “If you’d like to get involved, we have many materials you can pick up, and please do pray for us. I really do believe that in the end, God is the one that fights the battle.”

Yup, a question that has challenged histories greatest thinkers will be solved by a religious fanatic kid barely old enough to vote, who’s still working on her “degree”.

Burton, who is studying at an online Christian law school, has been working on the concept for the past two years and says an attorney friend of hers wrote the amendment.

“I do believe that Roe v. Wade should be overturned,” Burton says. “I mean even a lot of people on the pro-choice side say it was a bad decision made on bad law. And that’s why we’re trying to define a person and that’s why Roe v. Wade should be relooked at. At least present new information.”

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40. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 October 2008

oops, “history’s” … sigh.

Who’s the moron, keyboard boy?

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41. liberalcatnip - 29 October 2008

Tweety = prescription crack

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42. liberalcatnip - 29 October 2008

39. Living next to us would make me suicidal.

It would if I hadn’t stumbled upon the few, sane of you yanks here. ;)

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43. Gayle - 29 October 2008

“I guess there was no hope”

Ha!

Has anyone tallied up the money spent on this campaign?

Maybe it’s just the frugal New Englander in me, but I find the incessant pandering for money coupled with the lavish media buys repulsive.

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44. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 October 2008

Seabiscuit on Syria

Rick Sanchez just loves his Bushian agitprop. Dennis is having none of it.

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45. liberalcatnip - 29 October 2008

McSurge is on Larry King’s show tonite.

44. Rick Sanchez is such a tool.

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46. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 October 2008
47. marisacat - 29 October 2008

.. hmm I guess the earth did not move for some, despite the big cash outlay. Supposedly, from what I read, the target was wary vaguely Republicanish older voters.

LOL well so I heard.. ;)

Something has moved for Francis Fukuyama tho:

America has been living in a dream world for the past few years, losing its basic values of thrift and prudence and living far beyond its means, even as it has lectured the rest of the world to follow its model. At a time when the U.S. government has just nationalized a good part of the banking sector, we need to rethink a lot of the Reaganite verities of the past generation regarding taxes and regulation. Important as they were back in the 1980s and ’90s, they just won’t cut it for the period we are now entering. Obama is much better positioned to reinvent the American model and will certainly present a very different and more positive face of America to the rest of the world.

Francis is a fuck ‘em over then fuck ‘em over again kind of guy, using a different game and different front people.

Anyway ti is in American Conservative, if anyone could read it without gagging.

LINK

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48. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 October 2008

Perrin:

That there are violent rednecks who despise Obama is certainly no shock. Liberal sites have featured numerous videos of stupid white people spouting racist garbage, and this won’t end with Obama’s victory. Once he’s in, we’ll see more and more white anger and insecurity, which online libs will use to inspire further support for Their President. If open racists didn’t make it so easy for them, liberals would have to dig through right wing sites, looking for any scrap of usable hatred in order to justify their acquiescence. Indeed, far from being appalled by racist speech, many liberals court it, waving BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA like a red flag in a maddened bull’s face. His name alone inspires fear!

Cynical is the least of it. We passed cynical ages ago.

So what “America” are we living in? It seems to me that Obama is either demonized or deified — a dance of competing illusions. Then again, I had peyote for breakfast, and my spirit guide, a child in a wrestler’s mask, is flooding my brain with luminous visions, revealing a path where time collapses and cascades to old cartoon music. Your hallucinations may vary.

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49. ms_xeno - 29 October 2008

I got snubbed at a party yesterday for telling somebody that I hope McCain wins because “you wouldn’t turn your back on him, but you’d probably turn your back on Obama.”

Heh.

Small wonder I prefer the company of math-based tutorials over two-footed mammals nowadays. I was fucking serious. The only thing as repulsive as Republicans after a landslide would be Democrats after a landslide. Fuck it.

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50. marisacat - 29 October 2008

Speaking of digging up racism (as if there is not plenty around) even in a week with [very] convenient skin head wanna be killers dreaming of white tuxes streaked in their own blood (apparently) there is this.

i give up.

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51. marisacat - 29 October 2008

hey hey ms_xeno…. ;)

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52. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 October 2008
53. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 October 2008

The Trillion Dollar Tag Sale

Since bin Laden’s supreme act of economic judo in 2001, the U.S. military has spent multi-billions of tax dollars on a string of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, failed wars in both countries, and a failed effort to make good on George W. Bush’s promise to bring in bin Laden “dead or alive.” Despite this record, the Pentagon still has a success option in its back pocket that might help bail out the American people in this perilous economic moment. It could immediately begin to auction off its overseas empire posthaste. To head down this road, however, U.S. military leaders would first have to take a brutally honest look at the real costs, and the real utility, of their massively expensive weapons systems and, above all, those bases.

Today, the Pentagon acknowledges 761 active military “sites” in foreign countries — and that’s without bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, and certain other countries even being counted. This “empire of bases,” as Chalmers Johnson has noted, “began as the leftover residue of World War II,” later evolving into a Cold War and post-Cold War garrisoning of the planet.

With those bases came a series of costly wars in Korea in the 1950s, Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Persian Gulf in the early 1990s. An extremely conservative estimate of their cost by the Congressional Research Service — $1 trillion (in 2008 dollars) — tops the present economic bailout. Add in brief cut-and-run flops like Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia, from 1992-1995, as well as now-forgotten hollow victories in places like the island of Grenada and Panama, and you tack on billions more with little to show for it.

Since 2001, the Bush administration’s Global War on Terror (including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) has cost taxpayers more than the recent bailout — more than $800 billion and still climbing by at least $3.5 billion each week. And the full bill has yet to come due. According to Noble Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes, the total costs of those two wars could top out between $3 trillion and $7 trillion.

If the Pentagon sold off just the buildings and structures on its officially acknowledged overseas bases at their current estimated replacement value, the country would stand to gain more than $119 billion. Think of this as but a down payment on a full-scale Pentagon bailout package.

In addition, while it leases the property on which most of its bases abroad are built, the Pentagon does own some lucrative lands that could be sold off. For instance, it is the proud owner of more than 11,000 acres in Abu Dhabi, “the richest and most powerful of the seven kingdoms of the United Arab Emirates.” With land values there averaging $1,100 per square meter last year, this property alone is worth an estimated $48.9 billion. The Pentagon also owns several thousand acres spread across Oman, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Belgium. Selling off these lands as well would net a sizeable sum.

Without those bases, billions of dollars in other Pentagon expenses would immediately disappear. For instance, during the years of the Global War on Terror, the Overseas Cost of Living Allowance, which equalizes the “purchasing power between members [of the military] overseas and their U.S.-based counterparts,” has reached about $12 billion. Over the same period, the price tag for educating the children of U.S. military personnel abroad has clocked in at around $3.5 billion. By shutting down the 127 Department of Defense schools in Europe and the Pacific (as well as the 65 scattered across the U.S. mainland, Puerto Rico, and Cuba) and sending the children to public schools, the U.S. would realize modest long-term savings. Once no longer garrisoning the globe, the Pentagon would also be able to cease paying out the $1 billion or so that goes into the routine construction of housing and other base facilities each year, not to mention the multi-billions that have gone into the construction, and continual upgrading, of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And that’s not the end of it either. Back in the 1990s, the Pentagon estimated that it was spending $30 billion each year on “base support activities” — though the exact meaning of this phrase remains vague. Just take, for example, five bases being handed back to Germany: Buedingen, Gelnhausen, Darmstadt, Hanau and Turley Barracks in Mannheim. The annual cost of “operating” them is approximately $176 million. Imagine, then, what it has cost to run those 750+ bases during the Global War on Terror years.

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54. NYCO - 29 October 2008

On the other hand the one bright spot on Election Day for me is that we’re getting a new Congressman (probable winner Dan Maffei in NY-25). In this district the #1 requirement is that you must Be From Around Here. You must have at least four generations of 100% pure local blood and have the Scarlet Snowflake birthmark on your ass. Your party affiliation is optional. And, you must be either Irish or Italian. (See Maffei’s website, under “Three Things to Know,” that is Item #1: I Iz Homeboy.)

In fact I almost think Maffei could have WON in ’06 if he had been able to quash that nasty rumor that he was a carpetbagger from Washington.

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55. marisacat - 29 October 2008

Since bin Laden’s supreme act of economic judo in 2001, the U.S. military has spent multi-billions of tax dollars on a string of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, failed wars in both countries, and a failed effort to make good on George W. Bush’s promise to bring in bin Laden “dead or alive.”

Well.. John Burns, war explorer extraordinaire, is back stateside and giving interviews. He chats up Afghanistan quite well… it will take “2 – 3 years to get that war right”… and he warns off this bubbling idea of “talking to the Taliban”… more like a war consultant than a war reporter, LOL. If anyone is still taken in.

When someone raises what Ob and Knob might do, he preemptively states it will be up to Petraeus.

I sure do get the picture. And i have not even bothered to see if he has sat for an interview with Hugh Hewitt where he likes to let loose, get comfy and let fly with a few more ”truths” for the war party hardy good fellows.

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56. marisacat - 29 October 2008

54

that made me laugh… :)

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57. marisacat - 29 October 2008

watching the infomercial now. gah. There really is nothing to say.

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58. marisacat - 29 October 2008

oh fucking stop it, 26 minutes in he slobbers that he’ll ”think of you” when he sends ”your son or daughter” to war.

NO ONE can say he did not over and over declare for war.

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59. marisacat - 29 October 2008

Be nice if he stopped lecturing on who is whose keeper. All things considered.

I don’t care, really, if families make mashed potatoes of each other, but over and over his family is “found” and very small bits of help would be a big help to them. Plus he has used all of these people for “color commentary”.

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60. marisacat - 29 October 2008

nuuu thred….

LINK

……….. 8) ………..

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