Still…

Still… 8 February 2011

Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Egypt, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011.
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Cairo, Egypt: Anti-government demonstrators look at a display of protest messages held down by some of the rocks used in recent clashes [Ben Curtis/AP]

…going.

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1. marisacat - 9 February 2011: hmmm I think we are in the ‘not even blinking’ place.

GIFFORDS’ OFFICE CARRIES ON. “Over the past month, [Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’] aides have been forced into one of the worst crisis management tests ever faced by a congressional office,” Politico’s Jonathan Allen writes. “Even the outpouring of support can be a logistical nightmare:

Giffords’s district office has logged nearly 20,000 contacts in the month since the rampage. They deal with these challenges by answering the oft-repeated question: ‘What would Gabby want?’ At the center of the entire Giffords operation is her 30-year-old chief of staff, Pia Carusone, who has been running Giffords’s Tucson and Washington offices from spartan side rooms at Houston’s TIRR Memorial Hermann hospital with her BlackBerry, a Mac computer and a tiny, 3-by-5-inch reporter’s notebook containing four weeks’ worth of daily to-do lists. She cadged the notebook from an FBI agent in Arizona when she realized she needed to keep track of all her tasks.” http://politi.co/f0hF7k

WWGW. What would Gabby want.

So simple.

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marisacat - 9 February 2011: LOL Lest we get the wrong idea:

Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:

Wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Speaks, Asks for Toast With Breakfast [1:10 p.m. ET]

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2. marisacat - 9 February 2011: hmm AJ reporting huge marches in Alexandria, with family members of those killed in the lead.

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mattes - 9 February 2011: Weiss has live feed.

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3. mattes - 9 February 2011: God I hate benaaacccccooookkkkki.

A congressman just told him that he has a relative that is Doing very well financially, and his relative told the congressman, he did not care what his taxrate was as long as his customers could AFFORD TO BUY HIS BARBECUE SAUCE. AND BERNIE JUST SMILED LIKE A CHESHIRE CAT.

‘Let them eat cake’
By Hossein Askari and Noureddine Krichene

In his speech at the National Press Club in early February, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke downplayed, or some might say rejected, the notion that the Fed’s sustained loose monetary policy had had an impact on record global food prices.

“I think it’s entirely unfair to attribute excess demand in emerging markets to US monetary policy. Those nations can use their own monetary policy and adjust exchange rates to deal with their inflation problems,” Bernanke said. “It’s really up to emerging markets to find appropriate tools to balance their own growth.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MB10Dj01.html

‘Zorba’ composer declares himself an anti-Semite

ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — Mikis Theodorakis, the Greek composer who wrote the music for the film “Zorba the Greek,” said in a television interview that he is an “anti-Semite and anti-Zionist.”

Theodorakis, 86, a hero in Greece, also said in the interview on Greece’s High channel that “everything that happens today in the world has to do with the Zionists.” He added that “American Jews are behind the world economic crisis that has hit Greece

He added that “American Jews are behind the world economic crisis that has hit Greece also.”

The composer, a member of the Greek Communist Party for 60 years, once was a supporter of Israel but gradually became a major critic.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/02/09/2742909/zorba-composer-declares-himself-an-anti-semite

Poor Zorba does not know what’s coming his way.

Meanwhile Bercoki continues…pay the Chinese before ANYTHING else, including contractors, soldiers and SS.

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4. mattes - 9 February 2011: I feel like I’m singing to the choir here but:

In response to a question about the civil unrest in the Middle East and the Fed’s role in the months-long surge in commodities prices, Bernanke strongly denied that central bank purchases of Treasury bonds, known as quantitative easing, are the primary driver of higher global food prices.

Instead, Bernanke attributed the surging prices of things like corn, soybeans, sugar and livestock to rising incomes in developing countries.

Higher incomes translate into strong growth in global demand for food, particularly an increased appetite for animal proteins such as beef, pork and chicken.

“As people’s diets become more sophisticated, their demand for food and energy grows,” he said.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/03/bernanke-points-finger-on-food-prices/?iid=EL

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marisacat - 9 February 2011: Instead, Bernanke attributed the surging prices of things like corn, soybeans, sugar and livestock to rising incomes in developing countries.

he really is an idiot.

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mattes - 9 February 2011: not to mention raising prices here

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marisacat - 9 February 2011: well I think itis all orchestrated… a mix of speculation, reducing farm land, few big agribusiness running way too much… and all of this leasing and buying of foreign farm land, to raise crops that are not available to the people of the country the land is in.

And Bernanke knows all of this. And more…

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mattes - 9 February 2011: Hence…the smile.

And this is amazing:

China could have learned from Japan’s sad example. Before the Chinese appeared as buyers, Japan was the largest investor in US debt. In 1971, Japan was running an unprecedented trade surplus vis-a-vis the US, and the exchange rate of the Japanese yen was 300 to the dollar. American policymakers and money doctors put enormous pressure on Japan to let the yen float upwards, as this was the “in thing” to do after the Nixon-Friedman conspiracy made the US default on its foreign gold obligations “respectable”, on the spurious theory that this would first ease, then eliminate the American trade deficit.

Japan, in effect still an occupied country, yielded to the American pressure and the yen rose so that by 1981 only 100 yen were needed to buy one dollar. This was a three-fold appreciation of the yen, but it did not bring about an improvement in the American trade deficit with Japan, as promised by Friedmanite propagandists. Instead, there was a 10-fold further deterioration!

Yet the Americans did not revise their policy recommendations, and continued to insist on floating the yen upwards. It appeared that the Americans had a hidden agenda that was not the elimination of the American trade deficit. Could it have been abatement of the American debt? Indeed, the yen-value of Japan’s foreign exchange reserves held in dollars was cut by two-thirds as a result of foreign exchange policy forced upon Japan.

The Chinese should have seen the writing on the wall: buying dollar-denominated assets was tantamount to kissing good-by to your savings. In terms of the Nixon-Friedman conspiracy this was extortion, an underhanded way of secretly siphoning off the savings of America’s trading partners running surpluses, disguised as exchange-rate policy.

Worse still, when the Japanese wanted to draw on the remnants of their savings held in American banks to tie them over temporary cash shortages, they found that the money wasn’t there. The American money-doctors were ever-ready to come up with a solution. The Japanese government had excellent credit rating and no debt to foreigners. Why not borrow the money it needed?

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/MB10Cb01.html

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brinn - 9 February 2011: you’re right, mattes, he is such a POS!! If higher incomes were driving food prices, we here in USAistan should be experiencing record low food prices…

What a complete ignoramous. The sad thing is, so few people know the damned thing about economics, they believe whatever pile of crap is fed them…worked for Greenspan for decades.

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marisacat - 9 February 2011: USAistan

OH! I like that!

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BooHooHooMan - 9 February 2011: Where heroin is plentiful, and MORE THAN 40 million are on Food Stamps.

Talk about distribution of resources!
We have Sports! And Gambling!
And Bloomberg! And Ed Rendell!

What’s not to love, baby?!??
We Got OBAMALLamLoveBaby, too!

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brinn - 9 February 2011: Yes, and most likely there are another 20 million like me and my boys who could dearly use some SNAP, but do not qualify….

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BooHooHooMan - 9 February 2011: Oh Brinn, I know. It took 3 months under Goldman Sachs-shit Corzine for people to get FS. No different under Christie of course. It’s Absolutely set up so people will walk.

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brinn - 9 February 2011: Well, believe it or not, TX social services are actually quite efficient and quick at what they do (given the bare bones budget that they have), it isn’t their fault that my unemployment bennies cause me to “make too much” per federal guidelines!

Believe me, they’re doling out the $$ as fast as they can — I have no problem with the state agencies in that regard. It the freaking pols from downtown at the lege to DC that are screwing us all…

Oh, and btw, in case you didn’t see my response to your note about my “resilience or steadfastness” (sorry, memory is a luxury) — my Greek family always called it “stubborn” — I really appreciated it!!

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brinn - 9 February 2011: 8) I do too, marisa, and I’ve been using it quite a bit lately!

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5. BooHooHooMan - 9 February 2011: Well, it’s still winter on the MidAtalntic coast , the middle of the week, so I guess WaPo’s “Spy Talk” Jeff Stein has to have SOMEthing for the well sweatered old Langley crowd to read in the chestnut paneled dens of their waterside homes along the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake. Seems like the old kitchen cabinet types are grousing now about the latest makeover – Panetta’s – of the CIA .

O YA – Big changes at the CIA, so steno’s Stein of WaPo on the US News report of the same.

LOL, ALL of which to me reads more like some suddenly over-run bumblefuck restaurant where the dumbfounded regulars are shocked to hear George Clooney and Matt Damon were pulled off coffee and pies to man the deepfryer and dishroom.

The geographic divisions “never really worked out” in reality, 😆 Palmer said. “I was a European specialist, but they’d suddenly say, ‘You’ve got to go to Africa.’ The majority of people were shifted around all of the time.”

“I never saw anybody get locked into one division,” Palmer added. “You could always apply to work in another division or get drafted into one of those transnational centers, like nuclear nonproliferation, counternarcotics and so on.”

“The [U.S. News] article makes it sound like a new idea,” said another retired senior CIA operations official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity. “It was tried in the 1990s and I thought later repudiated.”

“[It] totally misses the real needs of the clandestine services and the IC [intelligence community] in general,” the official added. “It is absolutely wrong-footed. What the agency/IC really needs is in-depth experts who really know their region/country’s language, history, culture etc.— not generalists floating all around the directorate. Good grief ! Don’t we ever learn?”

Um…No??

Former Middle East operative Robert Baer 🙄 seconded the need for more area experts.

Oh Bob, here’s an expert opinion:
They Hate us for good reason, Buttinski.
Like your wife, please.

“Let’s take Afghanistan,” he said.

“Here’s a good curriculum for an operative: two years of training, a year on a desk, two years of Pashto and about five solid years in a country to start to understand the place. If in the middle of that you pull the operator out and send him to Cairo, you’re turning the meter back to zero.”

“Believe it or not,” Baer cracked, “there are interesting people out there who don’t speak English and don’t Twitter.”

So much for rolling them on the floor, there, Bob.

Then this genius.

CIA spokesman George Little said the bureaucratic changes were necessary.

“This new model is designed to enable maximum flexibility in carrying out the full range of the agency’s mission, and it’s wrong to suggest that regional expertise is going away,” Little said.
“Combining regional and transnational skills are vital in confronting the national security challenges America currently faces.”

Yeh, that last graf should translate well into Pashto.

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marisacat - 9 February 2011: shocked to hear George Clooney and Matt Damon were pulled off coffee and pies to man the deepfryer and dishroom.

well they have been, they’re dispatched to chat up our wars. As I see it, anyway. 🙄

And Bob Baer is the one who, in his book, “Sleeping with the Enemy”, said if there is insurrection in Saudi A, we must “immediately sweep in” and “seize the oil fields”.

(We are so blessed!)

😆

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mattes - 9 February 2011: Wow, above my pay grade:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6156166/HBGary_leaked_emails

and

http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201106/6798/Data-intelligence-firms-proposed-a-systematic-attack-against-WikiLeaks?page=2

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mattes - 9 February 2011: First page of second address:

http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201106/6798/Data-intelligence-firms-proposed-a-systematic-attack-against-WikiLeaks?page=1

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BooHooHooMan - 9 February 2011: Well the litter of nerdlings breastfeeding at the CIA didn’t didn’t quite network-disable the guy who just walked the fuck in to one of their command centers with explosives now did they?

And Maybe they’ll be able to figure out an all Nerd-War~y like way to disable a billion people and their livestock from pissing nitrates which can readily distilled into all sorts of …..stuff.

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marisacat - 9 February 2011: the guy who just walked the fuck in to one of their command centers with explosives now did they

that attack was so revealing.

Poor training and desperation were on view. Prolly not just the CIA but Obby desperado to “get” Osama (the jokes write themselves, sadly)

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BooHooHooMan - 9 February 2011: I just gratuitously grabbed those trend trackers..

Not that film enlightens much anymore, certainly not out of Hollywood..

That time in the cycle of our Wars, Hollywood has trotted out more than a few vehicles lately for American actors to portray the ethically troubled “good guys” unfortunately signed up with the US butchers in an abattoir. Which they always twist home in the end..They did the same thing with with whatsisname, the Titanic kid, with Russell Crowe as his boss running street hits and drone kills.

There were a few laughs in Men Who Stare at Goats with Clooney, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey.. Light fare, still.
:
Ordinarily with cupcake and her friends off to college I don’t get teh cable.
This last month I’ve had a family member come to convalesce so I went in for the full package. Very little on offer in “Movies on demand” what one might consider politically serious. None of the film you’ve recommended. I looked for Fahrenheit 451. No demand, says Comcast.
Fuckers.

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marisacat - 9 February 2011: Very little on offer in “Movies on demand” what one might consider politically serious.

ugh I think everybody needs a Netflix account. Even just single disc account. Tho the streaming is unlimited, for 8.00 a month…

Tons of great old stuff….

***

Oh I agree, Hollywood comes out to celebrate the wars. But for the few showcased, very fakily, as anti war.

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6. marisacat - 9 February 2011: Have to luv the way the two parties use each other, to mutual benefit in our tawdry domestic politiking….

Nit nit, pick pick, bitch bitch, moan [cigarette], straighten the bed pillows – and start all over again.

Josh Trevino of all people … in the Guardian, of all places.

The opening graf is a good description tho… [snicker]

The administration of Barack Obama has reacted to the uprising against Hosni Mubarak with the enthusiasm of a man condemned to consume a gallon of plain yoghurt. The president of the United States is not against Egyptian democracy, exactly – but neither is he especially for it. ….

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ts - 9 February 2011: Maybe they can force feed him the yoghurt like they do the hunger strikers in Guantanamo?

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7. Madman in the Marketplace - 9 February 2011: Jim Webb retiring

Oh, such a fighting dem!

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ts - 9 February 2011: Wow, they can’t even wait to get voted out naturally!

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BooHooHooMan - 9 February 2011: 😆

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marisacat - 9 February 2011: I laughed when I saw it this am.

Bye.

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8. BooHooHooMan - 9 February 2011: Time, truly…
to break out the Big Font on HuffPo.

STRIKES BREAK OUT ACROSS EGYPT

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brinn - 9 February 2011: Don’t you mean AOLHUFFLE? heh.

Those Egyptians…they could teach a few things here and there…perhaps it is time to bring back that really annoying Bangles tune (with mods, of course)

Strike like and Egyptian…

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9. Heather-Rose Ryan - 9 February 2011: Just dropping by to gloat about Jim Webb’s wimpitude. I knew you folks would be reveling in it as much as I am. “Women Can’t Fight”. Heh.

I’m wondering if he got blackmailed or something.

I hope all is well with you all! We’re fine here, but wildly busy.

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marisacat - 9 February 2011: Hi HRR! How are you!

Yeah I wonder about JW. When he went in I figured he’d stay the 20+ years as a senator from VA.

Jerk that he is….

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marisacat - 9 February 2011: oh yeah. Just saw this over at Politico.

Obama on Webb

The statement:

From his courageous service in Vietnam to his tireless work in the United States Senate, Jim Webb has dedicated his life to serving our nation and those who defend it. Jim has been a relentless advocate for our veterans who helped to pass the post-9/11 GI Bill; a strong voice for American leadership in the world who strengthened our relationships in Southeast Asia; and a leading reformer who is improving our criminal justice system. Michelle and I thank Senator Webb for his distinguished service, and I look forward to working with Jim over the next two years on behalf of Virginians and the American people. ..

I am sure Webb is laughing.

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10. mattes - 9 February 2011: Lordy.

At the CIA, Accidentally Kidnapping and Torturing an Innocent Guy Earns You a Promotion

At the CIA, Accidentally Kidnapping and Torturing an Innocent Guy Earns You a PromotionThe Associated Press’ Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo have a breathtaking-but-sadly-unsurprising story detailing the CIA’s habit of promoting the very people responsible for the Agency’s most spectacular fuck-ups. The analyst responsible for illegally abducting, drugging, sodomizing, and beating a completely innocent man because she thought he was someone else? She’s running the hunt for bin Laden now. The guy who let a prisoner freeze to death in Afghanistan? He oversees spying operations in the Middle East.

It should come as no surprise that a secret organization with no accountability promotes incompetents—but the CIA is actively encouraging the careers of the most aggressively error-prone employees it has:

Gawker

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marisacat - 9 February 2011: As millions of white [neo]liberals yawn and move on.

Etc.

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11. BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: As’ad at UC Davis 2 Days ago:

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12. BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: A transcript of the first half of AA’s speech at UC Davis:

I read today 8 out of 10 Americans identify with the protesters in Egypt. I was gratified, but wondered to myself, if people of America are truly identifying with the protesters, why are they not on the streets of the United States?

What is going on in Egypt is not an Egyptian story: it is not one of those cases where you can see them from a very long distance and act as if you can claim innocence about what the United States is doing. What is happening in Egypt is an American story, First and foremost.

The regime that people in Egypt are complaining about is a regime that has been set up deliberately, constructed with U.S. taxpayers money and the American military since 1979. We have done that to the pleasure of Israel, its occupations, it Wars and massacres and the United States has been insistent that there can be no democracy because that is not in the interest of Israel or the United States.

So, if we are trying to realize, when people in the United States and the West wonder why Arabs do not live in democracies as in the rest of the world, the answer has been delivered to us in crisp, clear terms: by Hillary Clinton, Obama this week and before that…

And the answer is they won’t allow it: The challenges that face the Arabs and the Egyptian people today have not been faced by any proponents for democracy anywhere in Latin America or in West/Eastern Europe. Back then, the United States has insisted that there should be a change of government immediately, that they should be replaced by free elections.

Witness the words of this Administration. First, I want to say something about how the United Sates was “caught off guard”. This is the arrogance of an Imperialist power. When events hit in Tunisia, the top person (charge) in the State Department, Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, said, and I’m quoting verbatim:

The events in Tunisia strike me as uniquely Tunisian. {Feltman}

And of course we had events hit in Egypt. If you asked him What happened in Tahrir Square? I assume he would say The events in Tahrir Square strike me in Egypt as unique to Tahrir Square. These people would not know a Revolution if it hits them in the face.

Because the set-up of U.S. policymaking in the Middle East has been since the Clinton Administration – ever since – has been set up with the full co-operation of the Zionist lobby to screen out, and I’m not just talking about those who are ~ “pro Arab” – it screens out those who are Middle East experts.

So we wonder, with people who are not Middle East experts – these are people who are fanatic Zionists – who see Israel and do not see what is happening to the United States and its interests. Because these years from now when people in Egypt and their anger against the United States – justified – is rising – when something happens in the Middle East – if something violent and truly a matter to ask, Why do they hate us? It seems to me, anybody who asks this question in America? after Egypt? – should definitely have his or her head head examined.

I think what is happening in the Obama Administration is also a lesson about American domestic politics. We now see there is a “liberal’ in the White House. And a Liberal in the White House not only has inherited and kept the Wars from the Bush years, but he has built upon them. Wars that are not those they would care to announce: in Somalia, in Pakistan, in Yemen, and elsewhere and now there is a War in Egypt. And this Administration is an accomplice with the Mubarak regime.

First of all, let’s decode, let’s deconstruct the rhetoric of this Administration. Notice the word “democracy” appear on the lips of Hillary Clinton, They instead use words like “Reform”. Did they talk about “Reform” of the East German Government? Did they talk about “Reform” in Cuba or North Korea? Of course not. What they mean by ‘Reform” is exactly that: they want to reform Dictatorship.

This Administration is trying to tell us the Best Hope of the Egyptian people is to have the Head of the Secret Police – I mean literally – he {Sulieaman} is head of the Secret Police. Imagine the head of STASI in East Germany was assigned by the United States to lead a “transition to democracy??? The Egyptian people are now being told the best man to help them to democracy is Head of Secret Police. So the word is “Reform”.
::
They also speak about “Process”. The word is basically to allow this regime to survive as long as it can.

::
Do you know that Hillary Clinton, this very week when she was in Berlin, she commended the Egyptian regime for it’s “restraint”?? Somebody tell Hillary Clinton that the “restraint” of the Egyptian regime has thus far cost us more than 300 Egyptian people DEAD and more than 2000 Injured: This is the kind of “retraint” this Administration is quite happy with.

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: yum yum

Thanks so much for posting that!

AJ just coming on here….sounds like they are planning another blockbuster Friday again.

I expect to see Hilarious lose it on camera as the days stretch on. She is starting to look drugged, as it is.

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: No idea what it means (as if the marke is connected to anything real!), but I see the market started out by tanking over 80 pts.

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: Kind of a garbled “BReaking News” via AJ, that the Supreme COuncil of the Armed Forces has met and supposedly the protesters demands will be met.

Head of NDP says “Mubarak will step down tonight“. (AJ says AP is reporting as well)

hmm Of course that leaves Suleiman, in place. Hillary still on drugs and Obby still greasing his smile.

(ugh)

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: Al Jazeera says NBC is reporting Moo will step down tonight.

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: WaPo has it coming from Panetta.
Sort of a littele toasted..
Hero sandwich, I guess. ala Mu.
His stepping aside. Where he will remain the peppery something or other as the U.S. just ladles the steaming cheese goo heavy on the heavy Sulieman. Still on the table. MAybe they can sell it before tommorrow when the Suez grinds to a standstill. Such ambience tho!

Heh- Sorry, LOL – still usin’ the CIA as Clusterfuck Restaurant analogy:
chairs and tables mostly, menu sucks..
you know, same crap every day.

NYT with the Helpful Hopey SHORTSELLING

Egypt’s Army Signals Transfer of Power

Crowds Cheer News; Mubarak Prepares to Address Nation

D’oh D’oh! CNN now has the Egyptian Info Minister denying the reports and has one of those hapless HellifInO! clips of Panetta on the Hill earlier.

Here’s the deal tho, the last 24, ALL the US media has been featuring this “woman in the crowd” clip, just humping it over and over on loop- I call her “Gladys from Giza” – coulda just dropped in from Miami, LOL – – anyways, they loop her total command of a head shot with pedestrians crowding around, just screaming her ass off: “This has NOTHING to do with the United States! It’s His fault and his alone! Mubarak is the one! He is the one who must go! ”
You know..THAaaat shit.

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: well… all I see is that elements of the mil see a way forward for them… and Suleiman. As reports come out of the level of incarceration and torture of ones targetted as important to the ‘revolution”.

We’ll see where it all goes.

I think the army wanted to coopt the building massive marches of Friday, hope to show them as SuPPORT for the mil take over (well, like they were not before, snicker).

The crowds, the people, have been very smart so far. We shall see….

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mattes - 10 February 2011: Couldn’t agree more.

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13. Madman in the Marketplace - 10 February 2011: New Obama strategy: Beat up poor people

Well, it’s not “new”, but the details:

The Obama administration, reports National Journal’s Mark Ambinder, will propose big cuts to a program that provides energy assistance to poor people when it unveils its suggested 2012 budget. “The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP,” writes Ambinder, “would see funding drop by about $2.5 billion from an authorized 2009 total of $5.1 billion.”

The news is generating a lot of outrage from progressives, in large part because of a paragraph that suggests that the White House wants to gain political advantage from being seen as tough on the most vulnerable Americans — people who can’t afford heating oil during cold winters.

It’s the biggest domestic spending cut disclosed so far, and one that will likely generate the most heat from the president’s traditional political allies. That would satisfy the White House, which has a vested interest in convincing Americans that it is serious about budget discipline.

Intriguingly, an updated version of Ambinder’s piece changed the wording of the beginning of second sentence from “That would satisfy the White House” to “Such complaints might satisfy the White House.” Do you suppose some of the unnamed sources who leaked this story to Ambinder gave him an earful after seeing just how angry the initial reaction to his infelicitous phrasing was turning out to be?

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: anyone who votes for Obby is an idiot.

Really. I am not ascribing love and kindness t the Democrats, but LIHEAP is one of the ways, has been one of the ways, they tie people to them. Blither babble on social services and education as well… and so on. (ad nauseum)

Maybe Obby is begging Chavez and Citgo to step in again with programs to inner cities…

Left and liberal seem to just lvoe to roll over, present their stomach, their neck, their vitals… to Obby and Lipless and others, so it can be kicked.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 10 February 2011: yup

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: We’ve had a series of horrific deaths over the past few years, as more and more people are cut off by the local gas and electric company. the most recent left a surviving 7 year old, losing mother, sister and the friend who tried to save them… father in immigration detention in San Diego.

Such misery.

It USED to be that the law forbade, at lest here in cali, cutting heat source off in winter, a ban to June 1. That went several years ago…

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Madman in the Marketplace - 10 February 2011: it’s disgusting how cold-hearted this country is … pun intended

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mattes - 10 February 2011: When he agreed to the price cuts for millionaires I called my congress person and told them I will never vote democratic again….like they care.

He cut the baby in half, brainwashed by Liberman, his teacher, that the way forward was biparticianism.

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: I think Ob is and always has been a big fucking sell out. Slobbering over people like Lieberman and Coburn and so on, is just because he wants to do that.

I think he has a big fat problem loving white people too damned much. Esp ‘stick up the ass’ conservatives.

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mattes - 10 February 2011: ugh…not price cuts….tax cuts!!

I admit fully, my brain no long functions. I live in a fog.

…I felt for him, but however he started out, he’s compromized now.

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: All of his supposed “liberalism” can be assigned to a narrow place he carved out, pandering to the really quite boring constituency he serviced in his slice of SS Chicago.

Minor fixer. A good look at the law firm he was at, Judson Miner, tells the tale. A fixer law firm. Their job is to shelpherd federal and state money to people like Valerie Jarrett (and Rezko, a minor thief and scammer, in the scale of things).

Take a good look at her, if you think he is just “now” compromised.

The two people walking over to the US Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, alongside Obby, were VJ and Jim Daley.

Sorry, he ARRIVED a joke.

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14. Madman in the Marketplace - 10 February 2011: Widow’s Tax Lingers For Military Families

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of the nation’s war widows find it perplexing and downright disrespectful to their late military husbands: In order to fully collect on insurance their husbands bought for them when alive, they must marry another man.

And to qualify, the widows must remarry when they are 57 or older. Those who remarry earlier miss out, as do widows who never remarry.

At the heart of the issue is a government policy known as the “widows’ tax.” It says a military spouse whose loved one dies from a service-related cause can’t collect both survivor’s benefits and the full annuity benefits from insurance the couple bought from the Defense Department at retirement. Instead, the amount of the annuity payment is reduced by the amount of the monthly survivor benefit.

Time after time, members of Congress have promised to help the 55,000 affected widows, but laws passed to help them have only created a more complicated system that’s left many of them confused and angry.

So what’s remarriage got to do with it? Very little, as it turns out. The marriage condition was stuck into the law by Congress as it attempted to help the survivors retain certain benefits if they remarried late in life, as is the case with other similar federal annuities. Because Congress hasn’t been able to come up with the money to help all the widows, relief has been limited to that group. The result is an all but incomprehensible mess.

“I’ve never even wanted to date, much less remarry,” said Nichole Haycock, a mother of three teenagers in Lawton, Okla., whose 38-year-old military husband died in 2002. “I already married the love of my life. Why would you bring that as a factor?”

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: what a bizarre mess….

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15. Madman in the Marketplace - 10 February 2011: Investigate the Vatican

I mean, I grew up believing that every breath I drew sent a god-made-man named Jesus Christ writhing on the cross to which he had been nailed — an execution for which he had been sent to earth by his heavenly father thousands of years ago, so that he might die for my sins so that I might live. And yet I was born not innocent but complicit in this lynching, incomprehensibly having to apologize and atone for this barbarism for all my days and feel terrible about myself and all mankind. And not only that, but every day when I went to Mass, we would solemnly re-create this human sacrifice by drinking Christ’s blood and eating his body in delicious wafer form. This was not an exercise in metaphor. As long as I shall live, I will never forget the look of spiritual transport on the face of my mother every time she received Communion. This was not a symbol of Christ’s body; this was his body, through the miracle of transubstantiation. “You better believe it, boy,” she’d say to me. And so I did. Oh, and then we’d wrap up each Mass by celebrating the fact — fact — that three days after Jesus had died, as any mere mortal would have after having been set up by your father and nailed to a cross by a mob, his spirit had risen on a cloud into heaven to rejoin the same god in the sky who had sent him on this errand in the first place.

Now, I ask you: Why is that story no less ridiculous than Hubbard’s mumbo jumbo? Is it because we have invested it with the power and majesty of myth for a far longer period, giving it now the air of the ordinary, and because of the veneration of that myth by generation after generation of people whom we love, and who have power over our young minds as we were coming up? Because certainly, in the twenty-first century, the story I grew up believing is every bit as risible as all the Scientology nonsense that Wright dutifully details, as did Janet Reitman in Rolling Stone before him, as have dozens of very good journalists before her. I say this not to denigrate this area of inquiry in any way, for these are examples of good and even brave journalists doing their jobs, and covering a subject that has shown a ruthless willingness to sue reporters into submission. (And incidentally, I also say it not to denigrate the scores of ordinary people, such as my dear mother, who have reaped astonishing and tangible benefits from the simple act of belief.)

Rather, I mean here to instead ask a question: Why all the fuss over Scientology, when your resources and time might better be directed at the finances, earthly corruption, and raw power of, say, the Catholic Church, an institution that wields influence incalculably greater than Hubbard’s itty-bitty religion?

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: Jesus. That level of belief is just weird. Even as a small child, it all appeared strange to me.

I don’t know about the “fuss over Scientology” but the French and Germans believe it is a scam. And at least in Germany, too many “suicides”.

I am all for hectoring, stalking, etc., any and all religionists, of any stripe.

Other than the poor serving rank and file, who work among the poor. But then too often the poor live in buildings the churches own, so it all gets very murky.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 10 February 2011: they’re all far too dangerous …

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16. marisacat - 10 February 2011: hmm fwiw… John Kyle won’t run in 2012.

The sick old dinosaurs have stolen enough. I guess.

Oh surely the Dems will run St Gabby. Or her husband. Or her dog.

Etc.

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mattes - 10 February 2011: Here I thought they were just starting to cash in their chips.

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: Oh IF ONLY the stupid Democrats would run her. Get rid of her, so she can lose in AZ.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/

February 10, 2011

Categories:2012.

Napolitano 2012?

With Jon Kyl retiring, the former Arizona governor’s name is among those floated.

But a colleague points out that Washington has been unkind to her ratings back home: A recent survey put her unfavorable figure at 55%.

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17. mattes - 10 February 2011: Debka, interesting bedfellows:

Deep US-Saudi rift over Egypt: Abdullah stands by Mubarak, turns to Tehran

The conversation between President Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah early Thursday, Feb. 10, was the most acerbic the US president has ever had with an Arab ruler, debkafile’s sources report. Their falling out on the Egyptian crisis so enraged the king that some US and Middle East sources reported he suffered a sudden heart attack. Rumors of his death rocked world financial and oil markets that morning and were denied by an adviser to the ruling family.

Panic:

‘Saudi king told Obama he’d fund Mubarak if U.S. halted Egypt aid’

Abdullah warned U.S. president that withdrawing $1.5 billion in annual aid would humiliate Mubarak, according to Britain’s The Times.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/saudi-king-told-obama-he-d-fund-mubarak-if-u-s-halted-egypt-aid-1.342462

The volley ball of “fear” has landed on top of the pyramid….for once.

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Yes, good catch, mattes.
And next to nothing on it here.

So our creeps will move to Suliefy or Suadify this…
Good Luck.
Berlin Wall moments and all…
Tho I prefer Like butterflies o’er the coast…

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18. BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: BREAKING – CNN-

Blitzer: YES, THIS JUST IN!
NOBODY KNOWS WHAT’S GOING ON!
Candy?

Crowley: Seems like it!
CRICKETS HERE AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT Too!
Prolly Behind-the Scene~zin it!
Wolf?

Blitzer: Yes! And Thank YOU, Candy Crowley!
We now await word momentarily from President Obama!

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: Don’t worry!

Eqyptian Information Minister says Mooo NOT stepping down. (per France 24)

Perhaps a conference in Geneva is needed for all confused to be more confused? Paris?

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: LOL. Um YUM! Eat THAT, Leon Pannini!

Oh Gad. Now They are going to trot Obby-the-busboy out in front of a blue “Winning the Future” background…

Can this get any more Weak?

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Unreal – the guy giving an Attaboy ..Football…in the Upper Peninsula of MI.

Somebody get this clown offstage..

Greased Lips is right:

We’ll have more to say as this plays out.
What is absolutely clear is we are watching History unfold.

OKAY, SPECTATOR!
Historic! GOT IT!

Gad now he’s doin the Sesame Street thing…

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: 😆 😆 😆

Blitzer, Shit You Not, With The Decoder Ring:

What you have seen –
What you have heard – is the President speak for all practical purposes that this is the time. This is the time for Hosni Mubarak to step down.

Well, SUuure Wolf. I occasionally hear secret messages thru the microwave too! Did ya check with the toaster?!?? Whatya hearin from the other household appliances??
::

Jesus Fuckin Chrifte:
😯 – > Where’d ya get THAT, Blitzer?!??

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: prolly listening to the israeli fillings in his teeth.

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: Maybe the Muppets could hold his cue cards. (the jokes write themselves!)

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Now the dumbfuck just faomed into existence the phrase:

Maybe a SOFT military coup?

This is like watching – horrified – as the batteries went down at 5am on those crappy little dolls from Hell I had to CPR to get thru Christmas mornings some 20 years ago.
Stay With Me, Damn IT!!
Just A little Bit , FUCKER! Stay With Me!!
WORK! SLAM WORK! SLAM WOoooooRK!!!

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: as the batteries went down at 5am on those crappy little dolls from Hell I had to CPR to get thru Christmas mornings some 20 years ago.

oh what a scream of an image from christmas past!

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: They need a conference, aligned, concurrant with, a global interfaith conference. In the most sex pot, flesh pot, hot pot filled city that can be found!

It is the only answer!!

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: 😆
Just in time for the “Open Left” I P O!

No? LOL. Aww.

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19. marisacat - 10 February 2011: Just the latest from Angry A, who is on fire….

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Egyptian liberalism

All the liberal intellectuals of Egypt where solidly aligned with the Mubarak dictatorship, and served as his most loyal propagandists. Do you think that the Egyptian people will forget that?

Posted by As’ad at 11:11 AM

*********

News from Egypt military high command

A most reliable source sent me this:

“D.C is striving to transfer the president’s power to omri shlomo [`umar sulayman]. anan & most senior officers are against. only the commanders of the air force & republican guard are [in favor]. tantawi is in the middle. anan will win”

Posted by As’ad at 11:07 AM

AJ just had a protester on who said the dead are 350… and will not be forgotten. Merely Moo stepping down, not enough.

I have to get ready for the hospital (blood draw) but am dipping in and out as AJ is back for the hour…..

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: http://www.angryarab.blogspot.com/

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20. marisacat - 10 February 2011: OK! 11:45 am off to the blood draw…. gah.

Will get a new thread up after I am back, prolly around 1:30 PM PT, ETA back home.

;0

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Hurry Back!

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21. mattes - 10 February 2011: Tweet from weiss live feed:

Changing his Facebook status with Israel and the USA to ‘its complicated’ #ReasonsMubarakIsLate

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22. BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Mooby on Now!

Sounds like he’s STAYING! O.M.Gawd….

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Sur fuckin Real

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Oh he’s stayin!

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Listening to AJ very smooth

CNN’s Translation is a stammering fucking joke..

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Which… the CNN translation…
only ADDS Poo to Moo’s Bullshit…

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23. BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Obama? Panetta?
Anybody? Hello??

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Oh – And Wolf Blitzer?

Uhm according to that translation

I Did Not Hear that Mubarak was going to step down…

WHOOPSIE! 😳

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: 😆

The Information Minister wuz rght.

snicker.

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mattes - 10 February 2011: Saudis and Israelis are united.

Bloodshed coming?

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: **Saudi ROYALS and Israel united.. 😉
Just sayin.

Remember, not EVERYONE caught a flight OUT of the U.S on nine’leven. As I recall, they had a few unhappy campers..

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: yum yum

Explanation

I really don’t buy that he is just stubborn. I really think that the US/Israel/Saudi Arabia just don’t want him to leave. Too much at state for all of them. This is not Tunisia–in that sense.

Posted by As’ad at 1:19 PM

The Speech

This speech will go down in history as the dumbest speech ever delivered by a dictator.

Posted by As’ad at 12:58 PM

he does not get it

He is begging them to storm the…Bastille.

Posted by As’ad at 12:53 PM

Gaza tunnels

Name the biggest tunnels in the world as of today? The Gaza tunnels of course.

Posted by As’ad at 12:26 PM

Gaza tunnels

It is fair to say that fighter jets will now be smuggled through the Gaza tunnels. Ha

Posted by As’ad at 12:10 PM

Gaza tunnels

2 million Egyptians are missing: they entered through the Gaza tunnels.

Posted by As’ad at 11:54 AM

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mattes - 10 February 2011: Damn, I can’t take my eyes off this event. Millions of people confronting fear.

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: Obama be prayin’.

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Oh I can imagine Obby in his jammies with the poop flap on back sayin his nightlies ta’night:

Sound that trumpet!
Oh God of Reagan and Zion!
Tear down those……… WALLS ? 😯

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24. catnip - 10 February 2011: catnip: live from Renovation Square* here where I have no cable teevee but I did watch MuMu on AJ. My Dog – what can you say?

(Drywalling, new floors & windows – what a mess.)

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: Renovolution Sq. 😉

How is Cat holding up?

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catnip - 10 February 2011: Good! He has a quiet zone in the bedroom now so he’s better.

How was the visit with the vampire?

AJ is saying Suleiman is going to make a speech soon too…

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: pretty good, I waited for My Preferred Phlebotomist… a really charming very young Chinese man named Norman.

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catnip - 10 February 2011: That makes life easier.

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: ugh I suffered enough in the fucking hosptial from lousy vampyres. Geesh. If it weren’t so painful it would have been comical.

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mattes - 10 February 2011: I be thinking 1917, as should Mubarak.

Sure is showing the hypocracy of the US/Israeli alliance to a world audience.

I can’t believe the millitary will fire on a million people. Possibly it will break them in two. Can only hope.

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25. BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: Moving On!

Angry Arabs Web Stats!

ANNND His global audience! Bravo!

HA! He has more unique visitors than Dailykos!

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marisacat - 10 February 2011: I admit I love AA…. I always liked the way he kicks everyone.

And UNLIKE Pepe Escobar, for instance, he is NOT going to fucking get Jesus and plump ofr Obbly Wobbly come 2012. NOR did he last time around.

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26. mattes - 10 February 2011: Suleeeman shorthand: I will hunt you down. Troublemakers.

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27. catnip - 10 February 2011: Win the future!

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: The Time is Now – NOT to Watch Satellite TV!

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mattes - 10 February 2011: hahaha

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28. catnip - 10 February 2011: These guys need new material.

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BooHooHooMan - 10 February 2011: AND Mo MONEH.

Cue huge Oil runup to finance the beat-down.
Nothin like a Revolution for the Oil Goons to come out of the woodwork.

Bo Worries tho! Obama’s GOT THIS!

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29. catnip - 10 February 2011: My Lebanese flooring guy has a cousin who hosts a religious program on AJ Arabic on Sundays.

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30. mattes - 10 February 2011: Best comment yet:

‘If Mubarak does not leave, it will show all arabs in the ME that peaceful revolution does not work’

MOO and chief are caught in a vice.

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31. marisacat - 10 February 2011: New

LINK

………………….. 😯 … 🙄

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