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Republicans: legacy of failure
2007-10-29 22:04:00
By VictorM: If you think that things are screwed up only because George Bush is an idiot, not because of conservative politics, you better think again. Let's take a little trip down memory lane, courtesy of Ken Layne:After just a year in office, the Reagan/Bush administration brought unemployment up to an astonishing 11% while interest rates topped 21%. More than 40 U.S. banks had collapsed by mid-1982, another post-Great Depression record. The steel and automobile industries began a decline from which they would never recover, and more than 17,000 U.S. businesses failed. Massive cuts in social services dumped more than a million homeless people on the streets, from poor people who lost their housing when HUD’s budget was slashed by two-thirds to the hopeless armies of the crazy forced out of federally-funded mental institutions.So no, our current problems aren't just because of the idiot president and the jerks he surrounds himself with. It's because conservative politics beli...
More About: Republicans , Failure , Legacy , Lure

Something I didn't know about hybrids
2007-10-29 19:36:00
By Rebecca Claren:Hybrids aren't necessarily the most environmentally friendly car on the market, says Jim Kliesch of Greenercars.org... Part of the hybrids' green allure is that when they idle in traffic or at a stoplight, the battery kicks in and shuts down the polluting gas engine. Even so, several cars on the market, such as the Honda Accord and Volkswagen's Beetle and Rabbit, emit less than hybrids. In fact, Honda's nonhybrid Civic GX (it's natural-gas powered) tops Greencars.org's "Greenest Vehicles of 2007." Some hybrids don't deserve any kind of green bragging rights. The Lexus RX SUV is designed not for fuel efficiency but for speed and power, and gets an average 30 mpg. That's not bad for an SUV but a host of nonhybrid cars get better gas mileage. So why do hybrid owners deserve tax credits and access to high-occupancy lanes? Such tax credits are window dressing that allows politicians to appear as if they're doing something to help the environment, sa...

Maybe a fire is just a fire
2007-10-29 05:00:00
By Tim Dickinson:What’s wrong with this country that we can’t just have a natural disaster anymore? What kind of sick people are we that Fox News has linked the Southland firestorm to Al Qaeda, Glenn Beck suggested that this disaster is some sort of divine retribution for those Malibu-ites who “hate America,” while the Huffington Post has seemed all kinds of eager for this to be The Next Katrina — almost rooting on the Santa Anna winds in the dark hope of adding another failed disaster response to the execrable Bush legacy. Seriously. Take a breath. How did we become this petty and hysterical?...How far gone are we that we so easily turn a firestorm into a launching pad for our pet political agendas. Let’s put out the flames first before we fight over the ashes. Meantime, go cleanse yourselves with a donation to the victims.
More About: Fire

Republican party: proxies of evil
2007-10-28 23:40:00
By VictorM: Over the last decade or so, we have seen the biggest threat to American freedom come from the christian right, a group that Frank Rich has equated to the good Germans. Their activism in support of a brutal and totalitarian approach to implementing their philosophies has been instrumental in the election of George Bush and his pursuit of disastrous policies.Some point to factors suggestion that the love affair is ending:The phenomenon of theologically conservative Christians plunging into political activism on the right is, historically speaking, something of an anomaly. Most evangelicals shrugged off abortion as a Catholic issue until after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But in the wake of the ban on public-school prayer, the sexual revolution and the exodus to the suburbs that filled the new megachurches, protecting the unborn became the rallying cry of a new movement to uphold the traditional family. Now another confluence of factors is threatening to tear the ...
More About: Party , Republican , Republican Party , Evil , Proxies

Why are right wingers foaming at the mouth?
2007-10-28 15:51:00
By DarkSyde, on possible reasons why right wingers are angry people:[C]onservatives these days are true believers, full blown ideologues, and their ideology, consciously or unconsciously is a big part of who they are as a person. That ideology has had its chance and failed catastrophically for all to see. And that failure has come at the hands in some cases of people, organizations, and competing ideologies that the conservatives have, as part of their rigid platform, denounced with every fiber of their being as something akin to evil. The failure of conservative ideology over the course of the Bush Presidency and the Republican Congress is, for them anyway, public humiliation at the hands of enemies they despise. They feel it as personally as if a childhood rival had given them an atomic snooky on the playground in front of their classmates. THAT might explain the vitriolic, unhinged nature of rightwing anger directed at progressives these days, even in the face of the ...
More About: Mouth , Foam

Don't upset the CEO
2007-10-27 17:52:00
By Paul Krugman, on to what extent news coverage is biased by the corporate interest of the parents:[A]t networks other than Fox, there probably aren't memos saying here is how we are going to slant the news today -- at Fox there are, every day. But there's probably this general sort of pressure to go for the views that won't upset the CEO of the firm that controls the network that has a lot of business interests that are best served by one side or the other ... so yes, this is a problem.
More About: Upset

Boo!! Be scared
2007-10-27 06:10:00
By Bill Maher:At the Republican debate this week, Mike Huckabee said, "Islamofascism is the greatest threat we ever faced." Really? More than the Nazis? And the Russians? And the Redcoats? In his latest ad, Mitt Romney warns eerily that Muslim jihadists want to establish an Islamic caliphate covering the whole world, including America. And I thought the people scared of gays and Mexicans were paranoid. Islamic terrorists taking over America? They can barely get across the monkey bars. Our defense budget is 600 billion a year, they're using guns they took off a dead Soviet in 1981 -- I think we can hold Charleston. We're the most powerful nation on earth with the largest economy and the best military, and we're made to act the fool by a few thousand cave dwellers who still put out their video on VHS. And that's because over the last seven years, because of the incompetence that goes by the name George Bush, we've become the most insecure, paranoid superpower ever. ...
More About: Scared

Righting a wrong
2007-10-27 00:06:00
By VictorM:The fact that this case was even allowed to get this far is proof of just how much the assholes in this country have a grip on things. That the decision was 4-3 shows we still have too many assholes in places of power but at least the majority decision offers a ray of hope for the sanity of this country:The Georgia Supreme Court today ended the 10-year prison sentence of a man who was convicted in 2003 of having consensual oral sex with another teenager. The court said the harsh sentence violated the Constitution’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment...The inmate, Genarlow Wilson, who is now 21, was 17 when he was caught on videotape having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a drug- and alcohol-fueled New Year’s Eve party in 2003.Let's get this straight... he was 17 and she was 15... they had oral sex... it was consensual... and there are still enough assholes who think a 10-year sentence is a fair penalty. ASSHOLES!!!
More About: Wrong

How do sleep at night?
2007-10-26 06:59:00
By Chris Bowers:At this point, if you favor an endless Iraq war, warrant-less spying on American citizens, and denying poor kids health care, why on earth is someone a Democrat? Let me rephrase that, since this goes beyond partisan self-identification: how can you do those three things and sleep at night?
More About: Night , Sleep

Colbert: a Republican buffon
2007-10-25 14:56:00
By Josh Marshall, on Stephen Colbert "running" for president:[L]ook at this paragraph down into Rasmussen's write-up (italics in the original) ...Colbert does particularly well with the younger voters most likely to be watching his show and therefore most aware of his myriad presidential-like qualities. In the match-up with Giuliani and Clinton, Colbert draws 28% of likely voters aged 18-29. He draws 31% of that cohort when his foes are Thompson and Clinton. In both match-ups, Colbert has more support with young voters than the GOP candidate. There's something appropriate in this. Americans in their twenties would prefer a normal person pretending to be a Republican buffoon than the real thing.
More About: Buffon

Like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune
2007-10-24 08:03:00
By Juan Cole:On Sunday, just days after the Turkish Parliament authorized an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish guerrillas ambushed and killed 17 Turkish soldiers inside Turkey. In Karachi, Pakistan, a massive bomb nearly killed U.S.-backed Benazir Bhutto, who was supposed to help stabilize the country. The Bush administration's entire Middle East policy is coming undone -- if it even has a policy left, other than just sticking its fingers in the multiple, and multiplying, holes in the dike...Like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf. The secular Baath Party in Iraq was replaced by Shiite fundamentalists, Sunni Salafi fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists. The pressure the Bush administration put on the Pakistani military government to combat Muslim militants in that country weakened the legitimacy of Musharraf, whom the P...
More About: Fortune , Millionaire , Gambling

Colbert for president
2007-10-23 20:44:00
By VictorM: Stephen Colbert is a very funny guy and his shtick on his TV show mocking Bill O'Rilley is a pure delight. Now he has announced that he's "running" for president of the United States. *yawn* This has been done by several comedians over the years and I'm not quite sure that Colbert will have anything fresh to add to the gag. Heck, I can't even imagine him being funnier than the current crop of Republican wackos who are really running.I agree with these comments:Which of the other candidates running in either party's primary do you unequivocally know their policies? At least w/ Colbert one knows w/ certainty, "I will support any policy that benefits me." What a mensch. :-) When I was a kid we weren't so up tight and when Paulson ran around the nation "running for president" for The Smothers Brothers.... no one took it seriously we just all enjoyed the joke.Many right wingers are offended by Colbert because it is they he mocks.... and they are all so thin skinned.
More About: President , Resident

Mike Huckabee is wacky
2007-10-23 06:10:00
By VictorM: If it sounds like a have a thing against Mike Huckabee , one of the many wacky Republican candidate for president, it's because I do. And why? Well, because of shit like this, as covered by Josh Marshall:I've sort of gotten tired of explaining that, no, the Founding Fathers actually weren't all born-agains and bible thumpers. Not hardly... But presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governoer Mike Huckabee, himself a Baptist minister, actually told a crowd yesterday that "most" of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were "clergymen." As these folks at Politifact.com point out, one out of 56 were clergymen.The man simple is catering so much to the christian right that it's sickening.
More About: Kabe

Greg Ryan fired
2007-10-23 06:00:00
By VictorM: Back in September 28, 2007 I said that Greg Ryan , the coach of the US Women's soccer team, should be fired. Today, I was granted my wish.Back then I said: Should Greg Ryan , the USA coach, be fired? Yes! Not because he's a bad coach. In fact, his record with the USA is excellent. But this move [replacing Hope Solo with Brianna Scully] justifies my belief that national team coaches should be replaced with certain frequency. The reason being that since they are not the ones dealing up close with new players, like club coaches do, they tend to revert back to the ones they are most familiar with. This was Bruce Arena's downfall when he selected the men's team for 2006, and the team proved too slow and too old for the task. And it was the case now with Ryan.Kristine Lilly, at age 36, and Briana Scully, also at age 36, wonderful as they were in their prime, have no business still being part of the US national team. There a lot of wonderful young talent out there. It's time...
More About: Fired

A moral failure from the highest levels of government
2007-10-22 07:52:00
By PRNewswire-USNewswire:The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), led by President and Trenton, NJ Mayor Douglas H. Palmer, today expressed disappointment at the failure of Congress to override President Bush's veto of reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program known as SCHIP. Had the program been approved, it would have provided insurance protection to more than 10 million low-income children by extending the original program by an additional 3.8 million children. "This is not just a political failure. This is a moral failure from the highest levels of government impacting children all across this country," said Mayor Palmer. "The decision of a few legislators has undermined a bipartisan effort of both the House and the Senate to provide critical help to children who don't have health insurance. This is unacceptable. Just a few weeks of funding for the war in Iraq could cover the cost of healthcare for millions of children in our country," Palme...
More About: Government , Failure , Moral , Lure

Bush: Mister 24 percent
2007-10-21 17:02:00
By Jon Ponder:Reuters/Zogby poll: Bush ’s job approval rating fell to 24 percent from last month’s record low for a Zogby poll of 29 percent. By contrast, Pres. Nixon was around 25 percent in the polls on the day he resigned. Both his numbers and Bush’s reflect the fact that about a quarter of Americans are dangerously delusional. Approval of Congress remains low: A paltry 11 percent gave Congress a positive grade, tying last month’s record low. Ironically, the low approval of Congress is probably due to the fact they haven’t impeached Bush or stopped his war.

Bad guy/girl
2007-10-21 02:56:00
Who is your favorite Bad Guy from fiction? It could be from literature, movies, whatever; and it could be a Bad Girl , for that matter.Check out the Favorite Bad Guy responses from our forum members and register to participate.We could use a few more members so don't be shy.

Remember: Republicans hate American children
2007-10-20 19:38:00
By VictorM: So a Democrat makes a statement that is totally accurate, the Republicans , with the help from the media, throw a phony hissy fit purely to divert attention from their problems, and surprise, surprise, the Democratic leadership fails us once again because rather than chastising the Republicans for their phoniness, they go after the truth teller. Oh come on, get real, you weasels!Representative Pete Stark's words were:You don't have money to fund the war or children, but you're gonna spend it blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their head blown off for the president's amusement.What exactly is wrong with that? Nothing. Every single Democrat who doesn't like the quote and is asked about it can should simply dismiss the question and return the conversation to the real message: Republicans hate American children.
More About: Children , Hate