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Open Thread

The Longest Odds

I want to thank all the speakers and performers for reminding us, through song and through words, just what it is that we love about America. And I want to thank all of you for braving the cold and the crowds and traveling in some cases thousands of miles to join us here today. Welcome to Washington, and welcome to this celebration of American renewal.

In the course of our history, only a handful of generations have been asked to confront challenges as serious as the ones we face right now. Our nation is at war. Our economy is in crisis. Millions of Americans are losing their jobs and their homes; they’re worried about how they’ll afford college for their kids or pay the stack of bills on their kitchen table. And most of all, they are anxious and uncertain about the future – about whether this generation of Americans will be able to pass on what’s best about this country to our children and their children.

I won’t pretend that meeting any one of these challenges will be easy. It will take more than a month or a year, and it will likely take many. Along the way there will be setbacks and false starts and days that test our fundamental resolve as a nation. But despite all of this – despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead – I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure – that the dream of our founders will live on in our time.

Nie bez powodu leki na Efekty niepożądane, które mogą wystąpić podczas kuracji środkami na poprawę erekcji receptę powinny być zażywane zgodnie z zaleceniami lekarzy. Bezpieczeństwo stosowania potwierdza dokumentacja i rekomendacje środowiska medycznego.

What gives me that hope is what I see when I look out across this mall. For in these monuments are chiseled those unlikely stories that affirm our unyielding faith – a faith that anything is possible in America. Rising before us stands a memorial to a man who led a small band of farmers and shopkeepers in revolution against the army of an Empire, all for the sake of an idea. On the ground below is a tribute to a generation that withstood war and depression – men and women like my grandparents who toiled on bomber assembly lines and marched across Europe to free the world from tyranny’s grasp. Directly in front of us is a pool that still reflects the dream of a King, and the glory of a people who marched and bled so that their children might be judged by their character’s content. And behind me, watching over the union he saved, sits the man who in so many ways made this day possible.

And yet, as I stand here tonight, what gives me the greatest hope of all is not the stone and marble that surrounds us today, but what fills the spaces in between. It is you – Americans of every race and region and station who came here because you believe in what this country can be and because you want to help us get there. It is the same thing that gave me hope from the day we began this campaign for the presidency nearly two years ago; a belief that if we could just recognize ourselves in one another and bring everyone together – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents; Latino, Asian, and Native American; black and white, gay and straight, disabled and not – then not only would we restore hope and opportunity in places that yearned for both, but maybe, just maybe, we might perfect our union in the process. This is what I believed, but you made this belief real. You proved once more that people who love this country can change it. And as I prepare to assume the presidency, yours are the voices I will take with me every day I walk into that Oval Office – the voices of men and women who have different stories but hold common hopes; who ask only for what was promised us as Americans – that we might make of our lives what we will and see our children climb higher than we did.

It is this thread that binds us together in common effort; that runs through every memorial on this mall; that connects us to all those who struggled and sacrificed and stood here before.

It is how this nation has overcome the greatest differences and the longest odds – because there is no obstacle that can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change.

That is the belief with which we began this campaign, and that is how we will overcome what ails us now. There is no doubt that our road will be long. That our climb will be steep. But never forget that the true character of our nation is revealed not during times of comfort and ease, but by the right we do when the moment is hard. I ask you to help me reveal that character once more, and together, we can carry forward as one nation, and one people, the legacy of our forefathers that we celebrate today.

Transcript
Obama’s Speech at the Lincoln Memorial
Washington, D.C.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

1,711 replies on “The Longest Odds”

yay Blindoptimist – great to see you back on deck. We are all needed now to solve the world’s woes… at least we got Obama in 😉

G’day, Bo-Bo, great to see you again.

OK, let’s talk drugs.
🙂

BlindO sez: “EC and KR, I have to say, on the drugs issue, this is not a straight-forward matter.”

Agree, but it’s the prohibitionists who are doing most of the obsfucating.

BO: “I certainly don’t think the police should be blamed for the death of the girl in Perth at the weekend.”

Me either but there’s no question that their intimidatory presence(dogs, storm trooper gear) contributed to the tragedy.

BO: “Substance abuse is a leading cause of death, physical illness (including strokes) and mental illness (including everything from depression to epilepsy and psychosis) among young people”

BlindO there’s no doubt substance abuse (some legit some not) causes deaths among young people. This is where analysis can be dodgy. In road deaths, for example, if a young driver has a cocktail of substances, including alcohol in his/her blood at autopsy, which drug gets tagged as the killer?

BO: “The misuse of drugs (and alcohol) is an absolute blight on our society, and – at least as far as illegal substances are concerned – affect young people the most.

Completely agree. However, I believe that the best way for a society to deal with “misuse” of drugs including alcohol is for educators and leaders in that society to tell young people the truth about ALL drugs. Educate them.

Eg, How many thousands of years have psychoactive substances been used by human beings, for what purposes were they used, and what does abuse of that drug do to you, your peers and what were the social ramifications of use/abuse. Then do the same for cannabis, alcohol, opium and derivatives and so on.

BO: “ it is very very hard to change this situation in a way that will actually reduce drug related harm.”

Again, mon ami, I believe if we tell our children the truth early in their high school years, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then roundedly educated young people will have the best chance of minimising future harm.

Go Michelle.
What a positive influence she is going to be for the next few years.
Michelle for Queen in sixteen

In three short days, Michelle Obama has expanded on her role as mom-in-chief to take on new and somewhat unusual duties for a first lady – actively pitching her husband’s economic stimulus package, now facing trouble in the Senate.

As she makes a “get-to-know-you” tour of federal agencies, Obama is using her considerable platform to amplify the message coming out of the White House: pass the stimulus plan, and pass it now. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has ramped up his efforts as well, reaching out to Republicans one-on-one, doing back-to-back TV interviews and tapping his grassroots network through the Internet.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18442.html

Across America stoners are hip that Michael “Skunk” Phelps prefers to train in bong water. Helps him build an appetite so’s he can feed all his fast-twitch muscle fibres après pool. And Manchester 2012 is gonna be one helluva challenge for the undisputed World Champion. Stoners are a lot more patriotic than people credit, it’s just that stoners can’t quite get their act together to demonstrate their innate love of country.

Until now!

What began as a “trickle” of hundreds of thousands of recycled bottles of “pre-loved” bong water is now a tsunami. Road tankers bursting with the stuff are surging towards the Olympic Bong Pool in South Carolina where “Skunk” trains. Cheech & Chong are considering a sponsorship deal with Michael and High Times magazine have secured the rights to a World Exclusive interview.
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/66332

*twinkle*

🙂

I’ve been reading everything but I’m way back at 1175 and you guys are burning the midnight oil and pushing my destination out to 1405. I will catch up – I can catch up – I will catch up!

By Post Author

Yeah, all that stuff Ecky said is right, BlindO…but I agree wholeheartedly that’s tricky either way you go. Some things are never going to be black or white, and this one especially. But if you follow the medico stuff in detail, and NOT just the tabloid hysteria, the biggest problem is alcohol, then tobacco and well down the list are the illegals. One of my medical friends, who’s also an epidemiologist amongst other talents, keeps lamenting that heroin is not legal because it really is the best drug for pain relief! We throw out a perfectly good use out of paranoia that we would create more dependent people, but the other opiate derivatives are just as addictive and can just as easily be abused. They’re just not quite as good.

Go figure.

Anyway, don’t me started! LOL

1403
Bless you Ecky. 🙂

Many many eons ago. In a far and distant galaxy…..
I used to work in a place that would today be called a “harm minimization facility”.
(That’s a drug rehabilitation clinic in plain English, for those of you not keeping up in the back of the class.)
It’s amazing how the rhetoric of denial and misinformation has barely changed since the late 60’s when I first became “interested” in the wonders and perils of organic chemistry.

BO, I don’t, not a even for a minute, think you aren’t totally sincere in your beliefs about the harm that can be unleashed when young people make unwise choices due to ignorance about intoxicants.

But EC has pretty well nailed the essential part of the real equation.
It’s about *informed* choice. The yoof need to have *real* information and proper data at their disposal. So they can make their *own* choices for good or ill.

That means they will make mistakes, (sometimes even fatal ones) but there is simply no sense or benefit, in spinning the just say no garbage at them.
Or even worse, leaving them to the gentle mercies of your average “plod with a dog”. Followed up with a visit to the “berk on the bench”. Our prisons are all too full of damaged souls, who are victims of “simple solutions to complex problems.”

Anyway….It’s time for a drug of beer here.
Cheers P.

Nor me Kirri – 20 years ago the prescibing of herion was being supported by lots of medicos because the alternaitve – methadone- was far worse for infants of herion addicted mothers, and heroin was the drug of choice for childbirth. This is simply a moralistic position on something that if not cut with crap and given in the correct dosage is less harmful than all the legal drugs we have at our disposal.
Utter bullshit, and a hangover from the religious right pedalling their ignorance as science.
Rant Not Over.

Update on the computer upgrade to home entertainment centre:

OK, got the video card and HD DVD player/writer installed but the standard VGA (analogue output) to the monitor was not working and it looked like a faulty card. Took it to seller, who plugged it into a box and yep, got a VGA output. Brought it back, re-installed, still cactus, but the HDMI output worked. Tried the DVI output, and even better quality screen image. Tried the DVD player, worked fine. Hired some Blu-Ray DVD’s, only to get an error that the Zone setting was wrong, so changed that, then another error saying the HDCP was not working. (That’s the copyright protocol on Blu-Ray).

So downloaded an updated driver for the card…and BINGO!

Full 1080p resolution, cinema quality DVD experience.

So the HD TV tuner is on HDMI input, computer/DVD to monitor on DVI, and all is now, finally…..WORKING.

Phew.
(And no, I will not be offering advice!!!!!!)

1412
Kirri. And as suitable punishment for all your conspicuous consumption….. You will be sentenced to power cuts at 40 paces and be forced to watch “Australia” in all its full blu-ray glory.
Every night for the next 6 weeks!! 👿

for heaven’s sake … 1413!!!
i wrote the last post… someone else’s turn.
Come on you lot – do your bit!

thanks Paddy – makes completse sense – especially the bits about the nanobytes versus the bumbites, or whatever. So should I move on from the beta video player?? Seems such a waste.

perhaps a tad unfair Ecky.
given the unholy mess left behind i honestly don’t see how a non-tax paying cabinet member (remember when our own PJK didn’t lodge a tax return as treasurer?) is a hanging offence. Mind you I may be biased 😉

Jen, a Blu-Ray is a rather sad marine creature that flaps around with winglike things.

We just watched “Rendition”, in honour of the all the lousy things that GW Bush gave to the world. Apart from the compulsory ‘hero’ who releases the poor innocent sod from torture in Egypt, it gives a good rendition (so to speak), of the unspeakable.

Thankyou George.

yes, jen, that last one of Mr. Fish’s is savage.

Re BHO’s appointments, his people should have vetted prospects better. They must have known after Ken Starr that the GOPpers were going to come after him and any of his commisars like starving steppenwolves launching themselves at lamb’s throats.

Daschle took the fall, Obi’s still kept his tax dodging trump atop Treasury.

If he cocks up big time, the Republicans will be a lot more savage than the cartoonists. It’ll be the star chamber!

Yeah, Kirri, “Rendition” isn’t a bad flick. Tragics like us already know all about the nitty-gritty of liberty deprivation and torture.
What I like most about the film is that is wises up the smarter rubes to the barbarity of what is being done to human beings in our name.
Streep, Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenall can pull punters to a film from a broad spectrum of political persuasion.

Obama losing the stimulus message war.

At this crucial juncture in the push to pass an economic recovery package, President Obama finds himself in the most unlikely of places: He is losing the message war.

Despite Obama’s sky high personal approval ratings, polls show support has declined for his stimulus bill since Republicans and their conservative talk-radio allies began railing against what they labeled as pork barrel spending within it.

The sheer size of it – hovering at about $900 billion — has prompted more protests that are now causing some moderate and conservative Democrats to flinch and, worse, hesitate.

The anxiety over lost momentum seemed almost palpable this week as the president in television interviews voiced frustration with his White House’s progress and the way his recovery program was being demonized as a Democratic spending frenzy.

In Obama’s own words in an NBC interview, it’s his job to “get this thing back on track.”

more on Politico

I like the bit in the article where it says Obama is like moving the Jetsons into the Flintstones house. The Whitehouse isn’t ready for the technology.

Chris, Obi’s the most powerful agent for change human on the planet. He’s had a couple of self-confessed “screw-ups”. OK. Fine. He’ll have to lift his game and use his 75% approval ratings(Kos) to deliver on his agenda. Failure to do so it not an enticing option.

Yeah Ecky, Rendition had it’s good points, but the compulsory American ‘good guy’, in this context, is probably a total fiction. Anyone even mentioning the name of someone held like that was likely to join him.

But it was a fitting title for our first HD rendition, eh? LOL (And it looks absolutely stunning, and clearly a lot sharper than even HD TV, which uses a slightly different format. It’s not been quite as simple as plug and play, but persistence and google help!)

EC, KR, paddy, I’m right with you on educating people about drugs and alcohol. And I know that alcohol is by far the worst contributor. But this must have something to do with the fact that alcohol is widely available, legally promoted and sold, and culturally acceptable. Consider what the consequences might be if ice or ecstasy was available on the same terms. The police might have over-done their stop-and-search routine (though I don’t know if this was the case or not). At the same time, it was a very hot day in Perth for the BDO and stopping people from using ecstasy would have been a good idea.

Not long ago I was stopped for a random breath test. I was also asked to give a swab to test for other drugs in my blood. While I was waiting for the result, I was chatting to the police man – all of 22 years old, I thought – whether they came up with many positive results. He said that out in the suburbs, the strike rate was less than 1 in 40. But in Northbridge on weekends, the strike rates were up to 1 in 5 on occasion. That is, 1 in 5 drivers were over the .05 limit or had illegal drugs in their blood. Surely it is sensible to get these drivers off the road, for their own good as well as all other road-users. Likewise, shouldn’t young kids be actively discouraged from taking dangerous substances on a very hot day in big crowd?

Kids are vulnerable. They will do stupid things, no matter how well informed they are. People prey on their vulnerability and inexperience purely to make money. We should do everything we can to stop this….but it ain’t easy.

#
1402
jen Says:
February 5th, 2009 at 6:51 pm

yay Blindoptimist – great to see you back on deck. We are all needed now to solve the world’s woes… at least we got Obama in 😉
…..
Yessssss! At long long last, America has redeemed Martin Luther King’s check. We watched and re-watched the inauguration on cable in a little room in Cambodia. There are high hopes now, though tempered with watchfulness too.

On the night of the Lunar New Year, at the end of the Inaugural week, we were in Hanoi. Through the night, people lit hundreds and hundreds of translucent paper lanterns. Each lantern has a small kero-soaked wick. As it burns, the lanterns are filled with heat and rise into the sky. So the nightsky was illuminated by innumerable floating balls of happiness, reunion and hopes for the future. It was really something to see. Watching these lovely things, I couldn’t help thinking that we all have to hope for the best now, knowing that hope alone will not be enough.

Try this one Gaffy. It’s on Crikey’s free site.

http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090205-Comitatus-Economic-Security-Package-worked-Shock.html

Definitely one of possum’s better graphs.

Someone should have bought this to the attention of Senator Joyce before be made an absolute tool of himself in senate estimates. There are times when the pain of suffering fools simply oozes from the expert witnesses and plops itself on the lounge room floor, to be cleaned up once the gob-smacked viewer can shake off the paralysis of disbelief.

Last night was one of those times.

1433
Flaneur
Thanks for that i finished up getting it.

I too sat through the live broadcast of the committee last night and am completely lost for words.
I can not make a comment re the ability of the two Dr’s and their competence but they deserve some sort of Australian order of merit for suffering those fools and their questions, particularly Barnyard Joyce. What a complete and utter fool.
How they restrained themselves from reading the horoscopes of the questioners was absolutely amazing.

Barnyard must have asked Henry about 15 times if the treasury document had been “Peer reviewed” FFS.
I have had a look but the transcript is not up in Hansard yet.
David Gould must be still on the floor laughing his head off and has not had time to add it to the site.
David i sincerely hope that the quality of that committee does not have a serious side effect on the quality of your posts here.
When you get to that standard we will have to tell you to fuck off. LOL
How embarrassing if anyone from overseas was watching that live broadcast.
Todays dead tree headlines should read.
“Henry has difficulty explaining economics 101 to grade three pupils”

Another interesting item in the Senate yesterday was a vote on setting up an emergency fund for disasters in the “Equine industry”
The Libs and Nats voted against it after 10 years of procrastinating and saying they would do something about it.
It gets shoved in front of them after 1 year of Ruddster and they voted it out. LOL.
Immediately one hopes alienating the complete racing industry.
Last nights headlines read 34 Senators vote against horse emergency fund. Not LNP knock it back.

1436
Actually Gaffy, I’ve just (finally) got off the phone trying to query a bill with Telstra.
Half an hour with some determined wanker in Perth. Trying to desperately sell me the benefits of reducing my appallingly large monthly line rental….By changing my ISP to Bigpond and getting cheaper line rental.
He seemed unable to grasp the fact, that Bigpond’s plans would be a complete, financial disaster with my Internet usage pattern.
In fact, I almost asked him if he’d been taking English comprehension lessons from Barnaby Joyce!!! 👿

LOL Hearing the odd snippet of the Senate debate being replayed on the radio this morning was simply Gobsmacking.
However, the “sad” news of Rupert’s financial woes has certainly been the best bit of news in a while. 🙂

BTW
Hope you’ve managed to keep your feet dry up there in Qld.
It *does* look a tad “damp” on the TV pics. 🙁

Barnyard must have asked Henry about 15 times if the treasury document had been “Peer reviewed” FFS.

And each time he asked, he rolled his eyes to demonstrate that *he* knows the obvious truth.

And what was it with Abetz and the timing of the printing? When he first started on that line, I thought he was trying to determine if the report was a rush job, or something that’d beed sitting around for years, but then he skewed off into the unknown when he wanted to know when the printing was complete!

At least Senators Brown and Xenophon appeared to be taking the subject seriously.

One wouldn’t believe it if it was on a TV drama!

Senate stimulus all-nighter.

Faced with rising jobless claims and an impatient White House, the Senate prepared to work through Thursday night in hopes of making the final adjustments needed to win passage this week of a massive economic recovery bill sought by President Barack Obama.

“Legislation is the art of compromise, consensus building, that’s where we are,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Reid told his colleagues. “It’s 6:15 tonight and I would hope in the next 12 hours we can have a piece of legislation we can feel good about it.”

Central to the drama is a bipartisan bloc of more than a dozen senators who hold the balance of power and are struggling to reach agreement among themselves over how best to scale back the $924 billion package.

continued on Politico

Mexican state on Texas border mandates all children learn English

• Tamaulipas declares itself Mexico’s first bilingual state
• Programme aims to better prepare students for job market
It isn’t perfect English, but it’s pretty darn close. Spoken in unison, the words flow effortlessly from a group of smiling students. So does their message.

“English is important to me,” said 11-year-old Silvia Alejandra Briseno, “because it means more opportunities and better communication when I grow up. Hopefully a better job, too, here or there in Texas.”

Her bilingual teacher, 36-year-old Mary Lou Tamez, said, “English is critical, especially when you realise who our neighbors are – Texans.”

Without fanfare but with great hopes, the Texas border state of Tamaulipas has declared itself the first bilingual state in Mexico, deciding that its 320,000 public school students, from elementary to high school, will learn conversational English.

more in The Guardian

Any hopes for bipartisan cooperation that President Obama once harbored crashed on Capitol Hill just three weeks into his presidency as Senate leaders strained Thursday to pass his $900 billion economic stimulus bill with the minimum necessary number of Republican votes.
After threatening to go through the night and warning that the financial markets could crash in the morning, Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada said a bipartisan group of 16 senators would look for more spending cuts in the bill today.

continued on SF Gate

The Republicans have shown their true colours. The Democrats have got what they need to use against them in 2010. Time to hit them with the kitchen sink. No more kid gloves.

Obama to GOP: ‘Driving toward a cliff’

President Barack Obama, who has spent the better part of two weeks in office touting a bipartisan approach to the economic crisis, unloaded blunt words tonight for the Republicans insisting that tax cuts, not the massive new spending that he is seeking, will lift the nation from its doldrums.

Obama, addressing fellow House Democrats at the start of their weekend retreat in Williamsburg, Va., tonight, insisted that Americans aren’t interested in hearing “the same tired arguments and old ideas that helped create this problem….

“I welcome this debate, but, come on, we are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that, for the last eight years, doubled our national debt, and threw our economy into a tail spin ” Obama said, with a passion unseen in public since the campaign trail. “We can’t embrace the same old formula that says only tax cuts will address the problems we face.”

Opponents say the plan is not a stimulus bill, it’s a spending bill, he said. “What do you think stimulus is?” Obama said, with visible frustration. “That’s the point.”

more on The Swamp

Ginsburg’s illness could lead to Obama appointment.

Some presidents are handed the chance to remake the Supreme Court for a generation, if enough justices leave. Others wait in vain to make even one appointment.

President Barack Obama took office with a strong prospect that his first four years in office could bring two or more openings on the high court, though he may well be replacing aging liberal justices with younger ones.

Barring the unexpected, the court’s balance of power — four on the left, four on the right, one in the middle leaning right — is not likely to change significantly.

Word of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s illness on Thursday, just two weeks after Obama’s inauguration, set off an inevitable round of speculation about whether she will have to retire sooner than she would wish — and whom Obama might tap as her successor.

Chances are, Obama’s first appointment will be a woman — especially if it’s to take the place of Ginsburg, the only woman on the court. And, like Ginsburg, she will be liberal leaning.

more on Associated Press

The nomination of an African-American for president by a major party, and the Republicans’ first selection of a female candidate for vice-president, were not the only historic aspects of the 2008 election campaign in the United States. This was also the first national campaign profoundly shaped — even, at times, dominated — by the new media, from viral videos and blog rumors that went “mainstream” to startling online fundraising techniques.

more on The Editor and Publisher

We need four straight Democratic presidential terms to set the Supreme Court’s leaning for the next generation. That would be an untouchable realignment. 🙂

1448 Yeah, maybe a couple of Repug appointees, maybe offered inducements to leave early as well. (bribes). 😈

If you think Obama has lost his mojo, think again, he’s back on the attack, without his teleprompter.
.

At retreat, Obama goes on the offensive.

A fired-up Barack Obama ditched his TelePrompter to rally House Democrats and rip Republican opponents of his recovery package Thursday night – at one point openly mocking the GOP for failing to follow through on promises of bipartisanship.

In what was the most pointedly partisan speech of his young presidency, Obama rejected Republican arguments that massive spending in the $819 billion stimulus bill that passed the House should be replaced by a new round of massive tax cuts.

“I welcome this debate, but we are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin,” said President Obama – sounding more like Candidate Obama than at any time since he took the oath of office less than a month ago.

Obama, speaking to about 200 House Democrats at their annual retreat at the Kingsmill Resort and Spa, dismissed Republican attacks against the massive spending in the stimulus.

“What do you think a stimulus is?” Obama asked incredulously. “It’s spending — that’s the whole point! Seriously.”

more on Politico

Harry Reid says he thinks he has the numbers.

On Wednesday, Democratic senators were saying that they didn’t yet have the votes to pass an economic recovery package. A day later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that they have the numbers — or at least, they will in time for a vote today.

“We hope to have a vote today,” Reid told reporters.

“Do we have the votes? We believe we do. We believe we can find two Republicans of good will” to back the plan and override a Republican filibuster, Reid said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/05/reid-on-stimulus-we-have_n_164362.html

There’s no debating the Republican record on the economy. Their allegiance to Reaganomics and free market deregulation have led us to the brink of, well, dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria.

Nevertheless, there they are on cable news and the Sunday shows acting as if they know something. At the same time, they’ve proved themselves to be dishonest, bad-fath actors in this thing. They’ve spread lies about fake CBO reports, while also ignoring an actual CBO report on the Senate bill indicating that it would, in fact, succeed in stimulating economic growth. They’ve spread lies about nonexistent ACORN line items in the bill — line items that only exist inside of Michelle Malkin’s twisted dome. I mean, they met with Joe the Plumber on the Hill this week to discuss the economy. Joe the Plumber. About the economy. Because they’re very serious people who ought to be taken very seriously.

And so they should be summarily shut out of this process — whether or not the president wants them out.

The Republicans have zero cred.

The Huffington Post

Has anyone explained to the Republicans, that Plumbers fix pipes and accountants fix the economy? They need Joe the accountant at their meeting. If they can’t get him, I can recommend my son Adam the Accountant. I’m sure he knows a lot more about the economy the Joe the Plumber.

Oh well i suppose he is doing his little bit for the carbon footprint. LOL Some of the comments are hilarious.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who managed to invade a country and serve four terms in Congress, tried to ride a bus last week but failed, according to a report Monday.

Rumsfeld “stood alone” at the 42 Metrobus bus stop just north of Dupont Circle last Thursday, when icy traffic made the roads a nightmare for drivers,

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Fall_from_power_Rumsfeld_relegated_to_0202.html

I’d just like to bring everyone’s attention to the fact that you can contribute articles to The Huffington Post much the same as you do on here. Just sign up.

Yep, the Republicans sure have there priorities right. 😈

Bush Aide Says Obama Needs to Dress Up.

In an interview with Inside Edition, former Bush White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card objected to President Obama’s relaxing of the dress code in the Oval Office saying that he wished the president “would wear a suit coat and tie.”

Said Card: “The Oval Office symbolizes…the Constitution, the hopes and dreams, and I’m going to say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court and a dress code on the floor of the Senate, floor of the House, I think it’s appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President.”

more on the Political Wire

I must be a real dumb arse or something.
I fail to understand how these wankers bankers can justify giving bonuses to the executives etc after they have just been bailed out by the punters.
It seems logical to me if they were not bailed out then they would just shut the joint down and all the execs would go home with nothing in the way of any sort of bonus except for maybe their final pay. And find another job if there are any avaiable for executives who crippled their firms by their actions.
Now they have been bailed out they are demanding their bonuses because of contractural arrangements.
I say give them their bonuses when the failed joint that has been bailed out has repaid the punters and is making enough profit to sustain the bonuses.
The rule should be that if they use the bailout money for any other purpose then they should have to refund the bailout money in full immediately and shut the joint down.
I just dont get it.

Bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland bankers set for millions in bonuses.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article5663873.ece

Condi Rice is about to resume her university career as a political science lecturer and get a welcome home, maybe.

Will Condoleezza Rice be welcome when she returns to Stanford’s campus after eight years away serving President Bush? Maybe, but some students clearly think otherwise as this photo in the middle of the plaza with the campus bookstore, libraries, and student center shows.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donnie-fowler/stanford-doesnt-want-cond_b_164500.html

Bush Jacketless In Oval Office: Photo Uncovered After Bush Chief Of Staff Slams Obama’s Informal Appearance.

One day after President Bush’s former Chief of Staff Andrew Card blasted President Obama for breaking the Bush dress code, which reportedly required that a jacket be worn by anyone entering the Oval Office, we’ve unearthed a photo of, well, a jacketless President Bush in the Oval Office.

On Wednesday night, Card told “Inside Edition” that “there should be a dress code of respect….I wish that [Obama] would wear a suit coat and tie.” Much has been made of Obama’s informal appearance in a photograph taken on January 21st, the day after his inauguration.

The photo of Bush was taken on January 22nd, 2001–two days after his own inauguration.

The Huffington Post

1432
blindoptimist

lovely moment BiindO, and reminds me of something similar except it was the beginning of the first Gulf War and I was up in the hills of Bali and we watched the night fire of rockets over the desert on the village TV and then later walked out to watch the reflection of fireflies in the rice paddies. Both events were so similar visually and yet universes apart.

well sorry I’ve been a bit ‘cable guy’ of late folks, but it’s been a hell of a week putting all this gear together.

One last thing today, and I would not let it beat me, but it’s taken the ENTIRE day, and only worked out half and hour ago.

When my computer would not go into standby it left my monitor on and this would not do! After many hours trying to alter the Registry and failing to get it to respond I found a little application that does all that standby/hibernate stuff and it would work manually, but not automatically, and eventually I tracked it down to the wireless mouse. This USB device needs to talk to the computer and that chatter was read as ‘activity’ hence the system would never go into standby.

Solution?

Wait for it….HID Non-User Interface Data Filter.

yep, 4 little files for the System folder, and bingo!!!! It sorts out the human and non-human traffic on the mouse connection and finally allows the bloody thing to do what it’s supposed to, like run Screen Saver, standby, hibernate or shutdown as you set it.

A whole, entire friggin’ day! Aaaaargh, god this stuff drives me nuts, and why it won’t just tell you why it won’t do things is beyond me. How hard it would it be?

Thank god for google, is all I can say, and sure, you have to read through mountains of drivel, persist, and eventually, you WILL find what you need…if you haven’t thrown the computer out the window first! LOL

1459
“Rumsfeld “stood alone” at the 42 Metrobus bus stop just north of Dupont Circle last Thursday, when icy traffic made the roads a nightmare for drivers,”

Heard a variation on that one, Gaffy. Apparently one bus almost got there and Rummy was carrying a duck. A drunk in the bus yelled out,
“You can’t bring that animal on here!”

Rummy responded, “Oh yes I can. I’ve looked up the regulations, and there’s nothing against bringing a duck onto a bus.”

The drunk replied, “I wasn’t talking to you! I was talking to the duck!”

The bus moved on.

A barman went up to a horse sitting at the end of the bar and asked,”Why the long face?”

A new CBS News poll shows 81 percent of Americans believe Mr. Obama is trying for bipartisanship, reports CBS News correspondent Chip Reid.

“The time for talk is over. The time for action is now,” declared Mr. Obama as the Senate plodded through a fourth day of debate on the legislation. He implored lawmakers in both parties to “rise to this moment.”

Mr. Obama added he would “love to see additional improvements” in the bill, a gesture to the moderates from both parties who were at work trying to trim the bill with a newly recalculated, $937 billion price tag.

more on CBS News

1473
Don
The NQ version of that one is Joh walked into the bar with a cane toad on his head. The barman said where did you get that.
Cane toad says i don’t know it started out as a wart on me arse this morning.

1479
Chris
The Belching Peanut
Remember the flog who used to get premier of Qld every election by getting a majority of seats with about 19% of the vote. The Gerrymander king.

Hi Guys- Obi firng up at last – yay! And personally I’d prefer that he was not only sans- jacket but he could do away with the shirt too :mrgerren:
Flaneur – good to see you . Noticed your defection but figured you’d be back – the air is so much cleaner.
Well friends – Victorians are in fro it bigtime tomorrow – worst than Ash wednesday , and having been at Anglesae on Great Ocean Rd for that one – well, suffice to say don’t need to do it again. hile half of us are submerged the rest of us are about to fry… imagine if there really was global warming!

Somehow i feel for Obi. Trying to do the right thing and all the wreckers want to do is wheel in the wrecking ball.
He has to change the media’s view on life or something.
Maybe shout Rushie a joy flight or something nice.

Dangerous Republican Irrelevancy;

When a party’s ideas are discredited, failed, tried-and-proven-wanting, it either learns and grows, or denies and dies.

So, where’s the bad news, you ask? Well, before you pop the cork on the Moet and start boot-scooting to the Dixie Chicks, consider this: The Republicans and their talk radio fraternity-of-flatulence have done nothing but nitpick, ridicule and oppose the first major legislation of our new President—a president who came into office on a tidal wave of fervent dreams and desperate hopes—and cut his approval ratings down 20 points in 10 days. A dying party is a dangerous thing.

There is no reason for the Republicans to do anything but oppose Obama. As long as they have no ideas and nothing to say, they have nothing they want to achieve but office, nothing to save but their seats. Helping Obama succeed only hurts their prospects.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Dangerous-Republican-Irrel-by-Allan-Goldstein-090204-92.html

1484 Gaffhook Don’t pick on the Dixie Chicks, they hated George Bush. Stood up against him and ruined their careers because of it.

You have my sympathies Jen.
There is so much fresh water running out to sea from Cairns to Mackay it is unbelievable.
The last time we had rain like this the Burdekin dam was running 8 meters over and it is quite wide at the dam as well.
Unfortunate that we can not share it with you.

The big crash has produced the largest number of vacant homes in the US.
It is almost at the staggering figure of the equivalent of one vacant home for every man woman and child in Australia.

Fifteen percent of all houses and apartments in the United States stood empty at the end of 2008 – a record 19 million homes – according to data released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau. Vacant housing units in the fourth quarter increased nearly 7 percent compared with the same period in 2007, largely because of bank foreclosures and owners who abandoned their properties.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/02/05/BUUG15NAMJ.DTL

GB – it is his fault.

Looks like there are two options.
If you can not get them to fly a light plane then just lock them up for a while till the heat goes off.

George W. Bush might no longer be our president, but the political prosecutions that started under his watch are continuing–particularly here in Karl Rove’s Alabama.

Insurance executive John W. Goff is on trial this week in U.S. District Court in Montgomery, Alabama, charged with 26 counts of fraud, embezzlement, and conspiracy. The trial is expected to last two to three weeks, and when it is over, America could have a new political prisoner.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Political-Prosecutions-Con-by-Roger-Shuler-090205-368.html

Tomorrow, we have 45 degrees in Melbourne. Farmers will loose a lot more crops. The farmers still won’t get it. They’ll still vote for the climate change denying party at the next election.

Closing argument: Obama changes tone.

With his economic stimulus bill facing a rockier path than he’d hope, a different Barack Obama emerged Thursday.

Gone was the conciliatory rhetoric and gentle wooing of the GOP.

Instead appeared a president sounding like the candidate he was a few months ago, passionately and unmistakably chastising Republicans and reminding Americans of the policies they so soundly rejected on Election Day.

In a fired-up, mostly impromptu speech to House Democrats in Williamsburg, Va., Thursday night, Obama accused his Republican critics of wanting to return to “the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin.”

“I don’t care whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV,” he said. “If you’re headed for a cliff, you have to change direction. That’s what the American people called for in November, and that’s what we intend to deliver.”

It was new rhetoric delivered with a more insistent tone – one reminiscent of the final days of the campaign — and it offers a preview of the emphatic final argument Obama will make in the week before his self-imposed deadline to get the bill passed.

more on Politico

1484 Gaffhook That was a good article Gaffy, at least one of them can see what is happening to his party.

Jon Stewart is having a field day banging the GOPers over the head with old C-Span footage of them justifying pissing up billions in Iraq, ‘coz, ya know, the price of freedom..blah de blah fuckin’ blah’ and then howling like stuck pigs at Obama wanting to spend some on, like bridges and schools and stuff, actually IN America!

Oh, spare me, it does not get funnier! What a bunch of prats.

Stewart may have lost the Decider in Chief as funny fodder, but he’s still got all his little dribbling elves.

Moderates Close to Stimulus Deal.

Senate moderates searched for a compromise late Thursday that would pare back the economic stimulus toward $800 billion and allow them to support a popular new president while addressing widespread concerns about the size and scope of the package.

Key Democratic moderates said late Thursday that they were close to a deal that would win support from a small group of GOP centrists and perhaps give the package enough votes to pass.

With new unemployment figures expected Friday and patience on both sides of the aisle wearing thin, the talk of broad bipartisanship that surrounded early stimulus discussions had vanished as Senate Democratic leaders struggled to secure a bare minimum of Republican support needed to get 60 votes and send the bill (HR 1) to conference with the House.

Recalling earlier predictions of garnering as many as 80 votes in the Senate for President Obama’s legislative effort, Charles E. Schumer , D-N.Y., said, “That’s a distant memory.”

Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., wants to move to a final vote Friday and expressed cautious optimism that an amendment being crafted by the bipartisan group of moderates would win at least the two to three GOP votes needed to ensure final passage.

If it becomes clear Friday that senators are “spinning our wheels,” Reid said he would file a cloture motion to cut off debate, setting up a vote Feb. 8, a Sunday.

more on CQ Politics

Darth Vader calls Jon Stewart to ask him not to keep comparing him with Dick Cheney! LOL

I was really worried about the Doofus leaving, you know, his mangled English, his stoopid grin and bewildered expression, but there’s nothing to worry about when Dickus Cheney goes on air to justify their torture and rendition as what has kept ‘them safe’.

He sounds like someone scared of an indictment to me.

Read it and wince:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Employers slashed another 598,000 jobs off of U.S. payrolls in January, taking the unemployment rate up to 7.6%, according to the latest government reading on the nation’s battered labor market.

The latest job loss is the worst since December 1974, and brings job losses to 1.8 million in just the last three months. It is worse than the forecast of a loss of 540,000 jobs from economists surveyed by Briefing.com

…they are truly reaping the whirlwind of their own stupidity, and it will spare no one, from the (once) high flying ‘investors’ in Bernie Madoff’s vampire bat schemes to the starry-eyed blue collar/back skinned dupe who thought it was christmas when the banks threw half a bar their way (500k) for a McMansion they’d only ever dreamed of, well, they are now all in the same soup kitchen, bowls outstretched.

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