Game, Set, Match?

Well at this stage it looks like Olympia Snowe will make up for Ted Kennedys vote but the GOP are trying hard to convince her otherwise. Maybe they have offered her a free sight seeing trip over DC in a light plane or something.

There’s a very revealing moment in an interview that public option hero Jay Rockefeller gave to Ezra Klein. Rockefeller suggests he has first-hand knowledge of the tremendous pressure GOP leaders are putting on Olympia Snowe to not join Dems on health care reform:

I think the world of Olympia Snowe. She’s got incredible courage, and the Republican leadership is brutal in the way they apply pressure. Much more so than the Democrats…

They bring the hammer down on her, and I’m not going to say how. She’s very strong, and she represents a very rural state that has gone blue. So I don’t know what she’s going to do, and I’ll respect her whatever she does.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/senate-republicans/rockefeller-gop-leadership-is-bringing-the-hammer-down-on-snowe/

Ruperts favourite faux news has now got the news networks fighting amongst each other.
Rick Sanchez disses Faux News about the little rally at DC.

In this morning’s Washington Post, on page A9, the Fox News Channel took out a full-page ad, chest-thumping about its coverage of this past weekend’s Tea Party protests in Washington, DC (which were heavily promoted by Fox News). “How did, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN miss this story?” the text reads. It makes one wonder: Did Fox’s marketing department bother to check on its competitors’ coverage before they made these claims?

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/18/fox-news-newspaper-ad-mak_n_291494.html

Health Care: Jane Hamsher kicks Bluedog ass on Rachel’s show this evening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8CSGYYI7ic&feature=player_embedded#t=269

This link should be emailed and Facebooked everywhere. Members here need to get a Facebook page if they haven’t got one. I haven’t heard many mentioning Facebook. It is a very good way to get our message across.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM1f5xrOfGU

Waxman to support net neutrality bill.
=================================
by Chris in Paris on 9/18/2009 11:24:00 PM
Well done.
“Industry will benefit from clarity, consistency, and predictability with regard to Net neutrality,” Waxman said at the hearing. “I think that the time is right to formally establish, through legislation if required, the rules of the road with respect to Net neutrality.”
continued on Americablog
===============================================

“HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE WALK ON WATER FOR THESE BLUDGERS?!”

Following disappointing third-quarter projections, Christ has announced that he will only heal those that are both pure of heart and financially stable. “This is not a socialist regime,” said Christ…….“I will no longer be giving humans the gift of health – unless they keep up with monthly premiums and co-pays.”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/16/782728/-Jesus-H.-Christ-cancels-Healing-Insurance-for-the-poor

Oooo. The Prime Minister is a very naughty boy. He said fucken. We’re all going to hell and it’s Kevin Rudds fault.

FBI looking into BofA-Merrill deal.

The FBI in Charlotte and the U.S. Justice Department are among the multitude of agencies investigating Bank of America Corp.’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co., a knowledgeable source told the Observer Friday.

The criminal investigation has been under way for about six months, the source said. The probe means an additional layer of scrutiny for the Charlotte-based bank, which bought Merrill on Jan. 1.

Bank of America already faces investigations from the New York attorney general’s office, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the N.C. attorney general’s office. Those probes have largely focused on the payment of billions in Merrill bonuses before the deal closed and the lack of disclosure of Merrill’s ballooning fourth-quarter losses.

continued in the Charlette Observer

Ghost at 414, if the TX DEms flog Perry’s “Recession…what recession?!?”, they might be a slim chance. The GOP would require a massive swing against it and Sons of Diebold still control the ballot count but by rights it should be Gov. Perry’s “macaca moment”.

Chris, I’m also personally shocked and disappointed that a fine upstanding Family Values-loving man like Mr. Rudd could use such Unchristian-like language to parliamentary colleagues who approached him in good faith. He needs to get out to more strip joints while he’s in New York…….lighten up a little.
——————————————–

How The Audacity of Hope merged seamlessly with the Tyranny of the POTUS Trap:

some of us entertain a fondness for the quaint old Constitution. It may be too late to return to its ideals, but the effort should be made. As Cyrano said, “One doesn’t fight in the hope of winning” (Mais on ne se bat pas dans l’espoir du succès).

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23110

Kate Bailey Hutchinson, who is standing against him. She’s leaving the senate. Which will make another seat up for grabs if their happens to be a landslide.

Just trying to keep you on your toes.

How Roos well paid news editors edit the news.
Who woulda thunk it.

A Fox News Channel producer has been caught in a behind-the-scenes video rallying the crowd during last weekend’s 9/12 protest in Washington.

The Huffington Post has confirmed that the woman in the below video — seen raising her arms to rally the crowd behind Griff Jenkins, who was reporting from the scene for Fox News — is Fox News producer Heidi Noonan.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/19/fox-news-producer-caught_n_292529.html

Barack Obama appears to be laying the ground work for 2010 in the southern states. By attacking the confederates, sorry fundies, sorry, the states below the Mason-Dixon line. Via the Latinos. First he appoints a Latino Judge. Now he is appearing on their most popular Sunday show. Along with Obama’s strategy, we have the Republican strategy of doing everything it can to upset the Latinos. The most southern states are the strongest Latino states. They are also the strongest Republican states. The Latino vote will be very interesting to watch.
———————————————————————————–

This week President Obama hits all the major talk shows, except Fox News Sunday. But he is appearing on Univision’s Al Punto, which has more viewers than FNS. This week I’ve included Univision’s Al Punto’s listings –“Univision’s Sunday public affairs show, Al Punto, is hosted by renowned journalist and co-anchor of Univision’s award-winning evening news program “Noticiero Univision,” Jorge Ramos. Al Punto features exclusive interviews with prominent newsmakers, as well as roundtable analysis of current events. This weekly program focuses on the public affairs and political issues of importance to Hispanics across the United States.”

more on Firedoglake

Hot Violin Girls System of a Down Cover
Now I’m scared to talk to them for two reasons. Because they’re hot, and because they’re more talented than me.
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1921177
Who said good heavy metal rock music was dead? Play it through your amp system. You can also down load it with Real Player.

Peppermint Patty holds her finger steady on the point of the football as Charlie Brown measures his approach…………….

“I absolutely do not believe that it’s dead,” Obama told Univision. “I think that it’s something that we can still include as part of a comprehensive reform effort.”
That defense may mark one of the most significant reactions Obama has had to date to the health bill unveiled by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) this week, which eschews the public option in favor of nonprofit healthcare cooperatives.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/09/20/obama-public-dead/

———————-

Furthur proof of why only ungulates and political junkies watch Citizen Rupert’s Audio-Visual-U-Pay cable propaganda:

Awwwww…dat nordy Mistah Pwesident won’t doe on Fox

(but Prez O. is more than happy to put out real folksy-like on a Sunday Community TV Talk Show)

Meanwhile, on a planet some well-meaning people confuse with Earth:

WALLACE: …That’s exactly my position: I think Fox News Sunday is a truly fair and balanced show.
O’REILLY: You’re not an ideological show at all.
WALLACE: No. And it’s like they refuse to take “yes” for an answer. There’s a kind of childishness or pettiness about them…
O’REILLY: You know, that’s a…it’s an immaturity that if you don’t …if you don’t hold our line, we’re just gonna ice you.

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/chris-wallace-whines-white-house-are
—————————-oO0Oo—————————–
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/75761
—————————–
“Friends of The Pig” and “Hog Fanciers of America” have responded in the strongest possible terms to the indiscriminate slaughter of what they term are “wholly innocent Gyppo porkers” by purchasing key slabs of Cairo Prime Time to air their disgruntledness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBzJGckMYO4

And a neat lob deep in to the backhand corner sets the stage for the label Hypocrisy.

Media Mud Pies: CNN’s Embarrassing Response To FOX

As a result of this abrogation of journalism, Americans have a depleted treasury, a rotting infrastructure, criminal healthcare, fiscal sociopathy, substandard education, a dumbed-down public, an ever-widening socio-political chasm, and idiots elected to and remaining in office for lack of effective vetting and investigation by a legitimate Fourth Estate.

Mr. Sanchez, with all due respect, as you’ve delivered your message to FOX, I have a message for you. Your tirade is juvenile, hypocritical, and dare I say, unprofessional. CNN shares in the decline of our media almost as much as FOX. CNN is, after all, the home base of Lou Dobbs. Need I say more?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Media-Mud-Pies-CNN-s-Emba-by-Linda-Milazzo-090920-838.html

Looks like there is a strong hint of an upswing in the polls for Obama and the Democrats generally. The speech looks as though it has stopped the slide before it became too much of an issue. (even the Virginia governorship race has closed up, although the Democrats still look as though they will lose it.)

439 David Lose it? At this rate they will be 15% in front on election day.

Dramatic shifts among independent female voters and Northern Virginians over the past month have propelled Democrat R. Creigh Deeds to within four points of Republican Robert F. McDonnell in the race for Virginia governor, according to a new Washington Post poll. The change among likely voters — down from a 15-point margin in mid-August — coincides with the publication and ensuing controversy surrounding McDonnell’s graduate school thesis, in which he writes of his opposition to working women, feminists and gay people.

In the new poll, McDonnell edges Deeds by 51 to 47 percent among voters who say they are certain to vote in November, with the poll offering both candidates reasons to be optimistic as people begin to make up their minds six weeks before Election Day.

Oh I forgot. You’re a pessimist. Well, if we take 20% pessimism off everything you say, then you should line up with everyone else.

continued in The Washington Post. You may need to be registered.

Obama’s talk fest on the weekend will lift the polls up further.

Ohio, Sept 20: Ritualised State murder struck a major hitch today as death panel operators botched what even in these enlightened times in America, is a grisly and brutal way for a human being to be executed. The Prison’s chain-of-command became inoperative when, in an act of spontaneous kindness, the Chief Warden took his terminally stricken and much loved hound to the Vet for a “mercy shot” the moment after he had given the “thumbs down” for the execution to proceed.

“Guess this wasn’t the prison’s finest hour”, said the warden when contacted shortly afterwards at his Country Club by cell,
“but ol’ Yeller, he sure was smilin’ when he went to doggie heaven. You bet!”

The distressed death panel operators returned home to their families. As noted, the warden’s dog passed peacefully seconds after it received an injection of sodium pentobarbitone. Registered “execution” witnesses are recieving counseling from clergy handily in attendance for this violation of The Fifth Commandmant.
The condemned survivor awaits his fate.

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/jeff-danziger;_ylt=AiHoGKs.o4LjCHWoXzCzCWfXj5Z4;_ylu=X3oDMTE4czRmbW9xBHBvcwM2BHNlYwN5bl9hbHBoYV9saXN0BHNsawNqZWZmZGFuemlnZXI-

444
EC
Can you imagine Roo lining up at Barrys’ Bailouts asking for a handout with the proviso that he will resist from making a profit?

I didn’t have to do this for my Bronze Star! But that was decades ago.

But Guy Rundle deserves one for this effort; sweeping over the decades of the great imperial decline, he’s pulled the threads together and woven this great thing, this flotation device, in case you ever find yourself drowning in the crap and flotsam of daily drivel:

Rundle: The death of the neo-cons

Guy Rundle writes:

The death of Irving Kristol, doyen of American neoconservatives, a year or so after the death of William F Buckley, rules a line across one era of the American intellectual right. Together — Buckley the establishment man, but also a Catholic, Kristol the Jewish urban intellectual — they were the one-two of American conservatism, jab ’em with traditional society, wham finish ’em off with a deregulated economy and a strong state.

Though the term “neoconservative” or “neocon” came to most people’s attention during the Dubya era, their imperial purple was undoubtedly the Reagan years, when they overturned a whole bunch of 60s, 70s ideas — many of them pushed by Nixon as much as Carter — of detente, global citizenship, social investment — in favour of a state that pulled back its involvement in the domestic economy, shifted state spending to the military, and asserted the state’s role in setting or shaping moral values.

This emphasis, which put the right at the centre of American political-intellectual life, after five decades of dominance by the left, was novel because it ran deeply counter to the dominant American conservative value, which was states’ rights. For what was known in the 50s as the “Old Right”, based largely around Southerners in the Democratic Party, American conservatism was a valiant last-stand against a polity entirely restructured by New Deal liberalism at home, and UN-internationalism abroad.

William F Buckley had already begun to restructure that conservatism with the mid 50s launch of the National Review, re-centering conservatism on deeper values — that conservatism versus liberalism was an emerging struggle between a religious basis for life and secularism, and that states’ rights flowed from that. Thus if we are all fallen, and the wealth of tradition stretches beyond our knowledge, then we tamper with “inherited” institutions at our peril. Buckley thus opposed the civil rights movement and much more besides.

But Buckley’s refashioned conservatism was still in two-minds about its attitude to state power. On the one hand, communism represented the major global challenge — its tyranny springing from its atheism, which was its originating fault — but that did not of itself license an unending commitment to a strong state. Whatever the current struggle, conservatives should cleave to notions of scepticism and prudence as political virtues.

That sort of wavering could never seal the deal, and it was the alliance with an overwhelmingly urban Jewish European intellectual tradition represented by Kristol that put the whole package together. That New York tradition had arisen right back in the mass immigration of the 19th century, when East European and Russian pogroms had scattered whole communities of Jews, rural and urban, the latter overwhelmingly socialist and Marxist, the former having some real experience of the true nature of “traditional Christianity”. The 1917 October revolution converted many of these immigrant intellectual communities to Leninism and then Stalinism. And they were also among the first to adopt the dissident notions of Trotskyism.

By the time that WW2 supplied a fresh influx of intellectuals a whole subculture had been created — in magazines like the Partisan Review and universities such as the New School and Brandeis, established because Ivy League schools still ran a quota system on admitting Jews — supplying, in effect, a whole new intelligentsia for American life (it’s a measure of Australia’s size that the arrival of a single ship, the Dunera, could do the same here).

The debates in Partisan Review and another magazine Politics took the movement through Trotskyism and out the other side. Trotsky had called the USSR a “degenerated workers’ state” — i.e. to be criticised, but defended against the capitalist world in the last instance. By the time the Cold War descended, the “New York” movement defined its humanism against communism, as the supreme threat to the dominance of reason and humanity.

For a generation they would continue to be based within the Democratic party, their domestic politics New Deal liberalism. But under the influence of WW2 arrivals such as Leo Strauss, based largely in Chicago, they would come to see “liberalism” as the root cause of what they regarded as the cultural disaster of the 1960s social revolutions, the celebration of license, id over ego, play over work, eros over agape.

For Kristol and others this was the crossover moment — one where they invested their humanism in a relatively pessimistic assessment of human nature, rather than an optimistic one. The discipline of a leaner, crueller market was required because people left to their own devices would abandon internalised ‘protestant’ values. But, contrary to liberals and libertarians, a strong federal state was required to retain collective purpose when the market corroded other values, such as trust and public interest.

That synthesis put the “neocons” in the leadership role — the paleo-conservatives’ such as Buckley and Pat Buchanan, who had made alliances with libertarians, were willing to follow their lead. Reaganism was the political result, a stunning capture of a country teetering on the edge of a massive loss of industry to the developing world. In 1984 and 1988, Reagan and then Bush 41 persuaded whole states whose economy and way of life was being demolished by deregulatory policies — Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania — to vote for the folks growing the rust-belt.

On the surface that was achieved by the shock and awe tactics of people such as Lee Atwater, creator of the infamous “Willie Horton” ad that sank Dukakis in 88. But the intellectual depth, the analysis that made such strategic insights possible, came from the neocons — and it came to them, in turn, from their mixed heritage of Marxism, and the Platonism of Strauss and people like Allan Bloom. A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, a 60s US joke went; Kristol adapted it to “a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality” to explain both the movement’s transition, and it appeal.

The obvious question on the occasion of Kristol’s death is “what the hell happened?”. Politically, Reaganism began to fall apart as soon as the cold war ended — with one group of paleo-conservatives based around former Reagan director of communications Pat Buchanan coming out against the 1991 Gulf War, harking back to the old realpolitik basis of conservatism. Where, Buchanan and others asked, was the American interest in who ran Kuwait? It was not as if their oil would not come to market all the same.

For a new generation of neocons however, this was a jumping-off point. In the absence of global communism, neoconservatism had a chance to define itself as a set of positive values, to be exported to the world. Bush 41 and then Clinton had expelled these people from the White House, giving them the luxury of crafting a self-contained ideology in political exile.

With the addition of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilisations” the modernising energy rooted in Marxism, was joined by an ethnic and cultural particularism alien to it. Neonconservatism thus defined itself as both a universal approach to human governance, and a particular form of political-cultural life, namely an American one. The contradictions of this were never shaken out; and they are the reason for the chaotic pointlessness of a war like Afghanistan to this day.

By the time neoconservatism returned to power, with the Supreme Court coup of 2000, it was a cartoon version of the earlier movement, as occult and conspiratorial as a Dan Brown novel. Having parted with paleoconservatism, and its remnant traditions of realpolitik and isolationism, it was free to express a Jacobin spirit, of exporting revolution to the world, a return to the form, if not the content, of its Trotskyist roots — and one of the reasons why latter-day Trotskyists such as Christopher Hitchens found it so easy to join the blurred crusade.

The neocons 1.0 had been secular Americanist Jews, initially with little interest in Zionism (the US Jewish population had been by far the least Zionist of the Diaspora until the 1960s). The neocons 2.0 elevated Israel and Zionism to a symbol and keystone of modernity and the West. When heritage enthusiast Mohammed Atta put those planes into the WTC, the whole mix became turbocharged.

By that time, both Kristol and Buckley were on the outer of the movement they had created. Buckley had never been hugely enthusiastic about the 2003 Iraq invasion, and would ultimately come out against it in National Review, the only columnist permitted to do so. The paleo-cons had decamped to a new magazine The American Conservative, and National Review had become a parody of itself. In the wake of 911, joke-figures like Ann Coulter (“we should invade the Muslim world, kill its leaders and Christianise it”) came to the fore.

Creatures of the 24 hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite, they fed the raw need that the neocons had established — the use of a supercharged patriotism, a jingoistic exceptionalism, to substitute for the slow and remorseless decline of American power, and the quality of American daily life for millions of people.

No less than black politics, or the queer movement, super-patriotism had become a form of identity politics for the white working-class and middle-class (the latter term now transferred to the working class itself — in 2008, a publicity campaign by John Edwards addressed to “the American middle class” featured a picture of a man operating a factory lathe.). The process stripped it of all the attributes — depth, reasoning, secularism — that had allowed it to take a position of political command.

As countless memoirs now make clear, the Bush 43 White House during the WTC-Iraq-Afghanistan years was so utterly tangled up in its own fantasies and delusions that it could not begin to steer clearly. The unnamed official who remarked “we’re an empire and we make our own reality” effectively provided the antithesis of Kristol’s remark about being mugged by it.

The intellectual culture of neocnservatism was now dust. It’s no coincidence, as an old Trot like Irving would once have said, that his son Bill introduced Sarah Palin to the national stage. The discourse of magazines such as Encounter, and Kristol’s The Public Interest had been replaced by tomes such as Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”, which argued that the enthusiasm for natural fabrics and the Whole Foods store chain were a continuation of Mussolini’s project by other means. It was only this decline that made it possible that a vacuum could be created, such as would make the election of a black Chicago community organiser even conceivable.

Mixed are the fortunes of political war — war being the way in which Leo Strauss’s lifelong friend, the Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, suggested politics should always be defined. Conservatism in the US has intellectually collapsed into squalor, burnt-out in part by the supercharged nature of neoconservatism, its politics on steroids. European conservatism continues to cease to exist, clowns like Berlusconi and Sarkozy achieving nothing, the British conservatives now moving socially to the centre-left in many respects — and the continental European vacuum increasingly occupied by a genuine neo-fascism.

One area where the neocons did survive was in British new Labour, where both Blair and Brown were influenced by Kristol’s widow, Gertrude Himmelfarb, who called for the explicit state re-imposition of Victorian values, and turned the party of Methodism and Marx, into purveyors of a war-making surveillance state, in turn about to be dumped comprehensively by the voters.

And in Australia, John Howard, the country’s most explicit exponent of down-the-line neoconservatism, took his party sufficiently far from deep-seated Australian political traditions, as to set its hapless survivors a task akin to the Bronze Star lifesaving exam — swim back to shore in your pyjamas, clutching a boogie board between your teeth.

All of which raises the question — was neoconservatism the salvation of the right, giving it dominance for a generation, or the swansong of the West, its final supercharged hysterical claim of supremacy, against the cities crowding the horizon to the East. Was Irving Kristol its authentic expression — or Dubya, the alcoholic saved by American Jesus, projecting his redemption onto the world?

Kirri,
Spot on article.
Good to see you .

Great article by Guy Rundle Kirri.
Made breakfast a bit sweeter.

Via Larvatus Prodeo, great video on the New York Post special edition on climate change (with a twist).
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/09/22/tabloid-environmentalism/

Zelaya looks like he may be back home but not able to do much except hole up at the brazilian Embassy.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Deposed President Manuel Zelaya defied threats of arrest and returned home to Honduras Monday, three months after he was forced into exile at gunpoint.

Seeking safety at the Brazilian Embassy, Zelaya called on his countrymen to come to the capital for peaceful protest.

“It is the moment of reconciliation,” he said Monday during a televised speech that featured Zelaya’s voice but not his image.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=97786

The dog does it again.
Peerless stuff from the finest cartoonist in the country today.

http://media.crikey.com.au/Media/images/090922-Depressed-6a716924-b25e-4f7c-8108-af7c7e5e9a15.jpg

Ivan Marte: Rhode Island GOP Hispanic Assembly Chairman Quits Party Over Joe Wilson.
==============================================

The chairman of the Rhode Island Republican Hispanic Assembly and member of the Republican Central Committee says he has quit the GOP because he was embarrassed by South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s address to Congress on Sept. 9.

Wilson shouted “You lie,” when President Obama said illegal immigrants would not receive benefits under his health care plan.

Ivan Marte tells The Providence Journal that Wilson’s behavior was “shameful” and “uncivilized.”

continued on The Huffington Post
And may there be many more like this.

FCC Chairman Supports Net Neutrality.
===============================

It’s a big day for net neutrality. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski officially endorsed net neutrality as the policy for the FCC:

I believe we must choose to safeguard the openness that has made the Internet a stunning success. That is why today, I delivered a speech announcing that the FCC will be the smart cop on the beat when it comes to preserving a free and open Internet.

In particular, I proposed that the FCC adopt two new rules to help achieve this.

The first says broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications. The second says broadband providers must be transparent about their network management practices. These principles would apply to the Internet however it is accessed, though how they apply may differ depending on the access platform or technology used. Of course, network operators will be permitted to implement reasonable network management practices to address issues such as spam, address copyright infringement, and otherwise ensure a safe and secure network for all users.

I also proposed that the FCC formally enshrine the four pre-existing agency policies that say network operators cannot prevent users from accessing the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, nor can they prohibit users from attaching non-harmful devices to the network.

Perhaps more importantly, it looks like he has the votes to pass it through the FCC and make it into policy.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8353
————————————————————————————–
I don’t know whether it has any flow on to Australia or not.

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/20090921_just_for_you/

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/20090921_following_in_your_tank_tracks_a_cartoon_from_china/

Sept 21:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/ted-rall

Sept 21:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/jeff-danziger

Sept 22:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/tom-toles

Sept 21:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/matt-bors

Sept 22:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/doonesbury

Sept18:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/ben-sargent

Sept 21:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/pat-oliphant

Just a gentle nudge – for those that are not fans of all things Roo, I really think you’ll enjoy the video at 453.

Psst, hey guys. I know there’s a lot of you out there that like Grid Iron. You might like to catch the much awaited 3rd annual Lingerie Bowl see the video on The Huffington Post. Don’t tell Jen. She’s not into sport. 😉 There are some great moves on the video. 😈

Daily Kos TV. If you haven’t seen it yet. Pass it on.
http://www.dailykostv.com

Don’t know anything about it. I think I’m still alive. I’ll just check. 😈

470
Drat!! The earth didn’t move for me Gaffy.
Hmmm…..Let’s see, magnitude 3.0 and 2.6.
Must be a very slow news day. 🙂

And it looks like 10/10 for the Ruddster.

Kevin Rudd smartest guy in room, says Bill Clinton

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26113696-952,00.html

Via Daily Kos, brilliant spoof ad by Move On featuring Will Ferrell and John Hamm (drool) on health care.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/22/785202/-Protect-the-insurance-companies

A special FDOTM cartoon for those dusty ticsters in Sydney town today.
http://media.crikey.com.au/Media/images/090923-Driving3-f385d714-73ca-4e5a-87b9-a0bf90598c8a.jpg

GM is re employing some 2400 workers as they gear up for increased sales. The article does not say whether they are making new hybrid or electric cars or more of the same old same old.

The automaker says it will add a third shift at its Fairfax plant in Kansas City, Kan., in January. That will be followed in March or April by third shifts at factories in Delta Township, Mich., near Lansing, and Fort Wayne, Ind.

About 2,400 production workers will be recalled as a result of the added shifts, and another 600 will be recalled at parts factories across the country, said Tim Lee, group vice president for global manufacturing.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/gm-recalls-about-2400-wor_n_295256.html

Dusty dusk edition from The Land of Partch: cough, cough; splutter, splutter. Glug, glug, glug………aaaaahh. 🙂
——————-oOo————–

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/20090923_preexisting_petition/

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/20090923_feeding_the_empire/

Sept22:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/pat-oliphant

Sept23:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/tom-toles

Sept 23:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/jeff-danziger

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/76084/

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/75767/

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/76031/

Sept 24: It was early in the 21st Century when the Great Dumbing-Down hit pay dirt.
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/the-quigmans

P.S. Due to a Spaniard in my cyber-works, can’t currently connect to Salon.com. If roving Ticsters spot any good ‘toonies from Tommy Demain or other visual expressives from Salon’s stable please post ‘em till the Village Geek gets things sorted my end. 🙁

487
Catrina
I read that article and then wondered how much interest the law would take in solving it. No doubt they are very sincere in their work?
I then had a look at the statistics and they have an average number of 3 law enforcement agents per 1000 of population and in the “violent crime” area the overall Arrest/clean up rate is 45% in 2008.
Overall there were just over 11 mil crimes in 2008 which is down 3 mil from early 90’s.
Of that 11 mil there were 1,382,012 violent crimes and over 9 mil “property crimes”

Each law enforcement officer has roughly 333 persons (that includes men women and kids) to keep an eye on.
If we say that most Seppos go bible bashing most Sundays then that is roughly one person per day he has to keep tabs on.
Definitely overpaid and underworked IMHO.

Fear not, gaffy, the finest bunch of law enforcers who ever chowed down on tobasco tacos and warm tequila are poised to protect all Americans. Especially those vulnerable to Railroad Terrorism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC22HZ1-d8Y&feature=PlayList&p=1E6ED223EBD3FC62&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=40

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/76184

It was good enough for the judges to award Henry Kissinger one for Peace:
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/20090924_prize-winning_industry/

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/76137

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/76141

Ground Control to Major GOP:
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/76147

Jon Stewart interviews Rod Blagojevich.
In three parts.
Very Good.
Plenty of Swearing.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-22-2009/exclusive—rod-blagojevich-extended-interview-pt–1

Gaffy, that will be worth it just to see Stewart do his Tourrette’s version of pronouncing Blago’s name to his face! LOL

Regarding the Blagojevich thingy, he kept on telling Jon Stewart that the prosecutors have blocked the release of the tapes and also blocked him from commenting on them.

I am sure something similar has happened in the Sibil Edmonds story where the Shrubs attorneys have prevented her from releasing the contents of an email.

Also In Allabama as well as the Siegleman case there is another case where attorneys have blocked evidence being presented which may be beneficial to the those who have been convicted.

A Bush-appointed judge, David Proctor, let them get away with it. In the Smith case, prosecutors filed a motion in limine asking the court to prevent Smith from arguing that he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, not a felony, in an underlying state case. Steele let them get away with it, cutting off Smith’s No. 1 defense. A motion in limine is designed to reject evidence that is inadmissible or unfairly prejudicial. In Alabama during the Age of Bush, prosecutors and judges appear to have used them to deprive defendants of critical, and legitimate, defenses.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Don-Siegelman-Case-Might-b-by-Roger-Shuler-090924-534.html