Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have. René Descartes
2010/04/23
The Obama Deception
2010/04/21
2009/11/18
George W. Bush is America's most notorious mass murderer.
2009/10/19
2009/10/02
Limbaugh compares Obama's new healthcare logo to Nazi swastika
Godwin’s Law states that the longer a debate goes on, the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Hitler rises. It seems the debate over healthcare is no exception.
Over the last few days, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) has repeatedly accused people at a recent protest against President Obama's healthcare reform of wearing swastikas and SS symbols -- a claim that was later bolstered by a series of photographs.
"I think they’re AstroTurf, you be the judge," said Pelosi. "They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare."
Perennial Obama critic and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh was quick to respond to the accusations, arguing today on his radio show that it was in fact the Democrats who were using Nazi symbolism to advance their agenda. He cited a post on the conservative blog Sweetness & Light that compares Obama's new healthcare logo -- a combination of his campaign logo and the ancient Greek symbol of medicine -- to the Nazi swastika symbol.
“They accuse of us being Nazis, and Obama's got a healthcare logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook,” said Limbaugh.
Limbaugh then proceeded to describe the ways Democrats are like Nazis -- a list that included their dedication to animal rights and their opposition to smoking and pollution.
Well, the Nazis were against big business -- they hated big business. And of course we all know that they were opposed to Jewish capitalism. They were insanely, irrationally against pollution. They were for two years mandatory voluntary service to Germany. They had a whole bunch of make-work projects to keep people working, one of which was the Autobahn. They were against cruelty and vivisection of animals, but in the radical sense of devaluing human life, they banned smoking. They were totally against that. They were for abortion and euthanasia of the undesirables, as we all know, and they were for cradle-to-grave nationalized healthcare.
What do you think? Is Obama's new healthcare logo really a symbolic reference to Nazism?
--Brendan Bigelow
Photo: The Nazi swastika, left, as it appeared at the Mauthausen death camp (credit: Simon Wiesenthal Center) compared to Obama's new healthcare logo, righ
2009/09/11
2009/07/04
Sarah Palin: Next Stop Fox?
AllGov.com
Speculation about the reason behind Sarah Palin's surprise resignation as governor of Alaska has centered on her national political ambitions, possible unrevealed legal problems and maybe yet another pregnancy. More likely, Fox News or another TV network has made her an offer she can't refuse.
Why settle for being the governor of a state with a population the size of Columbus, Ohio, when you can have triple the audience with your own show on Fox News? And why settle for the paltry salary of a state executive when you can make millions on television? When you're a politician and you want to spend $150,000 on clothes, you get in trouble, but spend the same amount on clothes as a talk show host and it's a legitimate tax write-off.
Let's face it, being a government official is a hassle. Say something stupid and half the country makes fun of you. Say something stupid on television and your ratings go up. Punish your personal enemies and you're accused of ethical violations. Do you same in the world of TV and you fit right in.
Good luck, Sarah. We'll see you in prime tim
2009/06/23
The Real Lesson Of Iran -- Beware America's Republican Mullah
The Republicans are faulting President Obama for not taking a "strong enough stand" in support of the freedom marchers in Iran. Yet if the Republican/Religious Right/Neoconservative agenda had come to full fruition over the last 35 years the Republicans would have plunged America into our own version of the misbegotten theocracy destroying Iran today. I know. As a former Religious Right leader I worked to make America "safe" for "Christian values" and dangerous to everyone else. Thankfully I, and those like me, failed.
Had we succeeded America would be another version of Iran. Instead of people like James Dobson and Pat Robertson having become marginalized they'd be sitting in Washington advising whomever was the next Republican president. Instead of environmental protection and new mileage standards for cars there would be new anti-gay laws on the books.
- Read the whole article here
2009/06/10
"I" on the news
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
"i" on News | ||||
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2009/05/25
Ridiculous
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admits private investors are worried about investing in new government-backed commercial mortgage securities and dismisses as "ridiculous" a recent Republican National Committee resolution stating that Democratic policies bordered on socialism.
"There's still a bit of concern about whether, if you participated in these programs, you'll face in the future some change in the rules of the game, and that's causing a bit of -- a bit of concern," Geithner told The Post's Lois Romano for her continuing "Voices of Power" interview series. Private investors have expressed interest in the program, the government will work to limit their concern and he anticipates they will be "a good deal for the American taxpayer."
"That's the important thing to recognize," he said, "because you -- you have in this basic structure, investors putting skin into the game, taking risk, making judgments about what the price should be for these securities, and the taxpayer gets to participate in the upside in those judgments. So we think they're a good deal for the taxpayer."
Geithner also defended President Obama against this week's RNC resolution, stating that the administration "had to do exceptional things to help protect the American economy, help fix this crisis, fix this mess."
"Where we engage in these areas is with extreme reluctance and only because we think it's the necessary way to help reduce the risk of greater damage to businesses, to the basic fabric of the American economy," he said. "And I say where we do it, we'll do it only temporarily, try to make sure we get out as quickly as we can."
The government plans to divest itself of investments in the financial and automotive sectors, "As soon as we can," Geithner said.
Read more of his comments in Tuesday's editions of The Washington Post and watch video of the exchange above.
Read the whole story: Washington Post
2009/04/24
The Big Takeover
It's over — we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).
So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream. When Geithner announced the new $30 billion bailout, the party line was that poor AIG was just a victim of a lot of shitty luck — bad year for business, you know, what with the financial crisis and all. Edward Liddy, the company's CEO, actually compared it to catching a cold: "The marketplace is a pretty crummy place to be right now," he said. "When the world catches pneumonia, we get it too." In a pathetic attempt at name-dropping, he even whined that AIG was being "consumed by the same issues that are driving house prices down and 401K statements down and Warren Buffet's investment portfolio down."
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