The water is still a bit cold, but here I go!

“Allies Send Military Advisers, Equipment to Toughen Libya Rebels”

Does anyone know the details of the state owned banking system being recreated to a Central Bank system while the rebels are still in protest? I’m sorry but the swim into that pool has a lot of smelly fish.

Good morning PeasantParty and all,
The oil, what about the oil? You are so right about this not passing the smell test.
I would really like to see the Cheney Energy Task Force minutes that the Supreme Court has denied our ability to see.
Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya all for the Corporatacracy and no account on the human toll.
Dick had no part at all in Vietnam, he had “other priorities…”

Barbara Santee, former executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Oklahoma office, called the OK abortion restriction laws “a frontal assault”.

Mornin’, BT, pups

Bibi the Butcher’s plan for peace between Israel and Palestine is the destruction of the Palestinians by the US-sponsored IGF (Israeli Genocide Force).

• Paul Ryan’s constituents don’t like Paul Ryan.

Elections must be rigged. Is there another way to explain how weasels with really bad ideas that will screw over their constituents win reelection again and again and again?

• Yeah, this is going to end well.

Am I the only one around here who’s disappointed that Khaddafi’s still in power? For a while there, it looked like he was going to be overthrown.

Kloppenburg officially asked for a recount in WI yesterday.

The Republicans have given the president a gift in publicly endorsing the radical budget plan by Paul Ryan that slashes taxes on the rich and literally wipes out Medicare. The GOP has walked into a trap even more unfavorable than the Dems did on health care: 80 percent of all Americans and 60 percent of Republicans do not want ANY changes to Medicare, let alone killing it entirely. The Republicans could lose an entire generation of seniors with this one partisan policy mistake.
http://www.sunstateactivist.org

From the abortion ban in OK piece:

Fallin, a Republican serving her first term, said both laws are important measures that safeguard life.

The minute the child is born it immediately falls into the YOYO category.

Control women’s lives, yeah, that’s the ticket. Assholes.

Sounds like they would maybe like a way that women no longer become pregnant….just such a problem and for some reason everyone’s business.

After the investigation grinds to a halt and law suits are filed, perhaps Judge Prosser can preside:o)

Paul Ryan’s constituents don’t like Paul Ryan.

Hey Paul: How’s that being a clueless dickhead thing workin’ out for ya?

Morning BT & Firepups of Thursday Fire:

Rude has comments on the one-year anniversary of the minor Gulf spill by BP, etal…

Part One. Part Two. Part Three.

I don’t know what Kloppenburg’s problem is. I mean, one person with a highly-checkered past keeping all the voting information for a particular district on her own personal computer, and then suddenly discovering it a few days later. I mean…what could possibly be suspect about that?

Speed wasn’t the problem, Mr. President.

I think the biggest expectation this country had was with a Democratic house senate and white house there was no reason to carry on the republican war policy. Trying the torturers and their masters for that gross human indignity, showing the world we placed human rights above the MOTU, should have been job one as the country expected.

So they started on health care first, with the attendant lies, but surly the war rethinking would be next. Health care was a diversion from pumping up the wars they were “against”.

Wasn’t it quite the coincidence that the black box election only wound up with 60 senators ? Just the luck of the republicans to have a veto proof minority.

Good morning all.

The YOYO category wouldn’t be so bad if these same assholes who want to control women’s lives didn’t also protect corporations that abuse the public and support the corporate welfare system.

The Rude one says it like only he can.

SoDrag,
Hope you are feeling better this morning.

Good morning all you pups.

Much of the electorate are nothing more than marionettes that are manipulated by the plutocrats and their instruments of propaganda and indoctrination in the guise of a legitimate and independent 4th Estate.

“I’ve asked myself sometimes is there a way we could’ve gotten it done more quickly and in a way that the American people hadn’t gotten frustrated by.”

Err, I hate to say this, but maybe the President should assign someone to read Politico.

The 1997 Balanced Budget Act, for instance, was passed through reconciliation and created both the State Children’s Health Care Program, known as SCHIP, and the Medicare Advantage program for the elderly.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26835_Page2.html

The problem with going with the filibuster-proof reconciliation process was it would have meant a Medicare-based universal healthcare system. As the 1997 bill makes clear, reconciliation can be used to expand medical coverage to new age groups (like children) as well expand existing programs (like Medicare). The trouble then is while it’dd have given Medicare to every American, it could not give corporate welfare (e.g. individual mandate) to every health insurer, so obviously it would have been a terrible idea. Besides everyone knows that laws should be passed with a broad bipartisan consensus.

the second round of tax cuts — the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 — barely scraped by in the Senate.
After a tied 50-50 vote, Vice-President Dick Cheney cast the deciding aye to move the Bush tax cuts forward.

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/11/29/cheney-my-vote/

NPR had a scathing piece on the BP pr….speaker was someone who had already earlier retired from BP pr when the accident happened…lets it rip.

Excellent news. NPR, while it does have its failings, reaches a very large audience (relatively speaking). The more, the merrier, I always say…

Don’t forget that tomorrow is Earth Day. If you’re a Democrat in Congress or the WH make a “meaningful” speech and then sit on your fat privileged asses and do absolutely nothing. If your a Republican anywhere pour a quart of oil in your local public park or garden.

This story makes me sick. RIP.

Mayhaps the ELF could pay Monsanto a visit.

There was a time when air power could take care of artillery and mortars. Not so much anymore, I guess.

Yes, so sad….and what a messy undertaking.

Had budget reconciliation been used in a timely fashion to lower the age for Medicare and reform student loans, there may have never been a Tea Party. And everything since could have been entirely different — including the entire budget debate. Oh well.

Massive fail.

Such a tragedy.

Lisa put up a post about it yesterday after the news broke.

Hetherington was scheduled to discuss Restrepo which he co-directed with Sebastian Junger, on FDL Movie Night May 16…

Yep. If all that ever bothers me is a little gastronomic distress I’ll consider myself lucky. Thanks.

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

US KIA Afghanistan: 1,543

US KIA Irak: 4,448

Iraki, Afghan and Pakistani casualties: estimates vary to over 1.5M

US MBS 2011: 13,640 and counting

Wicked Game

Can’t resist another look at Cookie.

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things

Namaste

No war but class war

Never. Give. Up.

New post up top…

Guten tag, ya’ll.

A triumph for small government in OK.

Yeah… government so small it can fit inside a woman’s vagina!

At that Paul Ryan link:

VIDEO: Paul Ryan Booed At Town Hall For Defending Tax Breaks For The Wealthy

Hurrah! Bitten in the arse in his own district.

Is Barry actually conscious?

He’s conscious. It’s the public that’s unconscious.

I was willing to give the Libyan rebels air cover, but I do not want us on the ground. That has no good outcome whatever happens. It costs too much and adds another front in our imperial wars. I would not be averse to trying to make real peace talks.

The repubs have given the dims a ‘golden’ opportunity for election campaigning. I’m afraid that they are going to blow it with stupid ads like the one that was shown here the other day.

It was a sure bet that Team USA would have boots on the ground in Libya. It was only a matter of time, and now: here it is. Enjoy our next kinetic military action, which is all about OIL and money to be made by the barrelful by the upper 1%. Team USA was never in any way interested in assisting the rebels to gain their “freedom.” Why would the obscenely wealthy in the USA care about some dusky-hued serfs in Libya?

Agree. O is conscious but he has no conscience, and that’s for damn sure. The public at large is largely asleep at the wheel; also for damn sure, and it’s a damn shame all around.

Nice to see, but, at the end of the day, as Dick Cheney would say: SO???

It doesn’t matter what the voters in Ryan’s district think or feel. Ryan is serving very well his true constituents, which are the upper 1%. They are very very happy with Ryan’s “performance.” Ryan will get a big nice bonus from them, I’m sure. It’s called payola.

I wouldn’t be too quick to call it a mistake. Obama makes unilateral concessions and however extreme the demand Obama goes to the middle even if the middle happens to be in the far right. I don’t think the Democrats are going to be doing seniors any favors.

I never thought I would ever see a POTUS more contempt-able than Bush Jr. But listening to O’Sellout’s “woe is me, politics is hard, and bipartisanship is the boogyman responsible for why health care took so long, and why it will never be perfect in our lifetime” self-pity party really pisses me off.

He really has no respect for ordinary people. Shrub at least tried to fake it on occasion.

It’s heartening to see Obama make numerous progressive statements and do a mea culpa over his handling of the health care bill, as we enter the protracted election season.

Shrub at least tried to fake it on occasion.

He did?? Coulda fooled me. Never saw W have any respect for anyone, including himself, which is typical of most addicts (as W is). Witnessed W mightily sucking up to the obscenely wealthy, who had bailed him out countless times, but that’s different; I always figured W had his fingers crossed behind his back when he kissed the @sses of the PTB. I’m sure he hated doing even that, but I always figured that Poppy Booosch made him do it.

That said, I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis of the Great Pretender. IMO, O is more contemptible than W. With W, I *knew* exactly who and what he was, and W pretty much was up front about how he was going to rip off the middle & working classes & how he loathed us serfs anyway. I knew exactly what was coming.

O getting up on his hind legs & braying out his vapid nonsense whilst *pretending* to care is more than unbearable. Creepy vermin, slimely sh*t, pond scum is too kind of a description. and so on…

The Republicans could lose an entire generation of seniors with this one partisan policy mistake.

1. You’ve made the classic mistake in assuming that the DC Dems are actually competent at politics. Or,
2. Maybe our current crop of DC Dems actually wants the same things as the Repubs – at least the Neo-liberals do.

Either way, I have a feeling the Repubs don’t have too much to worry about.

I’d as sooner throw a punch at W as have a beer with him, but IIRC, there was a report of him crying with the parents of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghan. Not at the funerals, he never went to those, but he apparently met with families of the fallen. So the sociopathic SOB has at least that going for him.

The fact that Obama is lessening my hatred for W is another thing I didn’t think possible…

hmmm, ok, well maybe… still find it hard to see W as really “caring” about anyone but himself, but I might be wrong. I cannot abide O, but must confess that my loathing for the Great Pretender has had no impact on my depising of W. It’s hard to say who I loath more; pretty much neck and neck at this point.

As stated, though, I had no expectations of any different behavior from W than what he exhibited. My expectations of O were not all that high, but I must confess that O’s performance/behavior/etc has defied even my worst nightmare scenario. In that respect, O definitely “beats out” W… fwiw.

I also doubt that Seniors who are T-GOP (and they are legion) will actually “get it.” Most of ‘em would rather die (seriously) then ever vote anything other than T-GOP. That’s how they’re wired. They’re so indoctrinated and brainwashed by corp-owned fascist media that they could never vote for a Dem, no matter what.

So I seriously doubt that there is any “mis-step” with R’s in terms of Seniors, who have been well-trained for the past 3+ decades to consistently vote against their own interests (it’s certainly a big part of the reason why we find ourselves at this juncture today). Plus there’s that Southern Strategy thingie that the R’s have got going, and it works like a charm with a huge swathe of elderly T-GOPers, make no mistake.

Spot on – very true – but our media appears to be not the “A” students.

Meanwhile it is silly season – “Apple tracks locations – - Sen. Al Franken (D.-Minn.), who chairs a new privacy panel set up in February, yesterday asked Apple to explain why its iPhones are tracking users’ locations” – as if this is new in any way (the Apple file was discovered 6 months ago – it goes nowhere – it could be used for better wifi connections and other functions that might be able to use GPS data – but it is not used now and likely will be removed as it exists under the itunes permission – which is a stretch as to an agreement to give up your GPS privacy).

Ten years ago I made a call in DC to a fellow, who said hi – and who then noted I was at a location I was not normally at – my phone was a simple cell phone. The idea that the gov needs Apple’s help to track folks and establish history and patterns is rather silly – we crossed that bridge in the 80′s under Reagan.