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September 11, 2012 03:27 PM UTC

Tuesday Open Thread

  • 60 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”

–Albert Einstein

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60 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

    1. I moved on about 11.9 years ago.

      Go to any Southern Courthouse.  Look at those Confederate generals on their horses.  

      No one cares.

      September 11, in time, will be relegated to every other historical event’s dustbin.

      But to answer my own question of “Why not?”, it is that we should remember to never, ever elect another totally incompetent president and administration.  Of course, the American voter has already forgotten that, and are ready to be suckered in again every four years.  

  3. Let’s just forget about having silly laws and just make everything an amendment. We can even make it retro-active and turn all current state laws into amendments. When we need to make changes, then we’ll just add more amendments that counter the earlier amendments.

    I think I’ll call it the Amendment Amendment.

  4. …but Mr Twain already did that:

    “It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunderstroke like that and live. There is but one reasonable explanation of it. The intellect is stunned by the shock and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words. The power to realize their full import is mercifully wanting. The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss–that is all. It will take mind and memory months, and possibly years, to gather together the details and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss.” – Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1

  5. Seems the infamous “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”  memo was very, very far from the first or most serious warning the Bush administration received and chose to discount.

    On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief – and only that daily brief – in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.

    That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

    Details at

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09…

    1. ….told the Booshites that terrorism should be their number one priority, and that they should expect one type to be airplanes.

      After the attacks, Condi “WTF” Rice had the audacity to ask, “Who could have known that they would use airplanes?”

      And then our so-called Department of Defense, totally FAILED in their name and mission.

      And across the board, no heads rolled, no one was responsible.  In other times and places, political and military leaders would be deposed, stripped of pensions, and possibly hung for treason.

    2. It really re-enforces the view that Bush (and Cheney, and Bolton, and all the other guys currently advising Mitt Romney on foreign policy matters) were fixated on invading Iraq and cared little about the folks over at the CIA who they apparently thought were Clinton plants.

      Talk about being blinded by their own reality.

      1. Condi Rice, no doubt brilliant and perfectly suited for academia, as completely unqualified for any high level role in government. Clearly she was too timid and intimidated, too unwilling to mix it up with the big boys to be an effective NSA to her President, a provincial dullard who was clearly in over his head, woefully ignorant and in dire need of strong guidance. Unfortunately he got it only from the Cheney faction.  

        All the recent talk of Condi for VP or for President in the future is ridiculous.  What she’s qualified for is teaching a nice seminar somewhere. Commander in Chief or a heart beat away? Frightening to contemplate.    

        1. was the term Rice used to describe the information she received right up to 9-11.

          No intelligence is ” actionable ” if you read it and then just sit there like a fucking turnip…

  6. And a damned effective one at that:

    A giant federal tobacco tax hike has spurred a historic drop in smoking, especially among teens, poor people and those dependent on government health insurance, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

    President Obama signed the tax hike – the biggest to take effect in his first term – on his 16th day in office, reversing two vetoes by President Bush. The federal cigarette tax jumped from 39 cents to $1.01 per pack on April 1, 2009, to finance expanded health care for children. Since then, the change has brought in more than $30 billion in new revenue, tax records show.

    Yet the tax hike and its repercussions remain mostly unknown to the non-smoking public. The tax increase’s size and national reach lifted prices 22% overnight, more than all state and local tax hikes combined over the past decade when adjusted for inflation.

    Result: The tax hike has helped restart a long-term decline in smoking that had stalled in recent years. About 3 million fewer people smoked last year than in 2009, despite a larger population, according to surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The tax hits hardest on families who make less than $50,000 a year and account for two-thirds of smokers.

    “The federal tax increase was the win-win that we thought it would be and the evidence shows that,” says Danny McGoldrick, research vice president at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/n…

    Damn meddling federal government.

  7. I wonder if Paul Ryan could name the “close to forty” Colorado 14er’s he claims to have climbed.  

    This could be a nice softball question from a CO reporter that might lead to exposure of another Paul Ryan lie that would not go down well here in Colorado.

  8. Let me tell you a story….

    There once was a time when women knew their place. Back in those halcyon days, young women accepted that sex was a dirty thing they should go out of their way to avoid, lest the taint of it made them unmarriageable. Girls married young and dreamed of staying at home with children, far away from the dirty worlds of men and power. Of course, slipping up did happen, and girls got pregnant outisde of wedlock but since there was no birth control or abortion, those girls had to get married straightaway, so either way, women ended up where they belonged, in the home, while men went out and did all that working.

    Then the birth control pill was invented and abortion was legalized. All of a sudden, women started screwing who they liked without any consequences. They didn’t get married young anymore, instead choosing to do things like have careers and demand power. This meant the end of cherished gender roles, which in turn meant gay marriage, men losing their rightful place as leaders of nuclear families, single motherhood, and anarchy in the streets. Clearly, women’s abortion rights need to be taken away and access to contraception curtailed, and then perhaps we can return to the bliss of “Leave It To Beaver.”

    This is a story is one we all know, and it is the singular fable that drives the anti-choice movement. It is a story that is actually not true, of course. In the reality, many mothers worked outside of the home, premarital sex was surprisingly common, men abandoned women they got pregnant routinely, and abortion was common even as it was illegal. And yet this fantasy lives on, a fantasy of returning America—at least middle-class America—to a strong patriarchy where women’s talents and ambitions are all aimed at supporting men and where sex is irrevocably tied to procreation. It’s the fantasy that motivates the anti-choice movement. It’s the fantasy that leads to abortion restrictions, the building of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, the shooting of abortion doctors, usually by men who will never be Ward Cleaver and have grown bitter.

    But admitting this out loud is difficult for conservatives, because stripping women’s human rights to create a patriarchal fantasy world flies directly into the face of their claims to be about “liberty.” Instead, a thicket of lies has grown up to rationalize their preferred policy options: Claims about concern for fetal life, concerns that mysteriously never extend to actual children. Claims about concerns for women’s mental health, even though science has refuted any connection between abortion and poor mental health outcomes; instead the notion that abortion hurts it is rooted in the belief that women’s purpose is birthing, and that deviations from it mean women are somehow broken. Claims that abstinence-only programs are about health, when they are clearly about promoting a paranoid view of sex as inherently dirty and sinful. Claims now that denying women insurance coverage of contraception is a matter of “religious liberty,” even though docking a woman’s benefits because she disagrees on matters of dogma with her employer is a pretty straightforward assault on that woman’s religious liberty.

    But as we learned at the DNC this week, the Democrats have come up with a secret weapon that causes the entire wall of lies to come crashing down, revealing the sniveling, misogynist prude that is actually behind all these assaults on women’s reproductive rights.

    That weapon’s name is Sandra Fluke.

    http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/…

  10. Today I accepted a job with a Federal agency that I simultaneously bitch and praise every day (either on this site or others.)

    Citing “plausible deniability” for my future employer’s questions, I’ve asked the Dead Guvs to delete my account ASAP.

    Goodbye, all. It’s been a blast. Don’t let the trolls win, but let some Righties have their column space when they deserve it.  

    8. Today I hereby retract my nomination (retroactively, Mitt, retroactively) of SSG_Dan for Front Page Editor, so that his recent service to our online community here doesn’t prevent him from doing something that he’s probably best suited to do, in the long run.

      Keep fighting the good fight for the people who need it.

    10. is way overrated . . . know anyone that matters who doesn’t think that George W. Bush was a fucking disaster?

      Stick around . . . if you’re still worried about “plausible deniability,” I’ll let you adopt one or two of my sock puppets — too many mouths to feed as it is — think about it.  

    14. But knowing the real Dan is still out there fighting for the men and women he cares so much about is reassuring. Our pages will be poorer, but the world will be a better place.

      Good luck, Dan. Be happy. Stay strong.

  11. Today, we forget the almost 6,000 people who will be murdered this year as a result of drug violence in Mexico, in order to meet America’s enormous demand for illegal drugs.

    Today we forget the 14,000 Americans murdered last year, zero of whose murders were linked to Islamic extremism.

    Today, we forget the 17,000 children who will die of hunger today.

    Today, we forget the 26,000+ Americans who will die this year of treatable conditions because they cannot access health care.

    Today, we forget the 31,000 Americans who will die as a result of firearms accidents in the US this year.

    Today, we forget the 75,000 annual deaths in the USA connected with alcohol abuse–which shortens the lives of these victims by an average of 30 years.

    Today, we forget over 105,000 foreign civilians killed in a war started under false pretenses, using appeals to emotion to manipulate America in our time of grief.

    Instead, we’ll wave little flags, wear black ribbons, and rewatch 11-year-old footage of a tragedy for which we retaliated by taking 50 times as many civilian lives as the terrorists did.

    3. And what always gets overlooked on the Dead Persons 9/11 count is that many of those in the towers were NOT Americans.  But like the Americans, doing their jobs.

      Welcome to America.  Oops.  

    1. As someone whose native heritage is even less well documented than Warren’s (and has the same ‘family lore’ background, plus some physical traits), I’m glad to see the love and acceptance for the many many people with some native background who will probably never know the truth due to the stigma surrounding such an identification for many years of our history.

      I wish I even knew what tribe my ancestor belonged to.

  13. There’s a bevy of right-wing billionaires underwriting the Republican election effort, but the spending of one far outpaces the others. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has contributed more than $36 MILLION to various Republican Super PACs and has pledged to spend $100 MILLION in order to defeat President Obama and elect Mitt Romney.

    While $100 MILLION is a lot of money, it’s nothing compared to what Adelson stands to gain as a result of Mitt Romney’s tax policies. A new analysis out today finds that in just the four years of a Romney administration, Adelson could get a whopping $2.3 BILLION tax cut. That represents an astounding 2,200 percent return on his investment in Mitt Romney.

    h/t ThinkProgress

    http://thinkprogress.org/progr…

    1. Adelson is a Likudnik extraordinaire. Romney’s foreign policy advisers are also heavy on the blindly pro-Israel contingent – they want a war with Iran and have expressed sentiment dismissing any useful Palestinian settlement.  (Many of them are the same PNAC supporters that led Bush into the misguided war in Iraq.)

      Adelson also might gain from a change of scenery over at DOJ, as he’s under investigation for some of his casino investments in Macau.

      1. He wields tremendous influence over Bibi, who Romney’s already said will call the shots for America in the Middle East. Adelson’s not just buying the American election, with Romney he’s buying a whole glorious war. No wonder the Repubs are reluctant to talk foreign policy aside from obligatory snipes at Obama from the sidelines. They’re outsourcing that too.

        As they beat the drums for yet another disastrous American military intervention Adelson and AIPAC should register as lobbyists for a foreign government. Thankfully, most Israelis and Americans are resisting.

        Republicans = getting us into a mess; Democrats = getting us out. Damn, this is getting tiresome.

  14. if Rmoney continues to drop in polls he’ll get specific out of desperation. He may not do it until the debate. At that time he’ll likely spring something on all of us and hopefully President Obama will simply respond “Its about time. I know this has been on your mind for a bit so pardon me if I wait a day or so to respond to this surprise development”

    1. IMHO, Romney is old and he is manifesting the kind of vagueness that we see in our friends who are beginning to have cognitive difficulties.  He is non-specific; he is forgetful; he speaks in slogans and short sentences. His mistake about the Soviet Union being our major enemy is an example of major mistakes.  I can’t remember (see!) if Romney said Russia or the Soviet Union….but he was decades off.  Don’t we have a doctor in the house….someone who has some experience observing aging people?

      Bill Clinton is one year older than Romney.  Compare Clinton’s speech with that of Romney’s at the two conventions.  Clinton is coherent.  He presents arguments, logically, he is not totally dependent on the script or the teleprompter….Listen to Romney…scripted,

      bland, links talking points together. I am really concerned about the state of Romney’s mental health.

      2. that staying involved and dealing with changing real-world situations keeps the mind alert and perspectives fresh. Romney’s been wrapped in a cocoon of same-thinking rich overlords and their fantasies of intrinsic superiority.

        Wait a minute. I just fell for your premise that we old people are mental dodderers. AARP warned me about you young scammers!

  15. Lining up behind Mitt “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by factcheckers” Romney, redstate.com’s frontpagers post a diary entitled “Quote a FactChecker, Earn a Ban.”

    http://www.redstate.com/2012/0…

    Redstate has become kind of embarrassing. In this diary he posts a picture of a man with his head in his rectum, and also today Erick Erickson writes a frontpaged diary post about journalists masturbating in uncomfortable detail. We do that kind of thing in the comments here, but it’s pretty classless to do it on the front page.

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