Thursday Open Thread
It’s Thursday and the day after the State of the Union address. Amazingly, I’m not hung over. President Obama didn’t say “let me be clear” one time last night (that I caught). Although he did say “Middle Class,” “jobs” and “Main Street.” (My own personal drinking game.) Let’s open this thread.
The teabuggers were pretty stupid. An expert weighs in:
The affidavit itself reads like a bad script for an episode of the A-Team. Two members of the group dressed up as telephone repairmen and attempted to gain access to the telephone closet. They headed for the Senator’s office, attempted pretexting and were directed to the GSA office down the hall where the plot was uncovered when the pair were asked for identification and claimed to have left it in their van.
Now it is quite possible that a GSA employee would have been trained to recognize a telephone company ID badge, but I don’t know what one looks like and the typical security guard at a non-government facility wouldn’t either. For a few hundred bucks the conspirators could have bought a second hand badge printer on EBay to create their own badges and greatly reduced the chance of getting caught.
Using fake ID reduces the risk of being caught but increases the penalties if caught. Possession of a fraudulent access device is a federal crime, as is possession of means to create fraudulent access devices. Using real identification greatly increases the risk of being caught, but some do so anyway.
The post goes on to identify some of the security procedures of a federal building. Don’t let conservatives tell you that this is just some young guys pulling a prank. These guys are a part of the conservative think tank system. Each of them get some kind of paycheck from the VRWC. Dai was also representing himself as some kind of national security expert and was paid for this. O’Keefe was funded by Breitbart and Flanagan belonged to some conservative think tank. These three guys also started “alternative” conservative newspapers at their college, which is apparently how to get noticed and invited into the VRWC.
Oh, my. They just can’t help themselves, can they?
TeaParty.org, a Houston-based group founded by Dale Robertson, yesterday sent an email fund-raising solicitation, obtained by TPMmuckraker, headlined “Obama Pimping Obama-Care, One Last Time!”
The photograph below — showing the president as a stereotypical African-American pimp, sporting a pencil-thin mustache and a zebra-striped, fur-brimmed fedora, complete with a feather — illustrated the theme:
Tags: Open Thread
I am using this forum to announce that today I “Filed the paperwork” (meaning put in the US mail) to declare myself a candidate for the US Senate.
website:http://sites.google.com/site/brookebovardforsenate/
Congrats Brooke. Next, you need to form your fundraising committee.
Was that a volunteer?
congrats book….
and that picture looks kinda good. I think it is the Bagz subconsciously admitting Obama is their “daddy”.
Brook’s announcement should have it’s own thread
Author J.D. Salinger has died.
I am a big Salinger fan. But I suspect most thought he died years ago…
I wonder if he has unpublished work. He’s been a recluse for many, many years.
Funny, a friend just asked on facebook, this week, what Holden would be doing for a job, right now.
Howard Zinn has also died.
After Obama rips lobbyists, K St. insiders get private briefings (this morning)
The Hill ^ | 1/28/10 | Bob Cusack
A day after bashing lobbyists, President Barack Obama’s administration has invited K Street insiders to join private briefings on a range of topics addressed in Wednesday’s State of the Union. The Treasury Department on Thursday morning invited selected individuals to “a series of conference calls with senior Obama administration officials to discuss key aspects of the State of the Union address.” The invitation, which went to a variety of stakeholders, was sent by Fred Baldassaro, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Office of Business Affairs and Public Liaison. The invitation stated, “The White House is encouraging you to participate…
and this means what?
I don’t know where Holden Caulfield would be working, but he certainly would be a blogger.
All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
-Holden Caulfield
Yes, that’s what I said. He’d have a blog and spend his tip jar on booze.
liberalgeek, blogger – no; commentator – yes. Think anonone.
Nah, I put him in there as a cross between Jason330 and Mike Matthews.
White Optics stimulus grant announced, Castle has the decency to not show up.
Carper likes Obama’s budget commission.
Really – I think he’d be donviti.
Holden Caulfield would vomit at the thought of being lumped in with any of you, especially Jason and Viti, but how cute (or pathetic) of you all to try and romanticize yourselves into his likeness.
In my defense, he would be the most kickass blogger around.
No. You’ve become mainstream, predictable, vanilla and boring. Precisely everything Holden would never want to be. At best, he’d be a troll. Until that became mainstream. Then he’d be a troll’s troll.
LOL Elephant. Ur the pacaderm.
BTW, great obit on Salinger in the Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/books/29salinger.html?pagewanted=1&hp
Interesting that Elephant in the Room admits that liberals are mainstream.
Mainstream media, not mainstream morality.
You guys are totally normal…if normal is a bunch of freaks running around and humping everything.
Elephant – you are a bizarre creature.
Man, did Elephant just accuse us of being Republicans …. “running around and humping everything”?
Bizarre is correct. I just don’t get all the rage. It’s like what we say matters to Elephant.
I can’t talk now, I’m busy running around and humping things. It’s exhausting work.
Why would Elephant care what boring people think?
Interestingly enough, Obama did say “I” 88 times in the speech last night, according to the LA Times. I didn’t see how many times he said “me”, “my”, “mine” or any other first-person singular construction.
Bob White, what are you doing reading a liberal rag like the LA Times for?
Bush said “I” over 30 times in his last SOTU. What’s your point?
The guy referred to himself more than once a minute in a speech that is supposed to be about the state of the union, not the state of Barack Obama. Seems excessive — and reminds me of a certain Toby Keith song.
From now on, all speeches must be done in the passive voice.
Oh boy, that “I” conservative talking point is almost a year old. I can’t wait until Bob tells us “OMG, Obama uses a teleprompter!”
Getting word now on Twitter that Bernanke has been confirmed, 70-30.
Zelda Rubinstein also died (remember Poltergeist?)
You know what also died . . . my patience. Freakin’ trolls.
The New Yorker has made J.D. Salinger stories from their archives available to read for free.
interesting comparison: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/01/28/bushs-third-term/
UI one needs a subscription to view.
I’m a bit pissed off that none of you alerted me to the SOTU drinking games.
Truth be told, I’m pissed at myself for not creating my own.
you should have live blogged. the virtual alcohol was a flowin