Monday Open Thread
Welcome to your Monday open thread. I am on vacation this week and I’m visiting my family so posting may be spotty.
I know one thing I’ll be doing – watching the lunar eclipse. For the first time in nearly 500 years, a lunar eclipse will coincide with the winter solstice. It will be visible to the whole of North America.
If you step outside late tonight into early Tuesday morning, you may notice the moon looks like a luminous rotten orange. It’s a total lunar eclipse that will be visible to everyone in North and Central America, including Alaska and Hawaii.
…
The total eclipse will last for 72 minutes, a deeper “night within a night,” as he puts it. The moon will be partially eclipsed for about an hour as it goes into and out of the Earth’s shadow. The total eclipse will last from 2:41 to 3:53 a.m. ET.
“It’s going to take a long time to watch the whole eclipse, about 3½ hours,” says Rebecca Johnson, editor of StarDate magazine.
I’ll be in Kentucky, so I’ll be able to go somewhere with less light pollution.
digby at Hullaballoo catches this bit of crazy from the American Family Association. Bryan Fischer writes about the DADT repeal:
We are now stuck with sexual deviants serving openly in the U.S. military because of turncoat Republican senators.
…
The armies of other nations have allowed gays to serve openly in the military. The reason they could afford to do this is simple: they could allow homosexuals to serve in their military because we didn’t allow them to serve in ours.
They knew they could count on the strength, might, power, and cohesion of the U.S. military to intervene whenever and wherever necessary to pull their fannies out of the fire and squash the forces of tyranny wherever they raised their ugly heads around the world.
Those days are now gone. We will no longer be able to bail out these other emasculated armies because ours will now be feminized and neutered beyond repair, and there is no one left to bail us out. We have been permanently weakened as a military and as a nation by these misguided and treasonous Republican senators, and the world is now a more dangerous place for us all.
The world is going to end! Be afraid, be very afraid. Also, according the John McCain, soldiers limbs will fall off.
Tags: Open Thread
Jesus Saves… at Payne County Bank.
“Those days are now gone. We will no longer be able to bail out these other emasculated armies because ours will now be feminized and neutered beyond repair, and there is no one left to bail us out.”
By this (I am stretching it to say the following word) logic, then we will be saved by our extra-tough lesbian female soldiers.
DADT repeal is awfully lonely up on the Democrats’ trophy shelf. But it is a start.
I wonder if the wingnuts will start a repeal movement.
Wow! So… are they saying that our military would lose to a gay pride parade?
Not that it should surprise anyone, but there’s plenty of similar stuff at Delaware Politics.
Hey anon, can I have some of what your smoking, because you have a severe case of short-term memory loss.
Tone, sir, tone.
You’re right, tone.
Hey anon, can I PLEASE have some of what your smoking, because you have a severe case of short-term memory loss.
I would guess that anon’s point is that this is the first victory that the President has had that wasn’t, in some way, compromised. Imagine if this had happened with a public option, or even better, single-payer.
Imagine if we had gotten through FinReg without dilution.
Imagine if the President had gotten the Bush tax gifts removed for incomes over $250K/year.
These would have been unblemished victories, just like a full repeal of DADT.
I guess we can forget about the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the State CHIP act, reversing the Bush’s embryo order, new regulations to curb global warming, the hate crime act, the resurrection of the auto industry, the first major health care reform in ages, etcetera, etcetera.
Yeah, I guess we can forget about all those.
BREADCRUMBS!!!! no credit for Obama unless he expels the conservatives and does everything the Lefteabags want!!!!
I guess that some of them might qualify (Lilly Ledbetter would qualify) but the rest of them are not binary.
Take the stem cell ban…
So is the stem cell ban where a good science-based liberal might like it? No. But it is progress.
Keep in mind that this is somewhat rare, in that most of the time, political victories are tempered. This is an unadulterated victory.
An adulterated victory until everyone remembers that this bill give the President and Joint Chiefs say over when DADT no longer how gay people have to serve in the military. Once folks remember that, I’m imagining we’ll hear plenty — again — about how compromised this President is.
Sheesh.
For the record, I didn’t say that the President is compromised, but rather that he engaged in compromise.
To tell the truth, the repeal of DADT is tempering my anger over the Bush tax cut capitulation.
that is because you are a puppet for the evil Obomba police state
AFA is just like Jim Dobson’s Fuckus on the Family. Legends in their own minds.
I can live with compromise, blemishes, and adulteration. It’s the unnecessary capitulations that are disturbing. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory gets old. Getting within a small handful of votes in the Senate while the President remains silent. And then the lying about it.
Forgotten is the fact that even Obama’s 2008 pledge was itself a compromise (20% capital gains instead of expiring back to 39%).
Republicans are laughing like hell they got out of the expiration trap by trading some temporary UI – which they were going to give up anyway. Yes they were. They always have before, 100% of the time.
One bright spot – a little known feature of the HCR bill is that it includes a 3% tax on capital gains and dividends, which even without expiration raises it from 15% to 18%, which is pretty close to the 20% promised by “Obama 2008”. Which is probably the real reason why Repubs want to repeal HCR.
they want to repeal HCR because it stands the tiny chance of helping non-white non-rich people have the same shot as Boehner and Palin.
Apart from the economic impact, Obama’s compromises gave birth to the enthusiasm gap and revived the GOP, and gave new life to trickle-down theory. Instead of throwing the GOP an anchor, he gave them a big warm nemski.
Actually, if there is no Dem primary, or even if there is one, I think the door is wide open for a Perot-style third party candidacy.
Haley Barbour is considered a serious contender for the GOP presidential nomination. I think he would probably perform worse than Sarah Palin.
“Actually, if there is no Dem primary, or even if there is one, I think the door is wide open for a Perot-style third party candidacy.”
in your wettest dreams.
I’m saying the conditions are right for a third party candidate – not that I want one. But if we do get one it will be our own damn fault for trying to ride the yellow line. The ever-shifting yellow line.
I can see a Bloomberg challenge, or someone like him. It will all depend on the state of the economy.
It will all depend on the state of the economy.
Whatever happens in the economy, there will definitely be an enormous deficit. Which was Perot’s signature issue.
And on Election Day 1992, the unemployment rate was 7.2%. That was high enough to sink the incumbent.
If things go really well, then maybe the deficit will begin to shrink steadily and we will have some good CBO projections to point to.
well SOME anon has been ranting a lot lately on how much they want to see Obama primaried and defeated…. and seems to think it WOULDNT result in a Palin Presidency… was this not you?
Lol. You children slay me. For as long as I’ve been blogging some losers have held a candle for the deus ex machina of a third party.
“If things go really well, then maybe the deficit will begin to shrink steadily and we will have some good CBO projections to point to”
but everyone knows the CBO is a liberal big-gumment shell organization run by ACORN…. unless the projections are bad. Then it is a good american bipartisan group.
All of us rant and rave at some point. 😉
For as long as I’ve been blogging some losers have held a candle for the deus ex machina of a third party.
Ha ha. If I tell you to get off the train tracks because a train might be coming, that doesn’t mean I am rooting for the train.
Full eclipse of the moon tonight… also the winter solstice. If you are lucky you might see Christine O’Donnell flying by.
The action starts around 12:30am and peaks at 3:17am.
This calls for some “tap”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xlf5ucFanpY
2:00 AM. The snake god has half consumed the moon.
All Hail Solstice! If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
Speaking of Jesus…
Back in the land of Jesus…
“around 8 a.m. an estimated 500 police officers in tactical gear stormed the courtyard of the compound, broke through doors and quickly turned the men, women and children out into the season’s worst storm without shoes or jackets.”
“Thirteen-year-old Noor watched as a soldier threw his puppy – tied up and barking – and then shoot it in the stomach.”
“All that remained after the five-hour bulldozing operation was chewed-up grey concrete, bent fans, broken air-conditioners and furniture beneath rubble.”
As the “liberal” Nancy Pelosi and the “Democrats Push through Yet Another Anti-Palestinian Resolution”
Moved by nemski
It’s nemski week on DL.. kind of like Shark Week on TV. You keep turning on the TV but it’s still fricking sharks.
Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. I didn’t know he had it in him. If only this had been the template for the last two years:
What – no flying overseas during the heat of the debate? No dealing behind our backs for the opposite outcome? No excuses about how Republicans won’t budge?
Not this time it seems, as Obama smacks down the “pragmatists” who think you should just give up if you don’t have the votes on Day One of the debate. What a baffling President.
Why did Nemski remove my Jesus related post freom Pandora’s Jesus thread to the Monday open thread?
Speaking of Jesus…
Back in the land of Jesus…
“around 8 a.m. an estimated 500 police officers in tactical gear stormed the courtyard of the compound, broke through doors and quickly turned the men, women and children out into the season’s worst storm without shoes or jackets.”
“Thirteen-year-old Noor watched as a soldier threw his puppy – tied up and barking – and then shoot it in the stomach.”
“All that remained after the five-hour bulldozing operation was chewed-up grey concrete, bent fans, broken air-conditioners and furniture beneath rubble.”
As the “liberal” Nancy Pelosi and the “Democrats Push through Yet Another Anti-Palestinian Resolution”
Off topic.
Comment by nemski on 21 December 2010 at 12:45 pm:
“Off topic.”
Why is Zionist on Palestinian violence always "off-topic" on DL ?
Off-topic for that thread. Don’t be a numbskull. This is what open threads are for.