Thanksgiving Eve Open Thread [11.23.11]
Two Republican Illinois lawmakers want Cook County, which houses the City of Chicago, to become its own state.
The Pew Research Center finds that the Occupy Wall Street movement had its best week yet in news coverage.
“Last week, the U.S. economy was the No. 1 story at 22% of the newshole, with the majority of that coverage focused on the confrontations between protesters, law enforcement, and the city governments that preside over the public spaces that have become encampments. All totaled, the Occupy Wall Street story accounted for 13% of the overall newshole during the week of November 14-20… That coverage marked a major spike from the week before when media attention to the protests had dropped to just 1% of the newshole. It surpassed even the week of October 10-16, when the protests, largely focused on income inequality, filled 10% of the newshole as the demonstrations expanded around the country and partisans began turning it into a major political issue.”
So thanks Police and City Governments, the more you attack them, the more coverage they get.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has asked Google to institute a new system on their Blogger publishing platform where readers can flag “terrorist content.” Joe Lieberman, I hope you burn forever in Hell you fascist asshole. Your retirement can’t come soon enough. And talk about something that will be completely ineffective. Republicans will flag Democratic content as terrorist content, and we will be forced to do the same to Republican content. So, basically, Joe Lieberman just wants more flame wars on the internet.
To prove that there is no issue on which he won’t flip flop, and I mean NO issue. Mitt Romney now says his first name is Mitt. Previously, his first name was Willard.
Michele Bachmann is somehow on the House Intelligence Committee. There, she is privy to classified information. She is also running for President. Last night at the 138th GOP Debate, she leaked classified information about Pakistan’s 15 nuclear sites being vulnerable to terrorist attack, and that six of them had already come under some form of terrorist attack. The National Journal says the new facts “represent either a news-making leak of previously unknown classified information or another in her recent series of seemingly-random, and highly inaccurate, public comments.” A full investigation will be required, and if it is proven true that Ms. Bachmann breached our national security by leaking this information, she will have to be jailed.
Has anyone noticed that the News Journal is switching its commenting scheme to Facebook? You need a valid Facebook presence to actually comment there now, rather than the crazy anonymous NJ deal. What that means is that the usual nastiness in their comments space has died down for the moment. Apparently the folks with the incoherent, the vicious, the racist, the resentful, etc. don’t want to put their names with that kind of content.
Go figure.
Question of the day: Will they make Michelle Bachmann sleep naked in prison?
hey conservatives.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/pregnant-woman-miscarries-after-being-sprayed-with
the pigs are guilty of murder now, right? RIGHT?
That’s a damn shame. I have my doubts about the pepper spray crossing the placenta though, but I’ll wait for the medical records.
I think the kicks to the stomach also helped.
Yeah, that is the likely cause. The article quotes the victim saying that the pepper spray had an impact too. Hope that cop pays the price for being a violent asshole.
Conservatives love their police state more than they love their fetuses, I think.
It is a real shame that this woman lost her baby, and I hope that the authorities throw the book at this cop and his management.
And I wouldn’t underestimate the effects of a good dose of pepper spray — it is an inflammatory and between that and the way it affects your respiratory system, her body may have been stressed out enough or starved of enough oxygen to damage her baby. But the kick to her stomach (really?) and I guess she was hit again was likely the primary cause.
Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners that “the NASCAR weenies who booed Michele Obama did it to protest her “uppityism”.
Yeah, he said it.
No work on why they also booed Dr. Jill Biden. Maybe it was enabling uppity black people while white.
So true about the GOP and the police state. The little bit I heard about the GOP debate last night was about Ron Paul being lambasted for not wanting to make the Patriot Act even more patriotically repressive.
Obama and the Democrats love the American Police State just as much as Republicans, if not more. Obama and Holder are doing everything that they can to institutionalize it, and virtually no Democrats (including those here) are speaking out against it.
Too bad Ron Paul is such a loon, otherwise, he is spot-on regarding the loss of civil liberties in America.
When a1 types “Ctrl, ^ , ^” he pastes “Obama and the Democrats love (_________) just as much as Republicans,” in blog comments sections.
It is a huge time saver.
Five Myths About Newtie Gingrich.
I’m particularly fond of the debunking of he man’s so-called academic cred.
Unfortunately the police state, the surveillance state, and the erosion of civil liberties are a true area of bipartisan agreement for thirty years.
“Mitt Romney, Satan’s personal accountant.”
h/t dkos
Truth is truth. The left foot tracks in as much mud as the right foot.
only if BOTH FEET have been in the mud dear
Chad Livengood spoke of the transition to Facebook signons for WNJ feedback rather than the anonymous past approach, at PDD’s November member meeting.
Put down your drinks before you open this link:
The very confused Pat Robertson wants to know if macaroni and cheese is a Black thing.
And now the Facebook signins have disappeared from the NJ. Weird.
Story online says the FB commenting is coming out Nov. 30.
The FB thing sounds like a step in the right direction for the NJ.
Omg. Roberts thinks that they were speaking in code. “What is this Mac and cheese? “
Facebook commenting seems to be the norm for most media companies, including Gannett. While there is plenty of name-calling and other nasty behavior in the current format, the ability to remain anonymous is a necessity for some people — myself included — who remain civil. Anyone who believes a current or prospective employer will not check them out on Facebook is kidding themselves.
If I wanted my kids, mother, boss, friends and colleagues to know what I thought of that stuff, I would have been using my real name for years.
My guess is that commenting will slow to a trickle at TNJ site.
I’d rather see no comments in the NJ, than comments only from Facebookers.
Check out the sly last paragraph of the Huffpo post on Pat Robinson:
Yeah, that clip doesn’t do the Alzheimer’s thing justice. WTF does “til death do us part” mean if not that? And if it is a kind of death, is euthanasia OK at that point? Cause, I mean, they’re already “mostly dead” (if they were all the way dead, there’s only one thing to do… Go through their pockets and look for loose change).
And how does one mesh this total BS description of Alzheimer’s and Terry Schiavo?
The big question for Romney – what’s on his birth certificate? Maybe Orly Taitz should demand to see it.
I’d rather see Mitt’s income tax returns.
Here’s one (of two, really?) NJ announcements of the changeover to FB comments.
The comments here are seriously entertaining. After making the NJ comments section one of the most toxic places in the Delaware web space, the usual suspects are getting their paranoid on. And complaining that their various and sundry conspiracy theories, talking points, bigotries and just plain vile attitudes were somehow committed to making sure public corruption saw the light of day. Hysterical.
Pretty funny. I think some of those hateful shut ins think that they were providing some public service. Well, the guy who observed that the NJ didn’t like what it was reading was probably mostly right.
A few points:
1. The FB comment conversion is a Gannett-wide program, not just something TNJ has decided to do randomly. See http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/urgent-gci-switching-all-sites-to.html
2. All this represents is a basic return to civility that newspapers used to have before the Internet. It applies the same type of standards to online commenting that apply to letters to the editor.
Thanks! There are a number of sites (blogs, in particular) that are using Facebook comments and it is interesting to see how sane the conversations are when actual names are attached to comments.
Funny, I was reading through the Gannett blog linked above, and all but one commenter was anonymous, even as they generally approved of the policy. Irony?
Heres the Dem’s new add on our boy Willard
mittvmitt.co