Weekend Open Thread
What’s on your mind?
The birthers have a new obsession. I’m beginning to think their obsession is rooted in something else…
The may be some new torture allegations in the much-delayed CIA report to be released soon. Remember, this is the report that Cheney says proves torture gave good information.
A long-suppressed report by the Central Intelligence Agency’s inspector general to be released next week reveals that CIA interrogators staged mock executions as part of the agency’s post-9/11 program to detain and question terror suspects, NEWSWEEK has learned.
According to two sources—one who has read a draft of the paper and one who was briefed on it—the report describes how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. According to the sources, who like others quoted in this article asked not to be named while discussing sensitive information, Nashiri’s interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him. “The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up,” said one of the sources. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with “imminent death.”
In the never-ending health insurance reform soap opera, a new idea has been floated: split the bill into two parts. One part would have the most popular parts of the legislation, the consumer protections, and the second part would have the budget measures, including the public option and Medicaid expansion.
Democrats hope a split-the-bill plan would speed up a vote and help President Barack Obama meet his goal of getting a final measure by year’s end.
Senators on the Finance Committee are pushing ahead with talks on a bipartisan bill. Democratic leaders say they hope those talks succeed but increasingly are preparing for the possibility that they do not.
Most legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, but certain budget-related measures can pass with 51 votes through a parliamentary maneuver called reconciliation.
I think this is the way to get the best bill possible. The Republicans won’t play ball with a bipartisan bill, or it will be so weak as to be useless. I think the popular part of the bill will get Republican support, especially ending the pre-existing condition discrimination. Before any Republicans start whining and calling this the “nuclear option,” remember – Bush’s tax cuts were passed through budget reconciliation (that’s why they sunset) and reconciliation was been used 25 times in 35 years. It’s not new. That won’t stop the Republican hissy fit, though.
LOL. Does anyone remember that Mark Sanford was writing a book?
Unfortunately for the publisher, Viking, the proofs for its Spring 2010 catalog had already gone to press, complete with a glowing write up of Within Our Means.
TPM has now obtained the entry from the catalog, which was apparently just released. Touting the book as “a conservative manifesto from one of the Republican Party’s rising stars,” the catalog anticipates “national publicity,” “author tour,” and “radio interview campaign.”
Sanford would have explained through “personal” examples “how the GOP went astray over the last eight years.” One can only imagine.
“Governor Sanford’s down-to-earth voice and common sense principles will give conservative readers a much-needed sense of hope,” the catalog promises.
Tags: Open Thread
That first link doesn’t work, UI.
Hey UI — your birthers link isn’t working…
Sorry, link fixed!
Cannot wait for the first Town Hall when a birther asks about that!
I’m starting to find it really distasteful to watch the extent that these teabaggers can be so easily played.
Oh, for the love of Christ!
Next video will be conservative cretin standing up in a Town Hall, holding up a plastic bag with their son’s foreskin in it, and screaming at the Republican congressman, “Where is Obama’s foreskin?”
Jack and Jill Politics breaks down the evidence showing that the modern GOP has become a cult. It is long, but worth every second.
http://cagle.com/working/090818/payne.jpg
A re-inflation of the housing bubble?
Redwaterlily reports that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to allow churches to hire homosexuals as clergy as long as they are in a committed relationships.
Bravo for one more step away from bigotry!
I have this disturbing image of Obama’s next town hall turning into some sort of Bizarro World Mardi Gras. “Show us your d*ck!” Secret Service should check people for beads.
Car buyers will have their last shot to take advantage of the $3,500 or $4,500 incentives Sunday and Monday. The wildly popular Cash for Clunkers program ends Monday night. Nearly 500,000 gas guzzlers are off the road. More fuel efficient cars are on the road. That’s a good thing. Was it perfect? No. Could it have been better? Maybe. But compared to the Bush Administrtion’s tax breaks to buy gas guzzlers and feed the oil industry and promote pollution, this is the kind of government action we need more of.
The program has led to notable economic gains. General Motors and Chrysler, fresh off government-led bankruptcies, have boosted production, along with Toyota, Ford and others. GM is rehiring more than 1,300 laid-off workers, Hyundai is bringing 3,000 workers back to an Alabama plant, and automakers are paying workers overtime to meet the demand.
America’s major auto companies are working furiously to design and build fuel efficient cars. We lost eight years under the Bush Administration because of misguided priorities. The Obama Administraton is reversing those failures and it is working.
Bush handed them a $17 billion check before leaving office. Obama put them back to work.
“It wasn’t from the same old playbook of ideas out there,” said Paul Weinstein Jr., who served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.
It’s called change and it worked.
EDITORIAL: Hurray for polar bears–Growing population negates climate-change hysteria
The Washington Times ^ | August 23, 2009 | Editorial
It’s a good time to be a polar bear. Unusually cool temperatures in the northern climes last winter produced thicker-than-usual polar ice. This gave the lucky bears an extra two weeks to roam the ice floes to hunt ringed seals. As a result, adult bears are better fed and more cubs are surviving their first year. The bears will go into the winter with greater energy stores, which will mean a better chance of survival and even more cubs.
~snip~
The global-warming religion is highly resistant to facts. This came home to us recently when Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat, told the Detroit News that global warming is increasing “volatility” in the atmosphere. “I feel it when I’m flying,” she claimed. “We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes.” The notion that Mrs. Stabenow can sense climate volatility while jetting about is risible, but the fact that she serves on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and is a leading proponent of the job-killing, growth-destroying cap-and-trade legislation is no laughing matter.
Compare the senator’s sensory perception to hard data. In the past three years, the number of hurricanes has fallen dramatically, and tropical-cyclone activity is at one of the lowest points in the last 50 years. We hope that facts such as thickening Arctic ice and decreasing climate volatility can overcome the almost mystical attachment some politicians have to global-warming orthodoxy.
LOL anoni.
Most Americans Expect Income-Tax Hike Under Obama
Gallup ^ | August 21, 2009 | Jeffrey M. Jones
Even a majority of lower-income Americans expect an increase. A new Gallup Poll finds that 68% of Americans believe their federal income taxes will be higher by the time Barack Obama’s first term as president ends. This includes 35% who say their taxes will be “a lot higher.” Obama campaigned on the promise that he would raise income taxes on only the wealthiest Americans. While Americans were not necessarily convinced of that at the time — in Gallup’s final 2008 pre-election poll, 49% thought their income taxes would be higher if Obama were…
Most Americans also believe in that funny little man in the sky they call God.
Your point, anoni?
Global Warming is a misnomer; it’s really Global Weather Weirdness.
But that may be too nuanced for our plain-speakin’, resident trolls.
Why is it you always have to be speak or write in a literal manner when it comes to conservatives? I thought that was just for prepubescent humans. lol
And whatever you call it — thinking that an editorial in the Washington Times (for heaven’s sake) provides proof of much is pretty trollish. When even the Washington Times won’t put that BS in the reported part of their paper, you know something’s wrong.
But that’s our anoni! Wrong or lying about everything.
The global climate deniers love to believe the ice is coming back. Nice try. It covers lots of surface in the winter, but it’s as thin as their intellectual credentials so it melts again in summer. Of course, their propaganda sources never tell them that, so they don’t know it.