Tuesday Open Thread

Filed in National by on May 25, 2010

Welcome to the Tuesday edition of your open thread. Congratulations to the Philadelphia Flyers, the Eastern Division Champions. The Flyers will face the Chicago Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup. Is it just me or does hockey season seem to last forever?

Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal was the overwhelming favorite to win the CT-Sen race until some allegations surfaced that he had exaggerated his military record. The Connecticut had two choices for a candidate to take on Blumenthal, multi-millionaire WWE executive Linda McMahon or former Congressman, Vietnam vet and former intelligence officer Rob Simmons. Guess who the Connecticut GOP chose?

Republican Rob Simmons called an end to his campaign for the U.S. Senate this morning, saying he could no longer hope to win his party’s nomination after losing the convention endorsement to newcomer Linda McMahon.

To stay in the race without it, he said this morning, would “equate to Pickett’s Charge.”

In an interview in the parking lot outside New London’s WXLM-FM radio, where Simmons first announced his decision to “scale back” his Senate campaign, the candidate said he was disappointed that convention delegates awarded the party endorsement to McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. who has pledged to spend as much as $50 million of her own money on the Senate race.

McMahon won the endorsement at the convention. Simmons had enough votes to force a primary but decided against it.

And another one from the “Fox is not news” file:

In his commencement address to graduating West Point cadets on Saturday, the President outlined his upcoming national security strategy that is focused on international cooperation to meet the nation’s security challenges. He also praised American troops for their performance in Iraq. “A lesser Army might have seen its spirit broken,” he said, adding that “through their competence and creativity and courage, we are poised to end our combat mission in Iraq this summer.” At that point, cadets and the audience applauded for at least 12 seconds (starting at roughly the 10:24 mark here). However, as Michael Moore observed, video from the speech on FoxNews.com edits out that applause entirely, making it appear as if Obama is bizarrely staring silently for a long period of time. The audio is cut (starting at the 0:44 mark) for the 12 seconds of applause, and then skips to another part of the speech. Watch it (the first clip is from FoxNews.com, the second clip is from WhiteHouse.gov):

Yeah, I can’t think of any reason why Fox would edit out the applause of military academy graduates when Obama says he’s going to end the Iraq War. Nice propaganda move Fox!

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Opinionated chemist, troublemaker, blogger on national and Delaware politics.

Comments (29)

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  1. I told you that Nikki Haley was playing with fire by calling the SC blogger a liar. He says he has proof:

    This morning, a post on Folks’ blog hinted that he had records of voluminous correspondence between Haley and himself.

    The post said: “That four-and-a-half year record of correspondence ended on Saturday, May 22, 2010 – three days ago – with a text message sent from Folks’ cell phone to Haley’s cell phone at 1:04 p.m. alerting her to the fact that he had been placed in a position where he felt that he had no choice but to address the rumors regarding their relationship on his website.

    “Those are the bookends … but what happened in the interim?

    A lot … stay tuned … .”

  2. Rush Limbaugh, man of the people.

    For one, Chafets exposes some disconnects between Limbaugh’s private life and public presence. Chafets has seen more of the pundit’s personal world than any other journalist, and reveals some distinctly grandiose tastes in this self-imagined tribune of Middle America.

    “Largely decorated by Limbaugh himself, [his Palm Beach house] reflects the things and places he has seen and admired. A massive chandelier in the dining room, for example, is a replica of the one that hung in the lobby of New York’s Plaza Hotel. The vast salon is meant to suggest Versailles. The main guest suite, which I didn’t visit, is an exact replica of the Presidential Suite at the Hotel George V in Paris. There is a full suit of armor on display, as well as a life-size oil painting of El Rushbo. Fragrant candles burned throughout the house, a daily home-from-the-wars ritual.”

  3. Brooke says:

    Happy towel day. Thank you, Douglas Adams. And happy geek day, commemorating the anniversary of the release of Star Wars in 1977.

    Which I saw on a date. So HA!

  4. Brooke says:

    I want to know that the people appearing in that film are union actors. Any bets?

  5. delacrat says:

    Serves Obomba right.

    If he had addressed the group (IVAW)- Iraq Veterans Against the War.
    It would have been given respectful coverage by a reputable news organization like DemocracyNow!

    He’ll never learn that groveling to pro-war elements only gets him a treated like the lickspittle that he is .

  6. cassandra m says:

    I don’t remember if anyone has posted this before, but this is whack enough for an encore if so: Science Tattoos

    Now that’s what I call commitment.

  7. RSmitty says:

    Cass – I think one or more of those pics may have been UI or FR. 😛

  8. cassandra m says:

    This guy may be the winner of Do You Want to Be A Wingnut? —

    North Carolina Republicans are circulating court documents that suggest a far-right Tea-Party-backed congressional candidate claimed to be the Messiah, tried to raise his stepfather from the dead, believed God would drop a 1,000-mile high pyramid as the New Jerusalem on Greenland, and found the Ark of the Covenant in Arizona.

  9. Geezer says:

    Oh, come on. Everybody knows the Ark of the Covenant is in Utah.

  10. anonone says:

    Obomba administration supports immunity for pedophiles. I am so not kidding.

    “The Obama administration in a brief to the Supreme Court has backed the Vatican’s claim of immunity from lawsuits arising from cases of sexual abuse by priests in the United States.”

    http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.48ccbdeaaf685b4c112dc4554a808ca0.961&show_article=1

  11. P.Schwartz says:

    Weasel words from Axelrod. “no evidence”

    “When the allegations were made, they were looked into. And there was no evidence of such a thing,” Axelrod said on CNN’s “John King USA.” Axelrod acknowledged that if White House officials dangled a job in front of Rep. Joe Sestak’s face to keep him away from challenging incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, that would “constitute a serious breach of the law.”

  12. liberalgeek says:

    A1 – is the Pope a pedophile if he has a pedophile in his employ? Nowhere in that article does it say that the pedophile priest is immune from prosecution. It is a matter of liability for the pedophiles employer. The question addressed is whether a priest works for the Holy See or if he works for the diocese.

    Ergo, your statement “Obomba administration supports immunity for pedophiles” is demonstrably false. I am sure many people will be surprised by that fact.

  13. P.Schwartz says:

    Was it racist when Pres Bush sent troops to our southern border and not to our northern border?

  14. Geezer says:

    Schwartz: So if there’s no evidence, you vote to convict anyway? Admit that in voir dire and you’re immediately bounced from the jury pool.

  15. P.Schwartz says:

    No Geezer, just poining out that Axelrodscumbag didn’t say “We did not offer Sestak a job” he used the weasel words “no evidence”.

    just like there is “no evidence” that he lied when he said he was hung like a horse… until we pull down his pants.

    there is no evidence… until there is.

  16. Geezer says:

    What, you think maybe the put it in writing? Such offers are made every day in politics — you know it, I know it, and the American people know it. Stop acting shocked, shocked.

  17. P.Schwartz says:

    So your opinion of the lawlessness of the Obama administration is on par with mine.

  18. delacrat says:

    Liberalgeek,

    Pedophile priests are not unique to a single diocese or even country. If the problem trancends geography, then the source of the problem likely transcends geography as well, which in this case suggests the Vatican.

    The Vatican remained silent as priests were transfered from one victim pool to another.

    For the Obomba to give immunity to an such an accessory after the fact is unconscionable.

  19. TC says:

    Yeah, Nikki Haley will fit the pattern we’ve seen for years: vehement denial followed by tearful confession. God, how many times do we have to (want?) to sit through this?

  20. Geezer says:

    TC: Until they stop dragging private morality into public politics.

  21. jason330 says:

    Be sure to tune into “C’mon Delaware with Jason & Donviti” tomorrow. Our special guest will be Delaware’s clueless, lazy ass State Auditor Tom Wagner who will tell us why he is the last to know about every bullshit scam that goes down in this bitch. Also, I’ll be putting Donviti on the therapy couch and checking out the execrable wingnut side of the DE blogosphere.

  22. anonone says:

    LG, the Catholic Church as an institution enabled, condoned, and covered-up child abuse for decades, if not centuries, as a matter of written policy coming from the senior leadership, including the current Pope. I do, in fact, regard persons or institutions who knowingly enable, condone, and cover-up pedophilia as co-conspirators in the abuse. And so does the law.

    To put it in a local perspective, it is as if the Catholic Church unleashed thousands of Dr. Bradleys on unsuspecting communities around the world and then covered-up and relocated them anytime one got caught.

    The fact is that the Obomba administration is seeking to deny the victims of these atrocities even the opportunity to have their day in court. It is the moral equivalent of granting a pardon and immunity to hundreds of Dr. Bradleys and those who enabled them. Even your question as to “whether a priest works for the Holy See or if he works for the diocese” is something that the courts should decide after hearing from both sides. Obomba is siding with the molesters over the molested to deny the abused children their day in court.

    How anybody here can defend that or even ignore it is beyond my comprehension. Delacrat used the right word: unconscionable.

  23. P.Schwartz says:

    Our enemies don’t need spies, they have the liberal media:

    Just another act of deadly treason
    NY Post ^ | May 25, 2010 | Ralph Peters

    Yesterday, The New York Times published another front-page article based on a leaked classified document. This time, it was an order signed by Gen. David Petraeus authorizing black operations against adversaries and such dubious friends as Iran, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

    Gee, thanks. We really needed to know that. The world’s a better place now.

    Yet the Times’ sin was the lesser one. The paper has long since given up any pretense of patriotism. (Ugh! Yuck!) Its editors are just publishing and perishing as citizens of the world.

    It’s whoever leaked the document that bears the burn-in-hell blame.

    We must be able to keep secrets in wartime. But we can’t. Because domestic political agendas trump national security in every administration nowadays.

    Al Qaeda Cleric: Washington Post Saved Me from Airstrike (!!!)
    Fox News ^ | May 25, 2010 | Fox News Wire

    Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born imam linked to the Fort Hood shooting spree in Texas in November, the botched Christmas Day airliner bombing, and the failed Times Square bombing early this month, credited the Washington Post with tipping him off and allowing him to elude a U.S. airstrike in Yemen in December.

    Most of the attention given to al-Awlaki’s lengthy interview in an al-Qaida video released Sunday has focused on his call to kill civilian Americans. But far more provocative is his revelation of how the U.S. media can inadvertently assist and protect al-Qaida terrorists.

    “I had posted an article of mine in support of what Nidal Hasan did,” al-Awlaki said in Arabic, referring to the Army major now charged with 13 murder counts in the Fort Hood massacre. “And so, they shut down my website.”

    Al-Awlaki added, “Then I read in the Washington Post that they were monitoring my communications. So I was forced to stop these communications. I left that region, and then the American air strikes took place.”

  24. liberalgeek says:

    A1 – you are a deranged zealot. The Vatican, whether or not you like it, is a sovereign nation and as such has some different connotations for the United States. The Vatican maintains that the priests are hired, fired and moved by the individual diocese. The solicitor general supports that assertion.

    For you to make a statement that this is in some way immunity to pedophiles says more about you than anyone else. I am glad that you are spending some time over at Briebart’s sites, though. You two would get along well these days, I suspect.

  25. anonone says:

    So I am a “deranged zealot” because I think that it is wrong for Obomba to lobby for immunity to pedophiles and to deny their victims their day in court.

    The Vatican was made a “sovereign nation” under a treaty signed by the Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini for his own political purposes. There is no reason to continue to recognize that treaty.

    Furthermore, just because “the Vatican maintains that the priests are hired, fired and moved by the individual diocese” does not mean that is the case. That should be decided in court. The facts show that there are many policy decisions made at the Vatican level that are essentially mandates, including, for example, the policy not to report child abuse to “secular authorities.”

    It is clearly “immunity to pedophiles” regardless of how else you try to frame it. The Pope himself has been linked to the decisions to cover-up the actions of pedophile priests in Ireland when he was in the Vatican. Obomba is seeking to deny the victims of pedophiles their right to a day in court. The solicitor general represents the the administration’s views.

  26. Geezer says:

    “Obomba is seeking to deny the victims of pedophiles their right to a day in court.”

    He also refuses to give everyone a unicorn.

  27. liberalgeek says:

    You are a deranged zealot because you mischaracterized the article that you posted so that you could lead people to think that Obama was supporting immunity to pedophiles. From your article:

    The solicitor general’s office, which defends the position of President Barack Obama’s administration before the Supreme Court, said the Ninth Circuit improperly found the case to be an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a 1976 federal law that sets limits on when other countries can face lawsuits in US courts.

    That is their position. It is a question of whether the Vatican is sovereign, and thus able to be sued in US courts, not whether they are culpable.

    Your argument is getting even more specious, since you are now saying that Obama is seeking immunity for child molesters because he doesn’t disregard the legal status of another nation.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_the_Holy_See

    You may argue with the legal status of the Vatican, but that argument does not lead directly to the binary support of molesters or victims.

    In short, bullshit.

  28. Delaware Dem says:

    I am copying and pasting this comment by Geek into the Wednesday Open Thread, where Anonone continues his tirade.