Good Morning

Good Morning,

I haven't posted in a while.

I suspended my blogging so I could spend time working on the financial crisis.

Tonight's debate should be interesting.

I've been watching clips of Sarah Palin, as I'm sure Biden has, and her patterns are becoming more and more apparent.

Of course, Biden has speech and logic patterns but they are far more sophisticated in nature than Palin's simply as a matter of substance and experience.

]

ACTION, DEMOCRATS. THE MORE THAT ARE REGISTERED, THE MORE VOTES FOR OBAMA !!!
"Our attention has been consumed with Wall Street drama and the comedy event of the season -- tonight's vice-presidential debate -- but many people don't realize that in most states if you're not registered to vote by Monday, you cannot vote for president in November. In some states, the deadline is as early as this Saturday!

Will you do me a favor? Beginning right now, will you start asking everyone you know if they are registered to vote? Before you say hello, will you ask, "Hey, are you registered to vote here in (name of town)? 'Cause the deadline is Monday, and you have to be registered where you live." (Click here to find out what the deadline is in your state and click here to find out what the procedures are to sign up and vote. If you are a college student and want to find out where your vote counts most, click here.)

For the next couple of days, each of us has to do whatever we can to get people registered. Especially people who have recently moved, or students who are at college (students can vote where they go to school). Obama's two strongest bases -- young people and African Americans -- are traditionally the two groups who have the lowest voter registration and the lowest voter turnout. For Obama to win, this must change -- and it has to change today or tomorrow, not next week.

So send an email to everyone in your address book and attach this link so they know how to register and what the deadline is. Call the local Obama headquarters or the NAACP or black pastors or student Dems and offer your time to register people this weekend. It's called "the ground game," and it's where we always lose to the Republicans. Each of us need to commit to doing something in the next 48 hours to get the unregistered registered.

The more enlightened states allow you to register the day you vote. But in most places the deadline to register is this Monday, October 6th at 5pm.

Thanks for taking the time to make sure everyone you know is registered, and for helping them out if they're not.

Yours,
Michael Moore

The one pattern of logic and speech that is the most obvious is that when Sarah Palin gets asked a question where she obviously doesn't know the answer instead of just passing, she rambles.

Her ramblings seem to tie in very basic right-wing slogans but at the same time they buy her time in hopes of convincing the listener that she has had some forethought about the issue.

Some past debaters have claimed that she is known to display a level of charm if given a chance to distract the listeners from the issues. And because this debate will be televised and the clips will be replayed over and over again for the politically interested this tactic may not have the effect she is hoping to accomplish.

I wouldn't at all be surprised that if the Palin debate becomes a disaster, the McCain/Palin camp will blame the moderators for being liberal.

McCain has been consistently blaming anyone and anything that doesn't stand in lockstep with his campaign.

I believe Palin's major pull is with disenfranchised conservative Republicans.

These are Republicans who have only two choices politically, either admit that the Republican agenda is a disaster or "stay the course".

This small minority of voters will vote for a Palin Vice Presidency even if Hitler were at the head of the ticket. There is really no point in convincing this group to vote for anyone who isn't branded as a loyal Republican.

The rest of America has a clear choice.

Change we can believe in.

Or

More of the Same.

Good morning, all!

I see the fact free troll is spouting FOX talking points about Kissinger not supporting talks with Iran.

ABC News' Rachel Martin Reports: Former U.S.Secretary of State Henry Kissinger today told an audience in Washington, DC that the U.S. should negotiate with Iran "without conditions" and that the next President should begin such negotiations at a high level.

The former Nixon and Ford U.S. Secretary of State early in the year indicated his belief that the U.S. should hold direct talks with Iran when speaking to Bloomberg Television.

Kissinger Backs Direct Talks 'Without Conditions' with Iran

September 15, 2008 6:16 PM

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said the U.S. should negotiate directly with Iran over its nuclear program and other bilateral issues.

"One should be prepared to negotiate, and I think we should be prepared to negotiate about Iran," Kissinger, who brokered the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur war and peace talks with the North Vietnamese, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Asked whether he meant the U.S. should hold direct talks, Kissinger, 84, responded: "Yes, I think we should."

There has been no response so far from Iran, he said.

"I've been in semi-private, totally private talks with Iranians," he said. "They've had put before them approaches that with a little flexibility on their part would, in my view, surely lead to negotiations." He didn't elaborate on who was engaged in the talks.

Kissinger backs direct U.S. talks with Iran

Here is the video:

Henry Kissinger: High Level Negotiations with Iran

I think the Obama camp should request that they pull Gwen Ifill as moderator and place someone else in there. McCain will say that what's her name was treated badly because it was moderated by a liberal...

I wouldn't want to see Fox News, Hanniety and Limball get their panties in a wad over this....

Anyway - last minute change would probably be bad for what's her name but Biden could handle it...

I also think Biden should be on guard tonight - what's her name will probably try something to throw him off - like crying????? -- because the questions are too hard?

I do believe that tonight's debate is the make it or break time for McCain/Palin.

The rest of the debates will only reinforce the obvious.

Palin won't have loyal/faithful neo-cons in the audience to cheer her on.

Her substance will be the deciding factor in convincing Americans to stand behind her right-wing principles, while either ignoring or minimalizing progressive thinking and degrading all things liberal.

Good morning fellow Democrats.

Yes we can!

Si se puede!

Change we can believe in!

Fight the Smears!

Palin may have a chance at continuing this charade but there is a strong suspicion tonight will only accentuate the claim that she is completely out of her league and she shouldn't have even be elected governor of Alaska.

My guess is that Rove was unsuccessful at buying the questions for tonights debate. So now they are looking stupid, again, by bringing up something that is irrelivent and that they should have already known if they weren't soo sloppy.

The McCain Campaign is a direct reflection of how the country would be run under McCain. Barack's campaign has been run as smooth as silk.

The country is ready for a smooth ride.

Good morning, all.

It's positively "cold" and sunny this morning here in the Mississippi Valley. The trees are just beginning to turn colors.

Great news. My son won an obstructed-view ticket to the debate tonight in a student lottery at the university. It will be a funny story he'll be telling people about for the rest of his life...if the lovely Sarah doesn't disappoint.

It will be sort of like the funny stories people shared with us earlier this week in Branson, MO. We decided to take a short get-a-way and visit Roy Blunt country. Having an Obama bumper sticker on your car maybe was not the wisest thing in the world to do. But what the heck, we wanted to hear some kick ass bluegrass and have some great country cooking.

Let me tell you, folks, there may be trouble for the GOP in Southwest Missouri. The locals were not offended by our Obama buttons at all. They were actually interested in hearing why we are voting for him and Joe.

The Southern Baptist Church group from Texas that we sat among at a music concert was telling us about Obama's white grandparents...really. They knew his bio and were engaged by it.

There seemed to be a definite attempt by those who shouldn't be interested in Obama to find a way to accommodate their feelings toward him. No mentions about Muslims or the Rev. Wright came up with the regular people whom we shared tables with or sat with on trams.

Part of the reason for this I believe is McCain. Nobody likes him. He's really screwed up big time.

We talked to people from all over the country at this tourist mecca...but most were from within the Midwest and were seniors. They weren't hostile towards Obama as we thought they might be. A lot of the Undecided were actually open and inquiring.

Most of them will probably not vote for Obama, I realize this. But they are giving him the benefit of a doubt. As one older man said to me, "He carries himself well."

The Independents are clearly looking for something to pin their future on. So please keep working the phones and canvassing.

P.S. With all the talk about Palin's charisma, I think people are forgetting Joe's easy middle class sense of humor and warm personal story of loss and renewal. His life has been a true love story. I hope he shares some of it with us again tonight.

I am speechless and utterly disgusted that the Senate of this country cannot pass a bill that supposedly will prevent a total meltdown of our economic system without having to add tons of pork to the package.

Sandy - that's good to know that you weren't tossed out on your butt. I spend a few weeks in northern Wisconsin and all I saw were Obama signs - every where. But McCain was running ads almost 4 to 1.

I'm beginning to see more and more Obama yard signs in northern Indiana these days too. There was a report in the newspaper yesterday that Obama signs were coming up missing... guess the rednecks up here are out at night causing some problems.

Lunch time...

t

StewartT on October 2, 2008 at 10:36 AM

StewartT,

Palin will do O.K. if she remembers where she's at and acts accordingly. She can't be giving a stump speech which is what the GOP Base would love. If she acts like a bull dog in this format, she's going to look ridiculous to the Undecided.

But I do not underestimate the stupidity of the McCain camp. They seem to see every media appearance as an opportunity to go on the attack or pull a stunt. But then I suppose they can't let her just be herself either. That hasn't worked out well.

My guess is that we will get a well trained, well rehearsed candidate that doesn't act like a maverick or a Hockey Mom. So what does she have to offer that Romney or Huckabee wouldn't have been better choice?

Neo-Cons are out with a warning to moderator Gwen Ifil, because of the book she authored, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." A McCain senior adviser suggested if there were too many foreign policy questions, they would be "ready to pounce." In other words, if she asks too many questions Palin can't answer it's because of Ifil's questions, not Palin's lack of experience, knowledge, expertise, or simple intellect.

Here's some areas that have been approved for Ifil to cover with Palin: Moose Hunting from airplanes, PTA's, childrens' hockey, out-of-wedlock grandmotherhood, graduating college in five years through five different changes of college, beauty pageantry, telling lies about bridges, ducking ethics investigations after saying you'll cooperate, not being able to name one newspaper, book or magazine she's read lately, knowledge of the Supreme Court, talking in tounges, being cleansed of witches, inability to answer a simple question coherently.

OR THIS: Look into the camera and for the next five minutes convince the American Public that you are prepared, today, to be President of the United States.

CalDemo on October 2, 2008 at 12:15 PM

Caldemo,

Find a scapegoat. That's always the GOP strategy. Ifil could ask her about anything and it would be wrong. The fact that the RNC has already started the attacks on the moderator and not the opponent says everything.

Screwum on October 2, 2008 at 11:51 AM

Kathy,

Obama is up in Missouri right now. This happened with Kerry, too, but his campaign pulled out before their staff could capitalize on the late bump. They are actually expanding operations right now in our state. I'm encouraged by the number of volunteers and registrations efforts.

The Senate Plan

There are some good and maybe not-as-good items coming out of the Senate's "bailout" or "rescue" plan. Some of the so-called "pork" or "sweetners" that were added to get it passed don't look so bad:

Business tax breaks, including production investment in and use of renewable fuels

Require group health plans to include mental health and addiction treatment

Saving more than 20 million taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax

Tax relief to victims of natural disasters

Extended funding to rural schools and certain low tax base localities

Extend to end of '09 deduction for state and local general sales taxes

Extend to end of '09 tax breaks for higher education costs and teacher personal expenses

Increase FDIC insurance from $100K to $250K

Guess it can be said that one person's pork can be another person's beef. If this is what it takes to get the bill passed in the House, demos should be all over it and let the neo-cons gripe and moan all they want.

Funny how the neo-cons can't just go ahead and do what McCain tells them to do. Guess he's just another paper tiger, like Bush!

They were actually interested in hearing why we are voting for him and Joe. Posted by SandyH on October 2, 2008 at 11:35 AM

Either they were just being polite, or else theyd never seen a couple of liberal aliens before.

SandyH

Congrats to your son's ticket to the debate, those are opportunities we only get occasionally in our lifetime. Been to MO, first time in that area of the country and was very impressed. Great people out there too. Our daughter's family was there in missionary training.

Reasons some people give to not supporting Obama are a little hard to understand. My Obama lawn sign faces my neighbor's tri-fecta of car stickers: a Catholic radio station ad, a McCain/Palin sticker and a "No" on Prop 8, the anti-gay marriage proposition here in CA.

Older Americans (and I guess I qualify), should be attracted to Obama, if only for the sake of our children and grandchildren. We had to help our newlywed son a few years back, pay for medical insurance. His family lived with us several months so they could save money to get into a decent rental, largely because of their out-of-pocket health care costs.

Seniors should be worried about McCain's healh care plans, his privatization ideas about social security, his determination to cut what neo-cons like to refer to as "welfare state programs." Those programs include medi-care, prescription drug assistance, in-home health care, etc.

Every tax break he wants to extend to the wealthy or increase for the oil and other industries comes at a cost, and basically what's left are necessary social programs, that at least were deemed necessary at one time. And those populist promises of McCain are falacious, he couldn't get anything of the nature passed by his own right wing, conservative, party that will fight tooth and nail to preserve the interests of the socially and economically elite.

I want in a President someone who is intelligent, like Obama. I want someone who understands the interests and has lived the life of the middle class, like Obama. I want a President who is likely to be heard and welcomed in countries other than our own, like Obama.

Global Warming Alarmism is Unacceptable and Should be Confronted

Address by Vaclav Klaus

Many thanks for the invitation and for the opportunity to be here with all of you. I have visited the U.S. many times since the fall of communism in November 1989 when � after almost half a century - traveling to the free world became for people like me possible again, but I�ve never been to this beautiful city and to the state of Oregon before. Once again, thank you very much.

image

I am expected to talk here about global warming today (even though I don’t really feel it, especially not in this room) and my address will be devoted mostly to this issue. As you may expect Oregon is - for me - in this respect connected with the well-known Oregon petition which warned and keeps warning against the irrationality and one-sidedness of the global warming campaign. Rational people know that the warming we experience is well within the range of what seems to have been a natural fluctuation over the last ten thousand years. We should keep saying this very loudly.

Before I start talking about this issue, I would like to put the topic of my today’s speech into the broader perspective. During my visits in the U.S. in the last 19 years, I made speeches on a wide range of topics. There has, however, always been a connection between them. They were all about freedom and about threats endangering it. My today’s speech will not be different. I will try to argue and to convince you that even the global warming issue is about freedom. It is not about temperature or CO2. It is, therefore, not necessary to discuss either climatology, or any other related natural science but the implications of the global warming panic upon us, upon our freedom, our prosperity, our institutions and our legislation. It is part of a bigger story.

Vaclav Klaus is the current President of the Czech Republic. He gave this speech at the Hilton Hotel in Portland, Oregon on September 2008

I wonder how many of our staunch liberal trolls have invested money(secretly) in Halliburton, walmart, lockheed, Boeing and other such companies.
It would really be interesting to know, because then you would know just WHO is not a true liberal.

??

Global climate is always changing. It has always been so, and it is bound to continue changing long after man has come and gone. As the global climate changes, so does the distribution of temperature and atmospheric gas composition around and about the Earth. And the converse is also true. For whatever reasons yet to be learned by scientific study, changes in the Earth’s temperature and atmospheric composition will lead to global climate changes regardless of what the Sun is doing. If sufficient authority to pronounce the causes of global climate is not yet at hand, there is certainly no illegitimate authority for regimenting human behavior presumed to cause it. It is now widely believed that the climate of the earth is warming and that such warming is a threat to life on the planet. It is also believed that this global-warming is caused by a so-called greenhouse effect exacerbated by the presence of an excess of CO2 in the atmosphere put there by promiscuous human activity. Alarm over the dreaded greenhouse effect is spreading rapidly throughout the population via the mass media. A political stampede toward the enforcement of draconian CO2 abatement measures in society is in the making. The sky is falling. Look out below! "In 1991, the volcanic eruption at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines put more carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere than did the whole human race during the most recent century of the industrial era." This statement provoked queries from several thoughtful readers asking for sources, which proves LewRockwell.com readers are paying attention. Thus prompted, I proceeded to examine the Pinatubo event more carefully. I found an authoritative report on the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo event, which estimated this eruption put 921 megatons of H2O vapor and 234 megatons of CO2 gas into the atmosphere. If so, Pinatubo emitted in a matter of days about 1% of the CO2 emitted by the whole human race in the year 2003.

ya, I know already, some doofus lib is going to say that Al gore says erupting volcanoes is caused by global warming. Which in turn causes more global warming and we´re all gonna croak because Uncle AL says so

SCREW UNCLE AL!!!!!

The "Abundance of scientific statements" that you mention as justification of your belief in 'global warming' is no sound or logical basis for deciding or believing anything. The question is whether the scientific statements have any rational justification, and whether those making them are in effect making statements that are political rather than scientific, rent-seeking rather than objective. After all, this is the age of reason (or it was). Therefore, one should not accord to "scientists" the status of infallible high priests merely because they mumble a hieratic language with which one is unfamiliar. There is clear, compelling evidence that many of the major conclusions of the IPCC, your new religion's constantly-changing Holy Book, are based on evidence that has been fabricated. The "hockey stick" graph that purported to abolish the mediaeval warm period is just one example. So let me try to lure you away from feeble-minded, religious belief in the Church of "Global Warming" and back towards the use of the faculty of reason.

Let us begin with the "devastation of New Orleans" that you mention. Even the High Priests of your Church are entirely clear that individual extreme-weather events such as Hurricane Katrina cannot, repeat cannot, be attributed to "global warming". Even the Holy Book makes this entirely plain. There was one priest - Emanuel (a good, religious name) - who had suggested there might be a link between "global warming" and hurricanes; but he has recently recanted, at least to some extent. Very nearly all others in the hierarchy of your Church are clear that ascribing individual extreme-weather events to "global warming" is impossible. Why? Well, let's take the question of landfalling Atlantic hurricanes such as Katrina. The implication of your attribution of Hurricane Katrina to "global warming" is twofold: that "global warming" is happening, and that in consequence either the frequency or the intensity of tropical weather systems such as hurricanes is increasing. Neither of these propositions is true.

Yes, there has been "global warming" for 300 years, since the end of the 60-year period of unusually low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum (after the celebrated solar scientist-photographer who studied it). But there has been no net warming since 1995, and Keenlyside et al, in the theological journal Nature a few months ago, say they do not expect a new record year for global temperatures until 2015 at the earliest. If these theologians are correct, there will have been a D There is clear, compelling evidence that many of the major conclusions of the IPCC are based on evidence that has been fabricated. The "hockey stick" graph that purported to abolish the mediaeval warm period is just one example. 20-year period of no net "global warming" even though the presence of the devil Siotu in the ether grows inexorably stronger. And, secondly, the number of Atlantic hurricanes making landfall has actually fallen throughout the 20th century, even as temperatures have risen. Indeed, some theologians have argued that warmer weather actually reduces the temperature differential between sea and sky that generates hurricanes, reducing their frequency, and that the extra heat in the coupled ocean-atmosphere system increases wind-shear in tropical storms, tending to reduce their intensity. Certainly the frequency of intense tropical cyclones has fallen throughout the 30-year satellite record, even though temperatures have increased compared with 30 years ago. Also, the damage done by Hurricane Katrina was chiefly caused by the failure of the Democrat-led city administration to heed repeated warnings from the Corps of Engineers that the levees needed to be strengthened.

Next, you mention the recent hurricane damage at Galveston, and you imply that this is something new and terrible. Perhaps you would like to do some research of your own to verify whether the High Priests of your Church, some of whom have blamed the Galveston incident on the wrath of the devil Siotu, are likely to be telling the truth. And how, you may ask, may a non-theologian such as yourself argue theology with your High Priests? Well, the Galveston incident will give you just one indication of the many ways in which a lay member of the Church of "Global Warming" may verify for himself whether or not the Great Druids of his religion are speaking the truth from their pulpits in the media. Cast your eye back just over a century, to 1906, and look up what happened to Galveston then. Which was worse - Galveston 2008 or Galveston 1906? Next, check the global mean surface temperature in 1906: many theology faculties compile surface temperature data and make it publicly available to the faithful and to infidels alike. Was the global mean surface temperature significantly lower or significantly higher in 2008 than in 1906? What implications do your two answers have for your proposition that Galveston 2008 can be attributed to "global warming"?

Next, you mention fires in California. Once again, you can either sit slumped in your pew, gazing in adoration at the Archdruids as their pious faces flicker across your television screen, or you can do a little research for yourself. It may, for instance, occur to you to ask whether droughts were worse in the United States in the second half of the 20th century than they were in the first half. Once again, you may want to check with your local theological faculty to obtain the answer to this question. Or you may like to pick up a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. And you may want to verify whether temperatures in the second half of the 20th century were warmer than in the first half. Once again, what are the implications of your two answers for your proposition that "global warming" is causing forest fires? You could also talk to the Fire Department in California and obtain its data on the causes of forest fires. You might be mightily surprised by the answers you get.

Next, you talk of beetles in your forests destroying natural resources. Here, you could ask the Druids just a couple of simple questions. What evidence do they have, if any, that whichever species of beetle you have in mind has not wrought havoc in the forests before? And, even if your clergy think that they have evidence that the beetle-damage is new, what evidence do they have, if any, that the beetle-damage is greater because of "global warming" than it would otherwise have been? Of course, you could ask them the wider question what evidence there is that anthropogenic "global warming", as opposed to solar warming, is the reason for the temperature increases that have occurred over the past 300 years. The more honest parish priests will admit that for 250 of the past 300 years none of the inferred warming can be attributed to human industry. They will also be compelled to concede, if you press them, that the warming of the most recent 50 years has not occurred at a rate any greater than that which was observed before, so that it is in fact very difficult to discern any anthropogenic signal at all in the temperature record.

Next, you talk of people migrating from one place to another because in some places water has become scarce. Once again, it is easy for a layman, whether a true believer such as yourself or not, to verify whether such migrations are as a result of "global warming". For instance, you could ask whether there have been changing patterns of drought and flood before in human history. Once you have collected some historical data - most theological faculties have quite a lot of this available, though you may have to dig a little to get it - you could compare previous migrations with those of which you now speak. And you could also ask your local imam whether a theological phenomenon known as the Clausius-Clapeyron relation mandates that, as the atmosphere warms, the carrying-capacity of the space occupied by the atmosphere for water vapor decreases, remains static, or increases near-exponentially. Once you have found the answers to these not particularly difficult questions, you may like to spend some of your devotional time meditating on the question whether, or to what extent, the changes in patterns of flood and drought that have occurred in the past give you any confidence that such changes occurring today are either worse than those in the past or attributable to "global warming", whether caused by the increasing presence of the devil Siotu in the atmosphere or by the natural evolution of the climate. During your meditation, you may like to refer to the passage from the 2001 edition of the Holy Book of the IPCC that describes the climate as "a complex, non-linear, chaotic object" whose long-term future evolution cannot reliably be predicted. For 250 of the past 300 years none of the inferred warming can be attributed to human industry, and the warming of the most recent 50 years has not occurred at a rate any greater than that which was observed before, so that it is in fact very difficult to discern any anthropogenic signal at all in the temperature record.

If you are willing to reflect a little on the questions I have raised - and, with the exception of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, I have done my best to avoid anything that might be too technical for a layman to find out for himself - you will perhaps come to realize that there is very little basis in scientific fact for the alarmist, hellfire preaching in which your clergy love to indulge. And you may even find your faith in your new religion beginning to weaken a little in the face of the truths that you will have unearthed by the not particularly difficult process of simply checking those statements of your lamas that you can easily and independently verify. There are, of course, many environmental problems posed by the astonishing recent success of humankind. If you were concerned, for instance, about deforestation, or the loss of species whose habitats have been displaced by humans, then your concerns would have a good grounding in fact. But, given the abject failure of global temperatures to rise as the Druids had forecast, it must surely be clear to you that the influence of the devil Siotu on global temperatures - your theologians call this "climate sensitivity" - must be a great deal smaller than your Holy Book asks you to believe.

Finally, you may wonder why I have so scathingly described your pious belief in your new religion as founded upon blind faith rather than upon the light of reason. I have drafted this missive in this way so that you can perhaps come to see for yourself just how baffling it is to the likes of me, who were educated in the light of TH Huxley's dictum that the first duty of the scientist is skepticism, to see how easily your hierarchy is able to prey upon your naive credulity. I do not target this comment at you alone: there are far too many others who, like you, are in positions of some authority and whose duty to think these things through logically is great, and yet who simply fail to ask even the most elementary and blindingly obvious questions before sappily, happily, clappily believing in, and parroting by rote, whatever the current Establishment proposes. I do not know whether you merely believe all that you are told by the Druids because otherwise 6 you will find yourself in conflict with other true believers among your colleagues or, worse, among your superiors. If you are under pressures of this kind, I do sympathize. But if you are free to think for yourself without penalty, may I beg you - in the name of humanity - to give the use of reason a try?

Why "in the name of humanity"? Because, although the noisy preachers from the media pulpits have found it expedient not to say so, there have been food riots all round the world as the biofuel scam whipped up by the High Priests of your religion takes vast tracts of agricultural land out of food production. Millions are now starving because the price of food has doubled in little more than a year. A leaked report by theWorld Bank says that fully three-quarters of that doubling has occurred as a direct result of the biofuel scam. So your religion is causing mass starvation in faraway countries, and is even causing hardship to the poorest in your own country. Can you, in conscience, look away from the sufferings that your beliefs are inflicting upon the poorest and most helpless people in the world?

-Monckton of Brenchley Christopher Monckton was policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher as UK Prime Minister and has lectured on climate at university physics departments and at corporate meetings.

Isn't this special?

Report: Gingrich Stabbed Boehner In Back, Whipped GOP Opposition To Bailout

Sam Stein
September 30, 2008

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was working aggressively behind the scenes to defeat the Wall Street rescue plan minutes before he himself released a public statement in support of the package, NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported on Tuesday.

Gingrich was whipping up votes for the opposition, Mitchell said, apparently without the knowledge of the current GOP leader, John Boehner, who was responsible for recruiting enough support from his caucus to help ensure the bill's passage. Ultimately, the GOP was only able to rally roughly a third of its members.

"Newt Gingrich," she said on MSNBC, "I am told reliably by leading Republicans who are close to him, he was whipping against this up until the last minute when he issued that face-saving statement. Newt Gingrich was telling people in the strongest possible language that this was a terrible deal, not only that it was a terrible deal, it was a disaster, it was the end of democracy as we know, it was socialism -- and then at the last minute [he] comes out with a statement when the vote is already in place."

Indeed, as Mitchell noted, shortly before the bill's failure, Gingrich "reluctantly" came out in favor of its passage: "Therefore, while I am discouraged at the final collapse of the Bush Administration, and frustrated by the Democrats' passion for the taxpayer's money, I would reluctantly and sadly vote for the bailout were I still in office."

The rest of the set of Morning Joe had some interesting takes on the news nugget. Joe Scarborough called Gingrich's backstabbing of John Boehner "undercutting his own."

Mike Barnicle offered his own bit of reportorial insight: "Andrea, I could hug you for saying that, because I was told last night by two or they members of Congress that this was the opening salvo of Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign four years hence."

And Mika Brzezinski summed it up succinctly: "Talk about a crap sandwich," a reference to how Boehner described the bailout bill.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/30/report-gingrich-stabbed-b_n_130487.html

(Emphasis mine.)

I didn't know about Newt's involvement. Looks like the GOP was trying to have it both ways so they would have some cover for their incumbents in November. So Newt was running interference for McCain's Good Old Boys to give themselves some distance from Bush?

And apparently Newt saved face just in time. It now appears that there really is a growing crisis for state and local governments which are having trouble raising bond money for infrastructure projects. Our foreign lenders are not showing up for the auctions.

Who would have guessed? Apparently, Newt Gingrich for one. The Republicans have been all over the map on this latest conservative disaster. The GOP showed that they didn't know what happened or how to fix it...without playing politics aka Gingrich and McCain.

While our Democrats displayed a strong oversight role in this crisis. We have shown voters that we have the common sense and steady hand to handle whatever fallout the Bush Crime Family's Reign of Terror leaves behind.

Oh, give it a rest will you. Take a Krispy Kreme break.

You always go back to changing the subject with bogus arguments over abortion or global warming when you trolls don't want to face real problems like the current economic meltdown or the foreign entangelment in Iraq.

Guess what? Nobody will care whether you Republicans get tasered in a shelter the next time there is another Category 4 hurricane. You deserve whatever you get for burdening this country with your failed policies.

Village of the Obamatrons: Pyongyang Remix

neo_con on October 2, 2008 at 01:23 PM

Talk about conspiracy theories. Don't judge us by our own low standards.

Sandy, whatcha doing in this thread? Ya know there's a new one that opened about two hours ago, dontcha?

CalDemo on October 2, 2008 at 01:11 PM

Caldemo,

Those so called tax breaks never filter down to the middle class or working poor. They always pop up as higher fees and new forms of taxation often tacked on in the form of inflation, less services, or poor maintenance/neglect.

Everything is falling apart because of the excesses of the Republicans. Not only couldn't they contain themselves with no-bid privatization contracts...they went way overboard with pork spending that they have always attributed to only Democrats.

That fallacy has been debunked for all time now.

The Bush Era has proven again that Republican ideology doesn't work and leads to greed and corruption...and especially incompetence. Every generation has to re-learn what everyone has always known: Republicans are in it for themselves.

GregL on October 2, 2008 at 02:30 PM

Nope, I'm multi-tasking and trying to catch up from being away for several days. Thanks for the heads up.