He's outraged, I tell you.

He thinks it is OUTRAGEOUS that AIG and other companies are being forced to cut executive compensation, even though those funds would come from the federal government.

The companies received bailouts from the United States treasury.

He thinks it's intolerable that the very companies that were saved by the corporate welfare are being told to trim upfront compensation for their executives, even though the same executives stand to make out even more grandly, should they turn their companies around, so that their company stocks rise.

I'm watching this hearing on C-SPAN, and frankly, it's making me ill.

He's against making them earn their money, by making their companies more valuable. He just wants to shovel federal money into their banks accounts.

This is the same Dan Burton that bragged in the nineties that he did target practice on melons representing the President of the United States. You know, Bill Clinton, that murdered youths on Arkansas railroad tracks.

This is the same congressman that consistently opposes increases of the minimum wage for American workers. Yet he opposes making multi-millionaire executives earn their money.

Is this why I am cynical?

"Younger and fresher," is exactly what has gotten them to where they are.

Playboy was a great magazine, from the fifties through the eighties. They offered intelligent articles on important issues, exclusive interviews with world-class leaders and intellects, and sexy photographs of some of the most beautiful women in the world.

Today's version of the magazine is vastly different. It's like Maxim with fake boobies.

They used to feature interviews, thousands and thousands of words long, with important figures like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter and Malcolm X. Nowadays, the Interview feature has been reduced to babbling nonsense from the likes of "The Rock" and Tom Green. (I had to google Drew Barrymore to remember Mr. Green's first name.)

I'm still a subscriber (because they have offered me very attractive rates), but I can't think of the last article in the rag that I found interesting. It's always very trivial stuff.

And the "playmates" aren't what they used to be either. I'm just not titillated by the Stepford Models they've been peddling. Go back and look at the models they featured in the eighties. Now, those were some sexy women. Not the prefabricated models of today.

I think they should bring back the great fiction by great authors, the great reports by great journalists, the great interviews of great (and infamous) public figures, and the beautiful models with great natural bodies. Unfortunately, it seems they are headed in the opposite direction. And that, as sure as hell, will be the final nail in the coffin of the Playboy empire.

We all know that a week or two ago, the state House of Representatives voted to "honor and commend" Miss USA California for her anti-gay marriage beliefs. What a joke.

Tuesday, the House failed to even bring up for debate the removal of the state sales tax on groceries, because it would result in a slight increase of income taxes on upper-income people.

That same day, the House passed a bill to put more people in prison, by making salvia divinorum a controlled substance.

That same day, the House passed a bill that would increase violent crime by making possession of sawed-off shotguns legal.

And as far as I can tell, the medical marijuana bill never even got out of committee.

So, let me get this straight. Our legislators want to commend a fake-boobed, nude model that lives three thousand miles away from here for her bigotry against gay people, deny medicine to sick people, throw free spirits into Folsom Prison, so their anal rapes can serve as reality-show fodder for MSNBC, protect rich people from paying a little more in taxes so that poor people continue to carry their burden, and allow criminals to carry easily-concealed deadly weapons with which to murder.

Have I got that right?

I know the majority claim to be Democrats, but god, have I said tonight how much I hate these people? What a bunch of backward-thinking buffoons!

When Bush was running for president in 2000, my judgment of him was correct. And yours probably was too.

Back then, I sized Bush up as a pampered scion of a treacherous old-money family, that had built its wealth upon the backs of others, intellectually bankrupt and unfeeling and uncaring.

History, I believe, has proven me correct.

Remember what the mainstream media were saying in 2003?

Remember what Chris Matthews said?


Remember what Gordon Liddy said on Matthews' show (and Matthews loved it!)


They were telling us to love Bush because maybe he had a big dick!




And remember what Brian Williams (now the top news guy in the country) said.


Greta took it even further.


The corporatists were having orgasms left and right, over this rich kid that had never accomplished a single thing on his own.

They were ready to crown George W. Bush the messiah.

I knew they were ridiculous then, and you probably did too.

We were right about George.

And I think I'm probably right about Barack, too.

Obama truly is a uniter.

He's not a homophobe. He's not a racist. And he's no hater. Despite what you may read here.

Obama is a brilliant man, that deserves our support.

I was correct about Bush, and I'm confident I'm correct about Barack Obama, too.

I got the quotes from:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200604270005

On "Morning Joe."

Have our standards sunk so low as to have Mike Barnicle as our arbiter of ethics and "taste?"

Mike Barnicle was reprimanded for fabricating a story about children with cancer. And, in a separate instance, he plagiarized jokes from one of George Carlin's books.

Yet, one of the biggest companies in the world still has him on speaking for "the blue-collar man."

And I remember him, I think it was in 2004, going on-air, on MSNBC, to do his best to humiliate the members of a Frank Luntz (deserving, himself, of a separate post) focus-group by comparing its members to "the bar scene in Star Wars." That was in criticism of their physical appearance.

Does that s.o.b. think he's "hot?"

And the group, Olbermann included, if I recall correctly, chuckled in quite the unison.

While I congratulate MSNBC for providing a platform for voices like Olbermann and Maddow, I must question their ethics, when they pay what is at least a six-figure salary to this person to comment of the ethics or morality of anyone.

Barnicle, despite his manufactured image of a blue-collar amigo, is the epitome of the coziness that we must expunge from the national press corps. He is a blight and a scourge.

And he, and those like him, must be obliterated from the national scene. The sooner the better.

First, let me say that I'm in favor of the "Big 3" bailout, as long as it is in the form of a loan, not a grant. It is imperative for our economy that we salvage a manufacturing base. And I hope that soon-to-be President Obama adopts policies that will get America manufacturing even more durable goods soon. A "first-world" economy simply cannot be sustained with shady accounting tricks, and three-card monte banking practices, like we've seen in the past twenty years, or more. (And, yes, I'm including President Clinton in my criticism.) It's a house of cards, that appears to be on the verge on collapse. Secondly, I'm very skeptical of the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. The administration says they haven't even kept track of where all that money (a whole lot of money) is going. I strongly suspect, but obviously can't prove, that a healthy portion of that dough is going into the Bush family's offshore accounts. (Please, please look into that President Obama.)

Sorry, got off on a tangent there.

I was impressed with something Senator Bernie Sanders said not long ago. He was talking about bailing out Wall Street firms, because "they are too big to fail." Meaning our national economy could be crippled by the failure of just one or two corporations.


I couldn't agree more. The economy of a country as big and ostensibly prosperous as the United States shouldn't be held hostage by one company, or by one handful of companies. That's insanity.

Yet, we've learned that the Wall Street giants are using their portion of the bailout billions not to "un-freeze" lending, but rather to buy up their competitors. That, for the American taxpayer, is throwing good money after bad.

I'm not a particular cheerleader for capitalism. It does seem to be the best system there is, however, if it is properly regulated. It has gotten totally out of control in the United States though.

We cannot allow corporations to get so big that the failure of one company, or two, will sink our entire economy.

I say we bail out General Motors, on the condition that they are split into several different companies. Buick, Inc. Cadillac, Inc. Chevrolet, Inc. Saturn, Inc. Etc.

Same for Ford, and Chrysler.

And while I'm raving and ranting, why did the federal government spend years and millions of dollars to bust up AT&T, only to allow twenty-two years later, AT&T to re-swallow BellSouth?



Bust the trusts! And down with corporate person-hood!

We've been brought to this verge of a new Great Depression by Republicans, and New Democrats, that have sold out the future of this country for short-term personal gain and glory. They don't care about the country. They only care about themselves. They just thought that the chickens would come home to roost after they were safely dead. Guess what. The piper wants to be paid much sooner than they ever expected.

There's been a lot made, in the national mass-media, and even here on DU, of the supposed "fact" that Barack Obama received only one in ten "white" votes here in Alabama, for example.

Ten percent. One in ten.

The true number appears to be closer to 17% or 18%, up to maybe 20%.

I know that still isn't a huge percentage, but let's look at the facts.

John McCain won Alabama handily, at 59% to 39%. That's a healthy (for McCain) twenty-point margin.

But flash back to 2004. George Bush beat John Kerry 62% to 37%. That's an even healthier margin (for Bush), at 25%.

So statewide, Obama did 5 points better than John Kerry did last time around.

Flash forward again to 2008, and to Alabama's "whitest" county. Winston county in 97.9% white, and 0.6% black, according to 2006 Census Bureau estimates. Barack Obama received 17.5% of the vote in this whitest, and supposedly most insular, of all Alabama counties.

Before we get to the biggest county in the state, let me mention that I'm not aware of any particular surge here in black voter turnout, as compared to white voter turnout. Turnout was healthy, all around.

Jefferson County is the biggest county in the state. That's where Birmingham is. In 2004, George Bush won Jefferson by exactly nine points. In 2008, Barack Obama won Jefferson by 5.1%, 52.2% to 47.1%. I was pleasantly surprised by that result. I wasn't expecting Obama to take Jefferson County.

I'm not trying to convince anyone that Alabama is in any real way "liberal" or "progressive." It's obviously not. What I'm telling you is that real Southern Democrats, and liberals and progressives, did not abandon Obama because he is black. That is a lie being perpetuated by the mass media for their own benefit, whatever that mysterious benefit is.

Supposedly, it is for the same reason that they have bombarded us with Tim Russert's ludicrously simplistic conception of "blue states" and "red states."

Our American society is perhaps the most complicated society to ever exist on this blue earth. And for whatever reason, the Borg cannot resist the temptation to meddle in our apparent progress.

I remember vividly on election night, John King highlighting on his "magic map" a large swath of the South, in which he proclaimed "not a single county voted for Obama... A sad reminder of Jim Crow..."

Sadly, I laughed at his ignorance (or was it?) when he displayed his electronic wonder, with vast stretches of majority African-American counties tinted in Russert's red crayon.

I knew instantly that John King was either an over-paid hack of astounding ignorance, or a willing accomplice to the continued sowing of ignorance. (To what ends, I'm still trying to determine, exactly.)

And along these lines, Bill Maher owes an apology to the people of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and we are still waiting.


Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee. These are not liberal paradises. I, for one, have never claimed them to be. But I'm telling you that the VAST majority of voters that would vote against a candidate because of his or her race already belong to the Republican party.

The Deep South is a conservative region by-and-large. Even the African-American population down here is more conservative, at least socially, than you may realize. I don't like it anymore than you do.

I've reached middle-age, as difficult as it is for me to believe. Schools here were still racially segregated just a few years before I started going to school. I didn't realize all that stuff when I was a kid. I had a black "girlfriend" in the first grade. I didn't know at the time, that a few years earlier, me and her would have been shipped off to different schools just because of our skin. But I know that history now.

I want to see more progress before I die. I think it is important to push back against these "memes" that paint the Deep South as some alien culture. Down here, we still have plenty of problems. On that scale, religious fundamentalism (among both white and black folk) is far ahead of any systemic racism.

I'm just trying to help some of you understand the South. It's not quite the way you think it is.

We're happy because Obama won, and we're going to change.

But as they got their coats from the bed, the Republicans drowned the government in the bathtub.

And as they go out the door, they're stealing the silverware.

Trillions of dollars worth of silverware.

Silverware that we'll never be able to replace.

I just came across an interesting article by Gore Vidal, written shortly before 9/11. It is, this month, an archive feature on Vanity Fair's website.

To be clear, the Oklahoma City bombing was heinous, no matter the specific circumstances of the plan to carry it out. However, Vidal points out a number of things that were done, and a number of things that were said, that, especially with the Bush administration's record largely in the rear-view mirror, make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

He quotes Bill Clinton a couple of times. Clinton spoke words that many of us would have protested, had they come from the mouth of George Bush.



He quotes former CIA director William Colby talking about the "militia movement."


Does that description remind you of anything in particular?

He mentions a letter that McVeigh wrote to his sister, in which he tells her that he has joined a “Special Forces Group involved in criminal activity.”

Gore Vidal writes about the clear suppression of evidence in the McVeigh case by the federal government, and about how the government was so surely wrong in its handling of the Ruby Ridge and Waco situations. He writes clearly (though I admit that a few of his literary references fly about a mile over my head), about a federal government that is becoming more and more authoritarian, under the guise of protecting the American people. And, remember, this was written before 9/11 and all the Bush legislation that followed.

Read the full article here.

That was a Kerry sign.

Now, in Alabama, it's been up for four days, with no problems.

And it's a black guy!

I went by to get a yard sign. They were out of them. I'm okay with that, it just shows they are in demand.

The HQ is located in an otherwise unoccupied house, just off the busiest street in town. And the place was absolutely packed. I asked what was going on. I was told that they were training poll watchers. I recognized a few of the people there, though I couldn't put names to the faces. They were lawyers that I've seen at the courthouse.

I never saw anything remotely like this in 2004 or 2000. It made me really excited to see so much activity there. The Obama campaign is dead serious about protecting the integrity of the election, and that makes me really proud and happy!

I don't think I have.

Last night Campbell Brown and Jon Stewart seemed to agree that, at least in "prime time," MSNBC represents the "far left," and that their hosts (Keith and Rachel) are somehow equivalent to their FOX counterparts.

Excuse me, but I guess my Kool-Aid must have had some tequila mixed in.

Are you telling me that the mere act of refuting right-wing lies is equivalent to spreading right-wing lies?

I admit that I expect Olbermann and Maddow to vote for Obama. But I cannot, for the life of me, recall even one time that either one of them have advocated any "far left" positions.

Can anyone?

Can anyone tell me how Olbermann or Maddow have come even close to the partisanship of O'Reilly?

If not, how can Jon Stewart come so close to endorsing that absurd point of view?

The last time the United States elected a new Democratic president was in the year 1992.

That was also the last time the Alabama Crimson Tide won the national championship in football.

As an Alabama football fan, I'm not quite ready to say that Alabama is the best team in college football, in only Coach Nick Saban's second season at the helm. But CBS Sports is predicting that they reach the title game against Oklahoma.


http://www.sportsline.com/collegefootball/...

I'm not superstitious. And I am worried about the Tide facing an undefeated Kentucky Wildcats team this Saturday. It could turn into a "trap game," much like tomorrow night's debate with Ms. Palin.

But I would love the symmetry of Obama winning the presidency just before another unlikely Alabama championship.

Last time, 'Bama beat Miami for the honors. This time, the game is in Miami.

I watched the replay of "Hannity And Colmes" because I had already seen the stuff on the other channels.

I was immensely amused by Hannity mocking Barack's "book knowledge." It reminded me of the parents of the dumb kids I went to school with. The parents would promote their kids by saying that they might not be "book smart" but they excelled in other ways.

I suspect that Hannity is one of those that isn't "book smart."

I just found this highly amusing. That, and that 86% of Fox viewers thought that McCain won the debate.

After a long time, all of a sudden.

Didn't our national debt just quadruple or something?

Did the government really buy AIG? Or was it the other way around?

I'm thinking of a word...