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XOKCowboy's Journal
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/2... by NearlySomebody
Fri Jul 23, 2010 at 11:53:02 PM PDT
Wish I could write something in anger and disgust EVERY morning at 2AM then wake up at 7 and have my wife tell me I am on the rec list. Glad you all find this useful. I am just sick and tired of pussyfooting around HOW WE GOT INTO THIS MESS. For those of you who object to the salty language, my apologies. Please take it out, rinse and repeat. For those of you who asked about how it will affect my relationship with my family, worry not. My family, though politically divided, is big on love and understanding of each other. I have an awesome family. For those who asked if they could use parts of it, by all means, take it away.
For the past few years I have been getting email forwards from my dad. He always asks if they are true, and I always do a little bit of research and debunk them. And that was ok, if annoying. But I finally sent the email I have been fearing I would, and now I wonder about the repercussions.
The email came to my box with the note, "This will probably piss you off..." Good read and great rant about those chain emails we all seem to get forwarded sometimes.
http://crooksandliars.com/node/38535 From the moment he entered the White House, President Obama's attitude towards the crime, corruption and politicization of the Bush Justice Department has been to "look forward and not backwards." As we've seen for the third time in just the last several days, that's working out just fine for the Bush lawyers.
On Wednesday, prosecutor Nora Dannehy announced she would bring no charges against Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, Monica Goodling or any of the key players behind the purge of 9 U.S. attorneys. That scandal, part of a larger effort to target Democratic politicians and suppress Democratic voter turnout, will go unpunished despite the key roles of Rove and Miers, and the apparent perjury of former Attorney General Gonzales. Oh and now Bybee and Alberto (I don't recall remembering) Gonzales consider themselves victims. 
http://www.towleroad.com/2010/05/antigay-c... George Alan Rekers, a founding member of the Family Research Council with James Dobson and Amandi Nicholi Jr., was caught returning home from a European vacation in mid-April with a young man he hired on rentboy.com, the Miami New Times reports:
"On April 13, the "rent boy" (whom we'll call Lucien) arrived at Miami International Airport on Iberian Airlines Flight 6123, after a ten-day, fully subsidized trip to Europe. He was soon followed out of customs by an old man with an atavistic mustache and a desperate blond comb-over, pushing an overburdened baggage cart.
That man was George Alan Rekers, of North Miami — the callboy's client and, as it happens, one of America's most prominent anti-gay activists. Rekers, a Baptist minister who is a leading scholar for the Christian right, left the terminal with his gay escort, looking a bit discomfited when a picture of the two was snapped with a hot-pink digital camera.
Reached by New Times before a trip to Bermuda, Rekers said he learned Lucien was a prostitute only midway through their vacation. "I had surgery," Rekers said, "and I can't lift luggage. That's why I hired him." (Though medical problems didn't stop him from pushing the tottering baggage cart through MIA.) The louder they yell the more they have to hide. Excuse me while I enjoy a little schadenfreude.....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/c... Now, I never, ever, expected to find myself in a position where I could understand, from personal experience, the choices and temptations open to a man as rich as Lord Ashcroft. The fact remains that the first time I ever met my recently retired accountant, he put it to me point-blank: would I organise my money around my life, or my life around my money? If the latter, it was time to relocate to Ireland, Monaco, or possibly Belize.
I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.
A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug. A multi-millionaire who's been there. What's terrible is that the conditions she describes in Britain as a single parent are nothing compared to what poor, single mothers face here in the good ol' USA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWjZX57QQDY... TAP Portugal and ANA Airlines did something very special for their customers December 23rd in the middle of the Lisbon airport. Imagine what it took to pull this off. If this needs to be sent to the Lounge so be it but it made me smile. PS hat tip to Edward Kimmell for turning me on to it. Edited to correct the date.
The RW can have "You Lie" Wilson as their new hero. I've found mine.
http://www.uninsuredwristband.com / I saw this on Crooks&Liars.com. http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/sho... This is a project started in 2007 by Daric Cheshire, 36, an artist/business owner in Portland, Oregon, as a response to the ongoing health care crisis.
If you'll remember, there were a lot of causes using wristbands (such as the yellow "live strong" bands, etc.) at the time, and he thought it was a perfect way to illustrate the problem of the uninsured.
At the time he started the project, his own family was uninsured. The original concept: if people who actually are uninsured were to wear these wristbands, the rest of us lucky enough to have insurance would be able to see in daily life what a real problem it is - that it affects normal, everyday people like your grocery checker or your next door neighbor and not just marginalized groups like the homeless, or undocumented immigrants.
The response was enthusiastic, and it's grown to where the bands have been embraced by people who just want to draw attention to the problem, whether they're insured or not. As he puts it, the message of the band is: Go to the link to read more. I've ordered one. If you can't afford the $3.99 he'll send you one free. 
Every Mother's Day it really hits me how much I miss you. You passed away almost 11 years ago and I think you'd be proud of what I've done and the person I've become. I remember how exasperating you could be when I'd come visit. You'd give me a hard time about my smoking and my pot use and my "questionable friends" (it seems like all of my friends were "questionable" especially the female ones) but then you'd be proud of how clean my underwear was. I never regretted visiting you after I moved away but I always knew I was in for plenty of subtle criticism when I did. Now I know that you were just doing your job as a Mom. I also always knew that you loved me more than life itself.
The cancer took you away within a year of you getting those "belly aches". The doc gave you 4-5 months but you held out for over 11 months just so you could spend more time with the grandkids your ungrateful sons had finally given you a few years before. Plus you were always a tough ol' squaw. You had to be to endure the pain of the cancer. I remember you complaining about having to take the morphine because you didn't want to become a "drug addict". So typical.
I hear people complain about how their mothers hound them and try to micromanage their lives and how they "hate" them and I feel sorry for those people. I'd give anything to have just one more day with you Mom. I'd give anything to pick up my phone and hear "Why the hell haven't you called? What's wrong?". I'd give anything for one more hug.
I miss you Mom.
This is too good. We all know Scalia's public position about privacy laws (he hates them) and he was a staunch supporter of Bush's illegal data collection. Like all good Republicans though it's just OUR privacy he doesn't mind compromising. When it comes to his privacy that's a whole different matter. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/6... ! Here's where it gets really, really interesting: a Fordham University law professor, apparently unimpressed by Scalia's heaping piles of bullshit, decided that he'd take it directly to the old bastard. Hilarity ensued.
Every year, Fordham University Professor Joel Reidenberg teaches a class on Information Privacy Law. As a demonstration of the widespread availability of information on the Web, he usually asks his students to use free, publicly available tools to find out everything they can about him and compile a fact sheet.
But this year, Reidenberg decided to do something different, and give his students a new challenge:
This year, after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made public comments that seemingly may have questioned the need for more protection of private information, Reidenberg assigned the same project. Except this time Scalia was the subject, the prof explains to the ABA Journal in a telephone interview.
His class turned in a 15-page dossier that included not only Scalia's home address, home phone number and home value, but his food and movie preferences, his wife's personal e-mail address and photos of his grandchildren, reports Above the Law.
And, as Scalia himself made clear in a statement to Above the Law, he isn't happy about the invasion of his privacy. Like all good Republicans Scalia just blames the messenger and fails to get the point. The dossier collected was never published on the internet or distributed outside the classroom but it still incensed Scalia that they would invade his privacy. WhaddaDick!
When will there be a vote on the Senate Majority Leader? Harry's a nice guy and all of that but a terrible leader. His latest blunder about seating both/either Franken and Burris should be the last straw. We've got the majority and the presidency now. We deserve a strong SML.
Enough with the congratulatory and back slapping threads. Save them till Wednesday. It's not over till McGrumpy gives a concession speech. I know that things look very good right now but never underestimate how desperate the Neocons and Big Business are to keep power. Many of us here remember election night 2004.
Volunteer tomorrow if you can. Keep the faith one more day. Pray if that's your thing. Tomorrow night we can really celebrate.
As Kent Jones used to say Vigilance.
I'm sure that it's been posted before but I just saw it for the first time and if I just saw it there must be more who haven't seen it. It shows the true hope that Obama represents. As I said in another thread it looks like something Norman Rockwell would paint if he were alive today. 
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2008-08-07/... Thanks to DailyKos for pointing out this article in the Phoenix New Times by Amy Silverman who's been covering McCain and Arizona politics for 15 yrs. It's a great history detailing the Keating Scandal, McCain using Mo Udall's and Goldwater's good names to further his career then throwing them "under the bus", Cindy's drug addiction and associated fraud and extortion, everything. Very good read and I hope that it gets some MSM coverage.
You have got to see the new cover for next weeks New Yorker. John Aravosis is all over this at AmericaBlog http://www.americablog.com/2008/07/new-yor... This is what we have to deal with in America, as Democrats. A liberal media that bends over so far backwards to be "fair" that it becomes just as bad as FOX News. A liberal publication like the New Yorker thinks it's funny to make Mrs. Obama some radical black panther, Barack Obama basically a terrorist (you'll note that he looks just like Osama bin Laden on the wall), and they're even burning the American flag in the Oval Office (that's supposed to be the White House, get it?). They put Osama bin Laden on the wall of the Oval Office. And this is funny? Is the New Yorker so out of touch that they don't realize that much of America, or at least too much of America, harbors these very concerns about Obama and his wife? I'm sure the New Yorker thinks they're actually poking holes in the myth by making light of the stereotypes. Yeah, and tell us how this pokes fun at the stereotype? It reinforces it. And yet again, you'd never see them try anything like this with John McCain. God forbid you even ask a question about John McCain's experience, the media will destroy you. But paint Obama and his wife as America-hating flag-burning violent terrorists, and it's funny. I can't wait to hear what Mrs. Greenspan and Bob Schieffer over at NBC have to say about this. Somehow I'm betting their outrage won't be as great as when anyone questions Saint McCain. Oh how the east coast elite thinks that they're funny! It's a caricature, get it? It's making fun of the Neocons of course. People everywhere will get the joke right? It will be on the stands next week
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