Posted by JeffSingleton - Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 8:35 A

Obama and Blonde Politicians on the Tarmac

Some people on this corkboard might find this Maureen Dowd column amusing. I am not a huge fan of Dowd but sometimes she is off the charts funny, in a weird sort of way...

"WHAT is it with Barack Obama’s penchant for getting in tangles with blond politicians on airport tarmacs?.....":

http://www.nytimes.c...the-tarmac.html?_r=1

I hope this does not ignite more Obama versus Bush stuff unless someone has something dramatically new to say in that area,
 

Posted by MikeNaughton - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 10:26 P

New sales tax

"... yet again someone from the conservative contingent has posted angry words ..."

Methinks this gives conservatives a bad name. Based on this and other threads, newbie seems like a whiner who looks for reasons to be angry at the world around him/her. To me, newbie comes across simply as a malcontent grumbler ....
 

Posted by mark2 - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 9:08 P

New sales tax

Careful Newbie. You could surpass me in the pissing people off department. :) ahh the memories. Lol
 

Posted by mark2 - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 8:30 P

The great speech

It would appear that Obama has figured out what this country needs, a leader who really cares about the little guy. It looks like he really cares and has clue how to fix what's wrong. But.............he apparently needed 4 years to figure it out. Time for a change people, this guy is a lost cause. However, his charm and slick talking will get him re-elected again.
 

Posted by mik - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 5:16 P

New sales tax

Wow, Newbie. I guess we can't say what we think either? I thought this was a debate.

Also...

> Never try for am intellegent arguement with and UNARMED man.
> Looks like most of you folks are out of ammo.

I swear this is the very same thing you posted in one of your previous posts. Looks like YOU'RE out of ammo (and spell check, too! holy cow!).

http://www.montaguem...&cs=9&ID=32832&g=195
 

Posted by mik - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 5:11 P

New sales tax

Rob

> Some of us remain unemployed because we refuse to live in barracks
> to be roused out at midnight to work 12 hour shifts on the whim of a customer.
> ...
> God bless the corporations?

Agree, 100%, which is why I'm happy that "liberals" helped beat back the Robber Barron / Trusts of the late 19th century. I think we're heading there again, maybe. Will the Tea Party / Republicans save us from this fate again? No. They fight for corporation's rights. Not ours. Does Obama? Not as much as I'd like, but certainly more so. Ron Paul also seems to care, though he's very much going to try to throw the baby, the tub and the entire bathroom out with the bathwater. Who knows. Maybe that's what it'll take.
 

Posted by newbie - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 5:04 P

New sales tax

Watch yhe news and read a real paper. I suppose anything against YOUR thinkin is wrong. Like my pop used to say.. Never try for am intellegent arguement with and UNARMED man. Looks like most of you folks are out of ammo. Just keep givin away the store. Pretty soon the shelves. are empty. Just loke Obama wants.. Meanwhile keep your hands out of my pocket.
 

Posted by mik - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 4:42 P

New sales tax

Reminds me of a scene in War Horse between a foot soldier from England and another from Germany during WWI. They meet in the middle of a battle field between trenches to help release the horse who is entangled in the barbed wire. The German can speak English and the Englishman comments on this:

Englishman: "Hey, you speak English pretty good."

German man: "I speak English well."

It was pretty funny.


On a more serious, and topical note, the main problem I have with this thread is yet again someone from the conservative contingent has posted angry words about something someone is doing to take money from them and give it to the lazy illegals (free phones for welfare moms so they can order burritos?) , and when asked for source material to prove their claim ... nothing.
 

Posted by patrick - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 1:07 P

New sales tax

"puts there hands"
"there respective behinds"
"I AM GONNA BEACH"
"your one of em"

Dude, some attempt to write in actual English would be nice. Or maybe you're one of em illegals pickin peoples pockits and dont speak the language.
 

Posted by Rob - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 12:44 P

New sales tax

Some of us remain unemployed because we refuse to live in barracks to be roused out at midnight to work 12 hour shifts on the whim of a customer. Some of us have families that come before companies who want to promise customers guaranteed turnaround no matter the quantity or holidays involved. Companies do not want to give out benefits so they hire people as disposable interchangeable temporary workers with no respect for experience. To be hired on you have to have so many years of actual experience at half the pay the experience earned you five years ago.
I guess I could knuckle down and not watch my kids grow up and hope to see my grandkids when I retire. But I see today Friendlies as part of their bankruptcy restructuring is cutting benefits to their retirees. Maybe I won't be able to retire ever and left working temp jobs for minimum wage until I drop.
God bless the corporations?
 

Posted by mik - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 11:35 A

Comments by David Frum

Actually, except for the elite conservatives, the average middle-class conservative American probably won't even bother reading his article because it's just too long, and it's pointing out a core problem with the current political platform. And it's pointing blame at their favorite TV channel. Who would ever agree that their favorite channel is doing them harm -- and that their liberal friends / sparring acquaintances had been right all along?

The funny thing is Frum wants to get his party back to the good old days when they had real issues and weren't swayed by short term pop-screes. *AND* when they actually knew who the president of Uzbecki-becki-becki-becki-stan-stan was. I mean, the President of the United States should know who the other presidents of the world are, and understand how we fit into the global landscape, right? I want my president to be smarter than everyone else in the room. That's how we win. Who wants a dumb bully who just pushes everyone around. No one likes or respects that guy.
 

Posted by PaulK - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 11:22 A

Comments by David Frum

Mik, interesting comments by Frum. Unfortunately they will just be shrugged off by the very people already being lied to and manipulated by Fox and the talk radio blowhards. A new "fact" will emerge: that Frum is a pinko commie liberal socialist traitor with ties to Soros. And so it goes...
 

Posted by mik - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 10:14 A

Comments by David Frum

And here, for me, the ultimate point, by which most of the damage in the past 20 years have come from (other than Bush himself, but that's besides the point).

3. Fox News and Talk Radio

Extremism and conflict make for bad politics but great TV. Over the past two decades, conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment. An industry has grown up to serve that segment—and its stars have become the true thought leaders of the conservative world. The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). As a commercial proposition, this model has worked brilliantly in the Obama era. As journalism, not so much. As a tool of political mobilization, it backfires, by inciting followers to the point at which they force leaders into confrontations where everybody loses, like the summertime showdown over the debt ceiling.

But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama—whatever his policy ­errors—is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action ­phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) “the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.”

We used to say “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.” Now we are all entitled to our own facts, and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information.

When contemplating the ruthless brilliance of this system, it’s tempting to fall back on the theory that the GOP is masterminded by a cadre of sinister billionaires, deftly manipulating the political process for their own benefit. The billionaires do exist, and some do indeed attempt to influence the political process. The bizarre fiasco of campaign-finance reform has perversely empowered them to give unlimited funds anonymously to special entities that can spend limitlessly. (Thanks, Senator ­McCain! Nice job, Senator Feingold!) Yet, for the most part, these Republican billionaires are not acting cynically. They watch Fox News too, and they’re gripped by the same apocalyptic fears as the Republican base. In funding the tea-party movement, they are ­actually acting against their own longer-term interests, for it is the richest who have the most interest in political stability, which depends upon broad societal agreement that the existing distribution of rewards is fair and reasonable. If the social order comes to seem unjust to large numbers of people, what happens next will make Occupy Wall Street look like a street fair.

---

Well said, Mr. Frum. Something the Fox-haters have been saying for YEARS. Want to be entertained by the news and educated at the same time? Watch Jon Stewart and the Daily Show. Want to be entertained by the news and be dumbed-down and scared? Watch Fox. And now a conservative has come out and said it, too.

http://nymag.com/pri...-david-frum-2011-11/
 

Posted by thegarth - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 10:12 A

New sales tax

really? Do you "pay your own way" on everything? You know insurance is just spreading the risk around, right? or do you opt-out of health insurance and just pay whatever the hospitals ask of you? are you off-the-grid and don't drive anywhere? or are you using societal infrastructure just like everyone else?

We ALL pay more because people some people drive like idiots and some folks smoke and most people eat crap food.

And YES IT IS RACIST to start ranting about "healthcare for illegals" when that is NOT in fact being suggested AT ALL!

So show some proof or stop spewing lies.
 

Posted by mik - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 10:08 A

Comments by David Frum

Here's another. This is something that I've been shaking my head over for years and years -- how the poor and lower middle class can vote for Republicans, despite the fact that ultimately the party will only help the ultra-rich.

Yes, I know, in the end there is little difference between Republicans and Democrats in terms of how much money you wind up with, but on the surface, philosophically, Democrats are in it for the little person, not the tycoon.

Anyway, here are Frum's comments on that:

"1. Fiscal Austerity and Economic Stagnation

"We have entered an era in which politics increasingly revolves around the ugly question of who will bear how much pain. Conservative constituencies already see themselves as aggrieved victims of American government: They are the people who pay the taxes even as their “earned” benefits are siphoned off to provide welfare for the undeserving.

"The reality is, however, that the big winners in the American fiscal system are the rich, the old, the rural, and veterans—typically conservative constituencies. Squeezing the programs conservatives most dislike—PBS, the National Endowment for the Humanities, tax credits for the poor, the Department of Education, etc.—yields relatively little money. Any serious move to balance the budget, or even just reduce the deficit a little, must inevitably cut programs conservative voters do like: Medicare for current beneficiaries, farm subsidies, veterans’ benefits, and big tax loopholes like the mortgage-interest deduction and employer-provided health benefits.

"The rank and file of the GOP are therefore caught between their interests and their ideology—intensifying their suspicion that shadowy Washington elites are playing dirty tricks upon them."


... this, again, from a conservative writer for GW Bush.
 

Posted by mik - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 10:04 A

Comments by David Frum

Wow. This is from Frum's article in the NY Times. Frum, a conservative who worked for W Bush and has been a Republican all his adult life. This, from Frum.

"Conservatives have been driven to these fevered anxieties as much by their own trauma as by external events. In the aughts, Republicans held more power for longer than at any time since the twenties, yet the result was the weakest and least broadly shared economic expansion since World War II, followed by an economic crash and prolonged slump. Along the way, the GOP suffered two severe election defeats in 2006 and 2008. Imagine yourself a rank-and-file Republican in 2009: If you have not lost your job or your home, your savings have been sliced and your children cannot find work. Your retirement prospects have dimmed. Most of all, your neighbors blame you for all that has gone wrong in the country. There’s one thing you know for sure: None of this is your fault! And when the new president fails to deliver rapid recovery, he can be designated the target for everyone’s accumulated disappointment and rage. In the midst of economic wreckage, what relief to thrust all blame upon Barack Obama as the wrecker-in-chief.

"The Bush years cannot be repudiated, but the memory of them can be discarded to make way for a new and more radical ideology, assembled from bits of the old GOP platform that were once sublimated by the party elites but now roam the land freely: ultralibertarianism, crank monetary theories, populist fury, and paranoid visions of a Democratic Party controlled by ACORN and the New Black Panthers. For the past three years, the media have praised the enthusiasm and energy the tea party has brought to the GOP. Yet it’s telling that that movement has failed time and again to produce even a remotely credible candidate for president. Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich: The list of tea-party candidates reads like the early history of the U.S. space program, a series of humiliating fizzles and explosions that never achieved liftoff. A political movement that never took governing seriously was exploited by a succession of political entrepreneurs uninterested in governing—but all too interested in merchandising. Much as viewers tune in to American Idol to laugh at the inept, borderline dysfunctional early auditions, these tea-party champions provide a ghoulish type of news entertainment each time they reveal that they know nothing about public affairs and have never attempted to learn. But Cain’s gaffe on Libya or Perry’s brain freeze on the Department of Energy are not only indicators of bad leadership. They are indicators of a crisis of followership. The tea party never demanded knowledge or concern for governance, and so of course it never got them."
 

Posted by mik - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 9:52 A

Comments by David Frum

David Frum is a conservative writer, speech writer for Bush, and conservative pundit. Even he is complaining about Fox poisoning American culture. His last comments: "I will worry about my team."

http://front.moveon....ve-knowledge-system/

Conservative columnist David Frum, who was speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, blasted Fox News on Sunday for creating an “alternative knowledge system.”

In an article published by New York Magazine in late November, Frum had argued that conservative media like Fox News and talk radio “immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information.”

In an appearance on CNN Sunday, Frum cited claims made on Fox News that President Barack Obama was proposing a “new Christmas tree tax,” something that was found by both The Florida Times-Union and PolitiFact Oregon to be not true.

“It fed into a story about this Muslim-y kind of president trying to destroy a Christian holiday,” Frum explained to CNN’s Howard Kurtz. “To make this a ground for a cultural conflict, to create a sense in large numbers of people they are being persecuted and attacked at a time when the country is in so much trouble, that’s how this thing is fed.”

“The question is what is the impact on the viewer?” he continued. “And we know, for example, that people that watch a lot of Fox come away knowing a lot less about important world events. That’s a correlation that we know.”

Recent polling appears to back up Frum’s assertion.

Fairleigh Dickinson University found last month that “some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all.”

“For example, people who watch Fox News, the most popular of the 24-hour cable news networks, are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all (after controlling for other news sources, partisanship, education and other demographic factors),” they wrote. “Fox News watchers are also 6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government than those who watch no news.”

Here's the original article by Frum.

http://nymag.com/pri...-david-frum-2011-11/
 

Posted by mik - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 9:25 A

New sales tax

> I AM GONNA BEACH

Chuckle. I'd love to beach, too. Florida seems about right this time of year.

Anyway, I'm not finding anything on the net about a tax on soda and candy to pay for illegal immigrant health care. Can someone point me to an article or news story?

Or is this just another case of some random tax being connected to some other random hot button issue? For me I hate how property taxes are used to allow oil companies to pollute the environment!!!!!!!!! God, I can beach about that all day, unless it's on a beach near an oil company.
 

Posted by newbie - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 9:21 A

New sales tax

Racist my butt........ When ANYONE puts there hands in my pocket because they are too darn lazy to get off there respective behinds and pay thier OWN way I AM GONNA BEACH.. Ya don't like it tough noogies.. Ya must love givin away your money, OR your one of em pickin MY pocket !!!!!!!!!!!
 

Posted by thegarth - Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 8:55 A

New sales tax

actually the tax would have some earmarks for LEGAL immigrants and other citizens (NOT undocumented folks). Try to avoid the racist rhetoric please.
 

Posted by mik - Tue, Jan 24, 2012, 10:51 P

The great speech

I couldn't watch it. Pretty disappointed so far.
 

Posted by mik - Tue, Jan 24, 2012, 10:47 P

New sales tax

> ... under your heros plan ...

Who's hero?
 

Posted by mik - Tue, Jan 24, 2012, 10:46 P

New sales tax

Ok, so, what are you talking about then?
 

Posted by mark2 - Tue, Jan 24, 2012, 9:16 P

The great speech

Here we go with more rhetoric and promises. 4 more years!!!!
 

Posted by newbie - Tue, Jan 24, 2012, 9:00 P

New sales tax

Obamacare doesn't include the tax on water and juice. I was talking how under your heros plan, old folks are gonna get screwed.. And I can't see paying for any more giveaways... I WORK for what I have. House, health ins., food and cell phone. Whoops gonna miss his babble .. Have a nice nite..