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November 06, 2009 04:32 PM UTC

Open Line Friday!

  • 79 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Can I be honest about something? For twenty-one years, whenever something like the New York race happens, ‘Hey, Limbaugh bombs out, Limbaugh blew it, Limbaugh rejected by New York-23.’ When Clinton was elected: ‘Limbaugh rejected, what’s Limbaugh gonna talk about?’ And I’m still here, more popular than ever terms of ratings.”

–Rush Limbaugh

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79 thoughts on “Open Line Friday!”

    1. The American Soldier held captive by the Taliban? The Army has not only forgotten about him, they tried to cut him loose the first moment he was captured (claiming he deserted by walking off.)

      I’ve heard they’ve dropped propaganda leaflets that have two messages – one, that he’s a guest, but two, that the Army is looking for him, and they’ll frag whoever has him.

      It’s been 5 months – some journalists have been held longer. Problem is, he’s a great propaganda tool for the Taliban and A-Q – “look how well we’re treating the Crusader. Not like our brothers in Bagram and Guantanamo.”

  3. POTUS to weigh in shortly on the following

    http://www.denverpost.com/ci_1…

    Nearly 16 million people can’t find jobs even though the worst recession since the Great Depression has apparently ended. Many economists worry that persistently high unemployment could undermine the recovery by restraining consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy.

    But what about that $787,000,000,000?

    One sign of how hard it still is to find a job: the number of Americans who have been out of work for six months or longer rose to 5.6 million, a record. They comprise 35.6 percent of the unemployed population, matching a record set last month.

    POTUS has one of the toughest jobs, we need to help him by encouraging properly formed policies that lead to sustainable private sector job growth.

    Although our legislative and administrative leaders parade about spouting business principles and economic development, their actions continually focus on warped policies that will create some new government program to lead the way.  Get out of the way and keep your house in order is the message voters sent on Tuesday.

    1. God, how can you be such a maroon?

      Private enterprise got us in this mess because without regulation and oversight, this is ALWAYS the result; huge cyclical swings in the economy.

      Businesses cannot hire if there isn’t business to be had, to say nothing of loans being unavailable.

      Only your dreaded government has the means to borrow on the markets and then hire, yes, private companies to do work. No government “warped program,” no hiring.

      And let’s not forget all the safety net – thank you FDR, JFK, LBJ – programs that have kept monies flowing into the economy that didn’t exist at the time of The First Republican Great Depression.  

      As to yesterday, yawn. Seats always change hands.  The media and the Pubs are giddy thinking they’ve turned things around.  Don’t forget, Dems picked up seats, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside in the euphoria.

      And further, the Pubs will pick up more seats in 2010.  It always happens.  It means nothing for 2012.

      1. Not happy about people being out of work.

        Very, very unhappy at the fact that we just went almost a trillion dollars into debt with an ill-conceived ‘stimulus’ plan that was rushed through a vote without being read.

        This isn’t Bush’s recession.  Not anymore.

        1. Exactly which conditions caused this recession? It wasn’t anything that’s happened in the past 10 months.

          It is W’s recession.  If the banks hadn’t been encouraged to go nuts- not only financing a housing bubble, but being allowed to drop the Glass-Stegall (Lotsa blame to go around here) divisions so that the banks could bet the house in the secondary market.

          Comments have been casual so far, but estimates are for every hundred dollars of mortgage debt, there was only $10 or $20 of assets backing the paper in secondary. In some cases, less (Lehman)

          So, techincally, I don’t blame Bush. I blame Greenspan.  But the President has to step up and claim everything that happened or not on his watch.  The conditions that allowed the current recession were three:

          – banks run amok

          – two debt financed wars

          – W was an idiot.

          Ok – it was really only the first, two, but I haven’t typed that last in a long time.

      2. If you’d running MS-13, Russian Mafia or a Chinese Triad you might see opportunity for loan sharking or earning from a new US government program.

        All Americans need to help POTUS by encouraging properly formed policies that lead to sustainable private sector job growth, economic growth, less cost shifting and small/more effective government.

  4. As we enter the weekend we will witness the swearing in of 2 new Democratic Congressmen needed by Speaker Pelosi to corner the American Taxpayer with her plan to insert another new government program that in many peoples opinion will lead to job loss, massive cost shifting, rising premium rates and new taxes.

    Democratic brothers and sisters…take 4:37 minutes and listen to this doctor and legislator.

        1. But their cost estimate is $61 billion vs the trillions for the Pelosi plan (CBO/CMS still doesn’t have a number yet according to The Hill).

          Worse yet by noon Sunday the catholics will be going batshit crazy

          Denver Archbishop Chaput says promises were broken on abortion

          http://www.denverpost.com/ci_1…

              1. Just my guess, coming from a churchgoing Catholic family and Catholic school myself.

                There should be some sort of name for us, by sheer virtue that there are so many.

                Also, I don’t see anywhere where Aristotle ID’ himself as Catholic anyway…

                4. .

                  he seemed to say that many folks in the Denver area consider themselves Catholic, but reject the idea that the Archbishop has authority to teach or set norms.  

                  Them’s the folks I’d call “ethnic Catholic” if it made any sense.  I wouldn’t call them real Catholics.  

                  Not being a “real” Catholic is not intended as a put-down.  I think its an adult responsibility to think deeply about epistemology and eschatology and the various religions Man has developed to sort things out, and even more so to think about what constitutes a life well-lived.  Great literature and classical philosophy testify to the range of alternatives developed so far by people of spirituality.  

                  I can see how thin the reeds are that my particular choice hangs from.  How can I know for certain that there was a historical Jesus, for example.  

                  The Christian “Great Commission” is to ensure you’ve heard my version of the Good News.  I don’t need you to make the same choice to validate mine.  I recognize that you don’t need me to validate yours.  

                  I think that when a person consciously rejects Catholicism it could be for good reasons or bad reasons.  Being mad at your parents is not such a good reason.  Questioning if a loving God would permit thus and such might be part of a good reason.  Rejecting troglodyte doctrine as being contrary to the Essence, pretty good reason.  Having taken a faith journey and found what is in your heart to be counter to some core Catholic teachings is an excellent reason.  

                  Of course, you know I’m going to spin this to my advantage.  I think that a person who does that level of soul-searching and rejects the Catholic Church, but then embraces the eternal Truth that the Church may have strayed from, that really makes you a better Christian than me, maybe.

                  The folks I’m not as respectful of are the ones that don’t ever examine their humanity or their divinity.  Like some teenagers who reject their parent’s faith tradition as a way to assert independence, but never get around, at some later time, to doing the examination or contemplation that is essential to self-awareness.  

                  Don’t get me wrong: I see no possibility of abortion ever being OK, and I will never agree with you on that.  But if you’ve considered the matter deeply, that’s all I can ask.

                  .

                  1. I challenged you on the thread about abortions and health care….and per usual, you fade from a tough question….and instead, set yourself up to  pass judgement on others…really pisses me off…

                    you catholic men have a real problem….in order to have any authority, you have to be a celibate…no sex. (although there are those who argue that many priests manage to use the former to get the later),  If you want to have sex, then you can’t have any authority with real catholics….so I presume you get your rocks off lecturing to the likes of us …..

                    spare me the lecture about gentlemen lay priests or whatever…

                    I really resent your use of this blog for your religious beliefs,  I think it is inappropriate.

                    1. .

                      In the thread that said that the Catholic Church opposed health care reform, the statement was edited to change the meaning that was clearly conveyed in the full quote higher in the diary.  The Church clearly said to oppose reform if it included funding for abortion.  The “if it included funding for abortion” part was removed.

                      The posts along those lines – Church opposed reform – were plainly false.  I should bother telling someone multiple times that they are falsifying things ?  To what point ?

                      .

                    2. If the Church opposed any health care reform that contained the letter “e” in the bill, would it be false to state, simply, that the Church opposed health care reform? Or if the Church opposed health care reform that had provisions for reducing costs, increasing accessability, and improving the quality of health outcomes, would it be false to state that they oppose health care reform? They are opposing health care reform that has something they object to in it: That’s true of anyone who opposes it. And it doesn’t change the fact that they are opposing it.

                      “Falsifying” is an interesting concept: You claim, for instance, that the Church only opposes health care reform that includes funding for abortion. But the church includes funding for services that counsel prospective parents about the legal and medical options available to them as “funding for abortion.” That sounds like a bit of falsification to me.

                      And such counseling, for many, is as difficult to leave out of any ethical health care package as it is difficult to leave out the letter “e” from any printed version of it.

                  2. You’re engaging people in discourse, and that’s fine.

                    You said, “Like some teenagers who reject their parent’s faith tradition as a way to assert independence, but never get around, at some later time, to doing the examination or contemplation that is essential to self-awareness.”

                    If a child is raised to believe in “Secular Humanism,” and, asserting their independence, becomes a Catholic, do you withhold respect for them if they do not reconsider the Secular Humanism that they rejected?

                    You’ve referred to my “religion” at times, and I’ve taken no issue with it, because I agree completely that my cosmology is just as rich, and subtle, and spiritually gratifying, and morally informative as any established religion on Earth. It draws on all the world’s literary and philosophical tradiions (including Christianity), as well as on all the sciences, and on the sheer wonder of being a conscious being left to ponder an infinite and sublime reality.

                    To put it in your terms, the folks I’m most respectful of are the ones who recognize a world of ideas, and eschew the inherent fallacy and hubris of assuming they belong to a tribe or culture that has discovered the exclusive truth that others have failed to discover (Christianity, by the way, emerged as one of a class of competing “Mystery Cults” in the Graeco-Roman world, promising special benefits to those who are initiated into the mysteries of the cult).

                    We live in a world of tribes and nations and civilizations that have developed various cosmologies, various mythologies, various religions, some purporting to coexist with others, some purporting to be exclusive of others. The three great monotheistic religions took the latter route (“Catholic,” after all, means “universal”). The word “ethnocentrism” refers precisely to that tendency of believing that the absolute truth generated by one’s own culture is superior to the absolute truths generated by other cultures.

                    Christians do not hold the Koran or the Torah, let alone the Vedas, or the Tao Te Ching, to be “true” in the same way that the Bible is, not because the Bible is actually more true, but because (most commonly) they were socialized into the culture that holds the Bible to be more true (on the margins, there is the expansion of religion, based on missionary activity, and the appeal of new religions offered by people with seemingly greater power, which extends proselytizing religions into new territories, often with the help of colonization and conquest). This is rather blaringly obvious from even a passing glance at human history, let alone an in-depth examination of it.

                    The most godly of people are probably those who take their gods least literally, for they are those who recognize the sublime and irreducible nature of that which is referred to as “God,” and the political and historical (and tribalistic) nature of the trappings that we build around that concept.

              2. Chaput is a reactionary.  Where was he last year on the Death Penalty, does he threaten to withhold communion when politicians support the Iraq war?

                1.    Because of the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church, the vow of obedience that the clergy take, and the concept of infallability of the pope, there isn’t supposed to be differences of opinion, at least not on the important stuff.

                    If there is dissent, there are ways of handling that.

                    4. .

                      http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

                      Seemingly about a conference in the former Papal residence on how to tell the common folk about extraterrestrials, and the implications for Earth-centric Christianity, when those darn NASA folks eventually turn up more advanced life forms than us.

                      Getting out in front of a potential PR disaster.

                      .

      2. is fast becoming a lost cause for the GOP:

        When John Boehner, the Republican leader of the House, appeared at the Tea Party rally at the Capitol on Thursday afternoon, it was a dramatic signal: The wing-nuts have taken over the GOP.

        Think I’m being harsh? The angry folks at the protest — which attracted several thousand conservatives — held up signs with messages of hate: “Get the Red Out of the White House,” “Waterboard Congress,” “Ken-ya Trust Obama?” One called the president a “Traitor to the U.S. Constitution.” Another sign showed pictures of dead bodies at the Dachau concentration camp and compared health care reform to the Holocaust. A different placard depicted Obama as Sambo. Yes, Sambo. Another read, “Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds” — a reference to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory holding that one evil Jewish family has manipulated events around the globe for decades.

        All of this extremism was on display — proudly — at an event that was officially sponsored by the House Republicans.

        More at:  

        http://www.politicsdaily.com/2…

            1. .

              Jews are treated bad wherever they go.  As a result, they look out for each other.  Pretty soon, their businesses prosper because of the tribal support system “island” in a sea of others.

              Some of those others who are not prospering get jealous.  They wonder: we ostracize and repress these strangers, and yet they not only survive, they prosper.  

              Out come the pitchforks.

              .

              1. is that I keep getting left off the mailing list.  So far I haven’t seen the slightest material benefit from what ought to be my fair share in wealth and world domination.  If anyone can get me hooked up with those Rothchilds and /or the Elders of Zion, I’d so appreciate it.  

              2. I don’t think that’s why Jews achieve success.

                I think it’s more along the lines that Jews understand that much of the world is biased against them. Rather than just roll over, I think it fosters a notion that you’ll just have to work harder to get ahead. This manifests itself in Jews placing high value on education, hard work, material success.

                1. My grandfather used to say, ‘they can take your property, they can take your dignity, they can take your life, but they can’t take your education.’

                  1. It’s not at all evangelical. Converting to Judaism is a long, hard road.

                    Interfaith marriages used to be very strongly discouraged. Today? not so much.

                    So, Judaism starts to look like a wealthy, insular club that you can’t join.

                    [BTW, sorry for the late response. Maybe you’ll see it at some future date.]

                1. what might be termed “disproportionate success” among Jews (it’s important to remember that there are plenty of relatively poor Jews, even in the United States) in academia and business shouldn’t be ignored:

                  1) An ancient historical emphasis on literacy and talmudic study, which easily translates into placing a strong emphasis on modern academic achievement, and

                  2) The medieveal European phenomenon of the Church prohibiting Christians from performing certain essential financial functions, and so leaving those functions to Jews to perform, leading to a high degree of expertise in such functions being embedded in the Jewish community.

        1. The IRS takes returns at face value, and collects (or refunds) based on your filed return. The IRS audits returns on a select basis. Cheat a little, you get spanked. Cheat a lot (Wesley Snipes style) and you got to jail.

          We can make the assumption you’re telling the truth about your taxes, but we won’t make the assumption you’re telling the truth about getting hurt while in the military?

          1. In both cases, large amounts of revenue are implicated (in one case, in the form of lost revenue coming in, and in the other in the form of lost revenue going out).

            To play devil’s advocate (and not to imply that it is certain that the folloiwng argument is decisive), there appears to be an evidentiary difference between the two: If the IRS audits you, evidence of having cheated is relatively unambiguous and easy to find, whereas if you are lying about a disability claim, it is often very hard to determine both whether the disability actually exists, and whether (if not) you were intentionally lying or merely interpreting subjective states in ways more conducive to your self-interest than either the medical establishment or a broader social consensus is willing to support.

            Combining the large amount of revenue implicated, and the evidentiary problem that incentivizes more cheating in the case of falsing reporting a disability than is incentivized in the case of tax evasion, your suggestion might be too logistically difficult to accomplish.

          2. ….finds someone disabled based purely on someone’s application for disability.  Don’t they require some sort of medical evidence?  To meet some sort of legal definition of disability?  I should hope so, else they are fools.

            1. IN the first one when the android does the thing with the knife?

              It’s like that. The VA gives you a magic dagger- you do the finger dance.  If you succeed- you get $108/mo.  If not- well you were lying whaddaya expect to get?

          3. are good, honest, hard working people

            And we vets- ….well, I’ll speak for me and the ones I hang with:

            we fucking swear

            we’ve seen and done stuff

            We stand on a wall and say- no one’s going to hurt you, not on my watch

            What’s my point? I don’t have one. I often have no point- it’s part of my charm.

  6. Dow Jones Newswires:

    The number of U.S. oil and natural-gas drilling rigs in operation rose sequentially last month, according to Baker Hughes Inc. (BHI), though they remained down by nearly half from a year earlier as low prices and ample supply continue to damp drilling demand. The oil-field services provider said the U.S. rig count rose 3.5% to 1,044 in October from 1,009 in September but remained off by 47% from 1,976 a year earlier. The number of rigs drilling for oil in the U.S. has been increasing as energy producers move to take advantage of oil futures prices, which have more than doubled since February.

    1. He is being honest.  He really doesn’t care who wins or loses as long as he continues to get the ratings and the dough. This is Rush admitting that he couldn’t care less about politics or the state of his country.  It’s just show biz.

      1. Rush is about ratings and cash.

        He’s a product.

        That’s why I know his bs whining about the NFL was an act.  He knows the League is just as concerned about their own ratings and their product.  

  9. He’s in the news again.  Colorado Springs’ favorite evangelical christian conservative  is started a prayer group meeting at his home.

    http://www.denverpost.com/colo…

    No word on whether Mike Jones has been asked to come over with his massage table to help with this spiritually uplifting experience.

    2. .

      in a post earlier this week, as a way to reconcile with any of my friends here that were offended by my religious rants.

      I think it was on Wednesday’s Open Thread.

      Do you want to meet at Ted’s house, or should we get together beforehand and walk over together ?

      .  

    1. Could be money, could be because it doesn’t fit another of The Fix’s rules:

      Finally, and most importantly, there must be a genuine tension — dislike is even better — between the candidates and their respective campaigns. From that tension grows a willingness to throw haymakers at one another. “Nice” races are rarely the most memorable.

      That might make more sense.  Last month they were ninth, this month no mention of the fight, or why it’s off the list.  I don’t recall anyone being shocked by Romanoff’s fundraising, not impressed, but not shocked.

      Other than some overly passionate supporters here, this just isn’t an interesting primary.  At all.

      PS – Asking little faux questions, that you answer, makes you look sockpuppetish.

      1. Is that just a fancy way of saying douchey?

        Or is sockpuppetish the special language spoken by sock puppets?  If so, is it anything like Dwarvish or Elfish?

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