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December 16, 2010 04:39 PM UTC

Thursday Open Thread

  • 56 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it.”

–Confucius

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56 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

  1. And then I will assume my rightful place as either Pinky or Brain and start doing what we FPEs do.

    I will write a diary about why I am a registered D and why I lean progressive.

    If any of the R leaners write a decent diary about why they lean R vote R,  I’ll fp it.

    Likewise any other political persuasion.

    Otherwise, I don’t have a bunch of diaries saved up and unless my contract stipulates otherwise, daily diaries are unlikely.  Although a fp screen shot in the WashPo site is enticing.

    So we get the 2011 legislative session, whatever comes up in Washington, a mayoral election and spring training.  ok.

    2. Getting elected FPE wasn’t the only good news I received yesterday. I also found out that I passed my finals, and I’ll (finally) be graduating from college this weekend. Since my degree is in Music, I’ll probably have plenty of time to spend on Pols…

  2. who had to think for a minute when they saw this headline in the Post?

    Pedestrian injured in Stapleton hit-and-run is improving

    (Please don’t send hate mail about being insensitive.  But my first thought was that someone in San Francisco has been recovering for the last 5? years).

    1. this happened a block from my home. A woman was run over (RUN OVER) by a hit and run SUV driver. Her 30 plus week pregnancy was terminated and she lost her baby. Are you trying to trivialize this?

      Of course if you were JO, you’d be able to scold us all for not doing enough to prevent all hit and runs of pregnant women from ever occurring again. But since you’re just an R shill, I think you must have some other agenda.

  4. from The Independent

    All illicit substances, including heroin and cocaine, should be legalised, according to a former drugs minister who will today become the most senior politician to push for a dramatic change in the strategy for tackling Britain’s drug problems.

    …

    He will call in the Commons for a fundamental rethink of how the country responds to drug addiction. He will receive the backing of senior MPs of all parties who will argue that the current tough stance on drugs is counter-productive.

    2. We need to take effective measures to rob the dealers of their markets and the only way that we can do that is by supplying addicts through the medical profession, through prescription.

      Right because there’s no illegal market for prescription drugs.  At all.  None.

      This, for me, is yet another debate that is constantly calling for honesty, but can’t be honest.  You can’t just make shit up and paint it fine.  Honesty!!!!

      So really the only way to stop illegal drugs under this plan is to do away with prescriptions altogether.  Sounds bloody brilliant!  Take that, nasty dealers.

      1. If you legalize them to prescription levels and create the methods to allow doctors to prescribe for recreational use, that will greatly reduce the illegal drug trade.

        Most people are illicitly on prescription medications because it is illegal to prescribe for recreational use.  Legalize the prescription and you wind up with people having more contact with the medical system (good for rehab potential), better drug quality control (fewer deaths from crappy illegal drugs), and perhaps less severe abuse.

        The drug war is a gray area; no solution will be perfect.  I think this is a good step if Britain takes it.

  5. MAJ Dobson was the government’s second sentencing witness.  While the government elicited testimony from him about how he and his unit were harmed by LTC Lakin’s failure to deploy, his testimony didn’t seem at all whiney or self-pitying.  Rather, he came across as a professional military officer willing to do his duty.  His testimony would  prove quite aggravating.

    He testified that he recently returned from a six-month deployment with the 1-32 Cavalry Squadron.  He received a call on 6 April saying he might have to deploy on short notice.  He was then put on hold for a week, told that the doctor who was originally scheduled to deploy might do so after all.  He was then told he was definitely going and left two weeks later.

    MAJ Dobson’s wife had returned six months before from a deployment in Afghanistan.  The Army tried to give them some time together and he hadn’t expected to deploy until the end of the year.  He had been scheduled to attend the captains’ career course, which he had to cancel.

    When he arrived at Fort Campbell on 26 April, most of his squadron had already gone to Afghanistan.  He wasn’t able to attend the predeployment course required for deploying doctors.

    When he arrived in Afghanistan, his unit was on the Pakistani border in Kunar Province, just north of Jalalabad.  The previous unit had left a physician’s assistant behind to fill the gap when the 1-32 arrived without a doctor.  MAJ Dobson testified, “She was very happy to see me.”

    Then came the most powerful testimony of the court-martial.  On MAJ Dobson’s second day in country, his unit “had mass casualties” – a total of 16.  He testified that he felt he didn’t treat them as well as he could have had he had more time to prepare for his deployment.

    http://www.caaflog.com/2010/12…

    Did LTC Lakin kill or maim a few soldiers that day, because he choose to listen to the verbal blowjobs he was getting from the Birther Freaks? Probably, and that’s a point not lost on a military panel hearing the case.

    But what really guarantees that the panel understands that this is a Right-Wing Attention slut and not someone operating under his convictions? This:

    Other exhibits were the YouTube video and an audio CD containing an interview that LTC Lakin did with the Barry Farber radio show, which aired in early September.  The government closed its sentencing case by playing a clip from that interview.  While I couldn’t hear the audio well from my seat, I understand that in the clip, LTC Lakin was asked, “If you had to do it over again, would you?” and responded that he would.

    I hope all of those appearances on Talk Radio pay well, sir. And while I hope that you live the rest of your life in a run-down double-wide in Kansas, I hope that every night you have nightmares of the ghosts of the soldiers and marines you could’ve saved had you deployed with your unit.

  6. Speaker elect Boehner’s oddly out of proportion tearfulness over just about anything, not just what really ought to be the big emotional moments.  I mean, bawling at the memory of the mere sight of children while having no difficulty voting to cut off all kinds of funding to benefit them, in tears over his humble background while having no problem cutting off unemployment benefits at Christmas time, bawling while explaining his tendency to bawl.  So what the heck is all the crying about? Why so frequent and over so little?  

    I was thinking I’d never seen anything like it but then I remembered that, as a little girl, I had seen something quite like it.  My late over-imbibing great uncle used to get teary at the of drop of a hat. Could Boehner just be a weepy lush? Some  speculation on that score:

    http://www.politicsdaily.com/2…

      1. poor children or the unemployed. It’s just not that easy, even for pro actors, to produce realistic crying at the drop of a hat. I think the lack of ability to control the emotions, whatever their trigger, that causes the continual waterworks is real  which makes it all the more bizarre. I’m leaning heavily toward weepy lush as the best explanation.  

    3. it’s no longer speculation, it’s pretty well accepted fact that the dude loves his booze.

      Check out http://boehnerbooze.wordpress.com/ for evidence.

      Politico has noted that Boehner “cries more often later in the day,” and he often slurs his words right before emotional outbursts (such as what’s been witnessed in numerous interviews & taped statements).

      Orange John is reknowned for never working late and being frequently spotted in DC bars starting @5 most nights.

      At the ’04 GOP Convention in NY, Orange Johnny threw a 4-day bacchanal mostly funded by the alcohol industry.

      He’s a weepy lush and he’s now House Speaker elect — what a role model GOP.

      1. I like to make a distinction between stuff everyone says or hears and stuff with hard evidence.  I’ll grant you it’s hardly likely all the speculation in this case is unfounded. Drinking might also account for his particular shade of orange. Tan over jaundice yellow perhaps? Now that’s just shameless speculation. My bad.

    4. http://opinionator.blogs.nytim…

      It’s when he talks about how he rose from his humble past – the son of a bar owner, one of 12 children who grew up in a small home with a single bathroom – that Boehner starts to weep.

      “Making sure these kids have a shot at the American Dream like I did is very important,” he said, choking up, when asked on “60 Minutes” about his crying.

      But a look at Boehner’s record during his two decades in Congress shows a man who has voted against nearly every boost for the working stiff. There’s no empathy for those with the longest shots at the American Dream in his voting pattern. Instead, we see a politician who is hard-hearted in his legislative treatment of the people now coping with the kind of economic conditions in which the Boehner family grew up.

  7. …but Army Public Affairs gets it – between the warnography recruiting tool cum-video game “America’s Army” to Facebook pages to this very cool tribute site:

    http://www.army.mil/botb/

    The Battle of the Bugle started 66 years ago today, and this website is a very slick tribute to that horrible battle.  

      1. and were out of harm’s way for the most part, but on my wife’s side, one of her uncles was in a tank in the BOTB. He always held my wife and the other kids in her family rapt with a story about how the tank on one side was blown up, and then the other one was too…

  8. Fortunately he’s legally prohibited from every owning another dog.

    Dog lovers should all read “The Lost Dogs” by Jim Gorant (he wrote the Sports Illustrated article) for the full story on Michael Vick’s dog-fighting ring.

    Yes, there are a few really horrifying parts, the worst of which is where the author describes how MV and another guy killed a dog with their bare hands by slamming it against the ground. (It’s actually worse than that, but I’ll let you read it on your own.)

    The gory stuff is really a very small but necessary part of the book.  Many of the worst examples were covered in the media when the story first broke.  The first half mainly describes what the law enforcement guys had to go through to get the conviction in spite of a LOT pressure to drop it.  The second part of the book explains how the dogs were evaluated and distributed to various rescue groups to be rehabilitated and, if possible, adopted out to homes.

    If you’re a dog-lover, it’s a must read.  Then you’ll want to wretch every time you see Michael Vick on TV or a magazine cover.

  9. Red Cross Bans Christmas.

    Emphasis mine.

    Mrs Banks added: ‘ We have been instructed that we can’t say anything about Christmas and we certainly can’t have a Christmas tree.

    ‘ I think the policy is offensive to Moslems as well as to us. No reasonable person can object to Christians celebrating Christmas. But we are not supposed to show any sign of Christianity at all.’

    Labour peer Lord Ahmed, one of the country’s most prominent Moslem politicians, said: ‘It is stupid to think Moslems would be offended.

    ‘The Moslem community has been talking to Christians for the past 1,400 years. The teachings from Islam are that you should respect other faiths.’

    He added: ‘In my business all my staff celebrate Christmas and I celebrate with them. It is absolutely not the case that Christmas could damage the Red Cross reputation for neutrality – I think their people have gone a little bit over the top.’

      1. claiming there is a “war on Christmas” is good for ratings. As long as we can sell the gullible that there is a “war on Christmas” we will The Money (hallowed be thy name).

        Riiiiight.

  10. Reid seems to be going for it.

    I’m going to file cloture tonight on the DREAM Act. We’ll have a cloture vote on that Saturday morning fairly early.

    Should lead to a final vote on Sunday.

    1. he’s calling for a cloture vote on Saturday for DADT. Should be an interesting weekend.

      DREAM will be a tight vote. DADT has a good chance of being repealed.  

        1. But at this point, I’ll gladly take DADT being repealed and DREAM passing would be fantastic and a boost in so many ways to our economy as well as a real start to legal citizenship for tens of thousands of kids that have so much to add to our society.  

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