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April 29, 2011 03:42 PM UTC

Friday Open Thread

  • 57 Comments
  • by: MADCO

Something a little stupid, easily disprovable, inflammatory and which should but inexplicably isn’t embarrassing to Rs.   ~ Rush Limbaugh

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57 thoughts on “Friday Open Thread”

  1. Just 21% think the country is generally heading in the right direction. That’s the lowest level of optimism recorded since President Obama took office.

    Seventy-two percent (72%) believe that taxpayers are not getting a good return on their investment in public schools. Thirty-nine percent (39%) underestimate how much is spent per child on education and another 40% are unsure.

    http://www.rasmussenreports.co…

    On top of this, a handful of leading Democrats are joining Republicans in blocking a rise in the national debt limit without substantial and direct spending cuts tied to the proposed increase.

    So after months of denying he could access his “real” birth certificate, Obama whips it out only to be blasted by his own team.

    1. http://caivn.org/article/2011/…

      …newly-crowned Speaker of the House John Boehner isn’t exempt from the ire of Independents either.  His approval rating has dropped the most with the independent voter demographic out of all three traditional political affiliations.

      This week’s Gallup notes that Boehner’s favorable rating is down 10 points among Independents while his unfavorable rating is up by 17 points, shifting his net favorable score from +16 to -11.

      Of course, Obama gets to run against a real person–rather than a ‘generic’ Republican.

      Who can do it?  Trump? Cain? Paul2?

      Meanwhile, the Teapublicans have boxed the GOP into a corner.

       

    2. Hey ‘tad, just wondering when you were going to take credit for the 7 straight quarters of a positive GDP…y’know, that Republican’t Job & economic growth bill they passed the day the new Congress was partially sworn in?

      What that looks like:

      http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog…

      And hey – after hooting and shrieking about the importance of the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and NASDAQ in relation to Obama’s first year, seen the numbers this morning?

      http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/sto…

      Well, let me be the first to remind you that you’re a shrieking dumbass, the stimulus worked, we’re going to get most of of money back from TARP and the Auto bailout, and you’re a shrieking dumbass.

          1. If you’ve got a job you can afford to worry about the price of gasoline.

            If you don’t have a job you’ve got to worry about the price of everything.

            2. The price of gas is hurting Obama worse.

              Even if the true unemployment rate is 17 percent, that’s only 17 percent of the public that’s pissed off at him.

              The price of gas is pissing off 100 percent of the public.

              1. And, I realize that I and most of the people I have conversation with do not qualify as typical.

                But, even my Palin-supporting neighbor said this the other day:  “I don’t understand this ‘drill baby drill’ thing.  We’re talking about the world price of oil; how much could the US drill to affect that?  The current high prices aren’t being driven by supply; there’s no oil shortage.  Hell, the Saudi’s just announced that they are cutting back production due to slow demand.  It’s all the damn speculators, again.”

                I was stunned, because I knew he hadn’t heard this on FOX.  Neither one of us blamed Obama for the speculation, nor have any idea what could realistically be done to thwart it.

                But, we’re both pissed at the high rate of unemployment, although for different reasons.  Me, because Obama was soft on the amount of needed stimulus to correct the system, and because he”s adopted the spending-cut mentality of the disingenuous “deficit-(chicken)-hawks” of the right today at a time when more job creation stimulus is necessary and essential.  My neighbor, because for him the answer is more tax cuts.

                Go figure.

                    2. Let alone something as suspect and probably Marxist as public transportation.  

                    3. I’m used to it.  My first wife didn’t even have a driver’s license until we moved to Wyoming.  There, she had to get one out of necessity.

                      I took a Public Service bus to junior high and high school for six years.  I drove to a park-and-ride and took the subway to college every day.  When the subway went on strike, I took the Lackawanna railroad to school.

                      The buses here don’t run often enough or to enough places to make them worthwhile.  To get anywhere from my home by bus requires a commitment of more than an hour and at least one transfer.  And that’s only one way.

                      My workaround is to not drive unless I have to.  I now batch my trips to town.

                      Cheryl, on the other hand, still needs to go visit her mother at a nursing home in Fruita at least three times a week.  Without a car, you can’t get there from here.

                    4. By ‘you’ I meant the good voters of Mesa County, not ‘you’ Ralphie solo.

                      One thing about traveling in other lands…most have ways to get people from here to there–chicken buses, vans–packed to the gills, trains, etc.  

                      It is too bad our country is so behind in this IMO.  

                    5. have higher population densities.

                      Even in the Eastern US, mass transit is feasible and works well.  But it’s expensive–don’t get the shortsighted Chris Christie started about that extra set of train tracks under the Hudson River.

                      Out here where the population density is much lower, the cost per passenger-mile is just too high for most local governments.

                      In the meantime, I’m looking for a good used 49cc scooter.

  3. GMO has $106 billion in assets under management. So, I hope we can agree that this is a watershed statement from a key financial sector participant:

    Accelerated demand from developing countries, especially China, has caused an unprecedented shift in the price structure of resources: after 100 hundred years or more of price declines, they are now rising, and in the last 8 years have undone, remarkably, the effects of the last 100-year decline! Statistically, also, the level of price rises makes it extremely unlikely that the old trend is still in place. If I am right, we are now entering a period in which, like it or not, we must finally follow President Carter’s advice to develop a thoughtful energy policy and give up our carefree and careless ways with resources. The quicker we do this, the lower the cost will be. Any improvement at all in lifestyle for our grandchildren will take much more thoughtful behavior from political leaders and more restraint from everyone. Rapid growth is not ours by divine right; it is not even mathematically possible over a sustained period. Our goal should be to get everyone out of abject poverty, even if it necessitates some income redistribution. Because we have way overstepped sustainable levels, the greatest challenge will be in redesigning lifestyles to emphasize quality of life while quantitatively reducing our demand levels. A lower population would help. Just to start you off, I offer Exhibit 1: the world’s population growth. X marks the spot where Malthus wrote his defining work. Y marks my entry into the world. What a surge in population has occurred since then! Such compound growth cannot continue with finite resources. Along the way, you are certain to have a paradigm shift. And, increasingly, it looks like this is it!

    Government austerity measures, although a key component of the adjustments we’ll need to make to meet the current demands on our economic health, will additionally require across the board changes in how credit iinstruments are viewed and used; how lifestyle and quality of life is viewed; how the “empire” is deployed and sustained; and how negotiations and distributions of natural resources are obtained and allocated.

    In short, radical changes will be necessary in the ways we think and behave. Yes, this will require leadership and education (something I see very little of).

    If I could recommend somewhere to start, it would be with the person who inspired Ghandi and Martin Luther King – Henry David Thoreau. His views during the “bustling 19th Century”, were a reaction to the industrial revolution, a revolution that changed the world and got us to where we are today. A new revolution is required.  

  4. As Big Oil accrues massive profits, production (predictably) is up all over  the United States.  This, of course, is the tell to the big lie–companies slow drilling when prices are low (to keep the reserves in place until prices go back up), and they increase it when prices are high.  When prices soften so does drilling activity.  The reality is–Drill More, Pay More.  Companies control the supply–consumers control demand.  Until we (consumers) work on decreasing the demand side (through efficiencies and conservation) Big Oil will always have us over the barrel.  Quite literally.  

    Still, Boehner and the GOP want to keep the taxpayer largess flowing to these multi-national behemoths, so we can get gouged on both ends.

    Of course, America cannot drill it’s way to energy independence.  Not through digging up 16,000 square miles of the Green River Formation or punching thousands of new holes over the Niobrara.  

    This argument is as nonsensical now as it was when we last faced $4-a-gallon gas. To repeat: It’s a global oil market. Even if 3 million additional barrels a day could be extruded from lands and seabeds of the United States (the most optimistic figure, after all exploration is done), that sum is tiny compared to 86 million barrels now produced around the world. In other words, even under the best circumstances, the price to American consumers would hardly budge.

    http://www.csmonitor.com/Busin…

    Meanwhile, the GOP is slashing programs that might actually help America return some sensibility to its energy balance sheet:

    [The Energy Information Agency] is also one of many federal agencies and programs to feel the sting of deep cuts in the US budget passed earlier this month. In a press released published on Thursday, the EIA outlined what programs and activities it would be eliminating and suspending in order to reduce its operating costs, which included data collection and analysis of oil prices and oil production.

    The GOP energy plan–give massive tax breaks to Big Oil to prop up their near record profits; gut any and all regulations to protect ground water, air quality, wild public lands, and surface owners; give free rein to drillers anywhere and everywhere; and cut funding for research and data collection.  

    It will certainly be beneficial to some, and I’m sure Mr. Hayward appreciates it, now that he got his life back.  The American consumer and middle class?  Well, the GOP clearly doesn’t really consider those folks its constituents.  

    1. usually I surf between CNN, MSNBC, CSPAN and ESPN while reading and sending emails, etc. This morning my options were limited since only CSPAN had anything newsworthy other than sports

        1. The best movie you probably haven’t seen?  The best movie you may have seen once before, but forgot how incredible it was?

          The Lion in Winter — 1968

          Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn at the height of their skills, Anthony Hopkins in his film debut, Timothy Dalton . . . three Academy Awards.  (The 2003 remake is faithful to the dialouge, but simply can not hope to match the power and intensity of these actors.)

      2. When I saw Fergie’s daughters.

        And Prince Harry–he looks a lot like that polo player…

        Best line of the day was Laura Ingraham (I’m not a fan but fell asleep with the radio on):  “I wonder if they stood Camilla in the corner at the reception and hung a bag of oats on her?”

    3. But I also don’t do TV. So I did not watch. But I am pleased, because it motivated a coworker of mine to make homemade scones for the office. And who said the British monarchy never did me any favors?

      1. Wife and I are positively KNACKERED after viewing said nuptials.  The white peony tea, however, is holding us up splendidly.  

        Carry on.

        Fidel, OBE

  6. Democrats with ties to the Obama White House on Friday are launching a two-pronged fundraising effort aimed at countering deep-pocketed GOP groups in 2012 – and adopting some of the same policies on unlimited, secret donations that President Barack Obama himself has long opposed, the organizers tell POLITICO.

    The two groups, Priorities USA and Priorities USA Action, aim to raise $100 million to defend Obama’s reelection bid from an expected onslaught of attack ads from similar Republican outside money organizations activated in the 2010 midterms, organizers say.

    http://www.politico.com/news/s…

    Since our activist court declared corporations people the gloves should be off. We can’t just take a pounding to make Marquis of Queensbury points.

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