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February 20, 2012 04:03 PM UTC

Presidents' Day Open Thread

  • 48 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”

–Franklin D. Roosevelt

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48 thoughts on “Presidents’ Day Open Thread”

  1. I mean he’s scarier than a rabid dog loose in the neighborhood or a pit bull in the middle of a children’s playground.  This guy is so far out and so prejudiced against women’s health issues he leaves me sputtering to myself.

    Consider this:

    The government shouldn’t make health care providers fully cover prenatal tests like amniocentesis, which can determine the possibility of Down syndrome or other fetal problems, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said Sunday.

    http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/19/…

    Here’s his shtick – no abortions, no  contraception’s and if you get pregnant, no health care coverage for prenatal care.

    Yesiree, let’s keep ’em down on the farm folks…barefoot and pregnant no matter the health of the mother and child.  

    1. I mean, if anyone’s going to embrace Santorumism to it’s logical conclusion, then there would never be any abortions, and the health of the mother an fetus are completely in god’s (and god’s messengers’) hands — no need to waste anyone’s money on unnecessary health testing.  What you should be spending government money on is more hymnals.

      What an asshole . . .  

    2. to women’s and men’s health care.  If women are supposed to go all natural – no contraception, no amniocentesis, no prenatal care, then men need to go natural — no viagra, and certainly no health insurance coverage for viagra.  

    3. Once upon a time, as it should be now, a woman’s most personal important health decisions were best left to her husband and her priest.

      You can wear shoes, and do other things to avoid pregnancy, but when push comes to shove, wives submit (Colassians 3:18, Ephesians 5:22 and others – you could look it up)

      Ain’t patriarchy a bitch (so to speak)?

      1. but I have reason to find pit bulls within reach of children frightening.  

        I didn’t say Santorum was a pit bull, I said he was as scary as “a pit bull in the middle of a children’s playground”. That’s how I feel.

        1. Not the end of the world and you have every right to your opinion, of course, but Pit Bull hysteria kills family pets. Not only that, but Pit Bull bans just lead the people who raise vicious dogs to get themselves bigger, more dangerous, but still legal dogs. Cane Corsos (Italian mastiffs) are currently a very gentle breed with proper training, like any other mastiff, but they are becoming increasingly popular with people who want a vicious dog and live in a Pit Bull ban area. They’re about twice the size of Pits and have enormous jaws.

          Not that one mention is responsible for the Pit Bull ban, but it set me on edge, too. A “vicious dog” on a playground would be frightening, but a Pit Bull might well be there as a therapy dog or one of the children’s service animal.

      1. Wrong. He’s scary, you just fail to notice (really it’s a chronic problem for you, David) just how scary this, or any other, fucker is until he has a significant and noteworthy following.  

        1. There’s lots of people out there with really screwy beliefs. But we don’t need to be scared that some guy who spends his days shouting at walls is going to get elected to anything.

          It’s the followers that make him scary. Because with enough followers he can get elected and then it can impact us.

          1. He’s not scary because he can’t get elected but his followers are scary because they might elect him, therefore he can be elected? Huh? Which is it?  It can’t be both.

            2. BJ (I think you were here when he was spewing his idioticy) doesn’t scare me. Because he couldn’t get elected dog catcher.

              What scares me about Santorum’s followers is there are a large number of them willing to vote for someone with such horrible ideas. It’s that mass of voters that differentiates Santorum from BJ.

              I think we may be violently agreeing on this as I’m guessing you also see that what differentiates Santorum from others with these beliefs is he has a lot of people voting for him and that’s what makes him scary.

              1. between Santorum and another person.  It differentiated between Santorum who  is unelectable and Santorum who is electable.  Please review your comment. Grammar and syntax matter. As do the rules of logic.

                Also, does “violently” agreeing involve a dynamic similar to being a “severe” conservative.  I had no idea that my comment or Romney’s tenure as Gov involved such extreme levels of aggression.

    6. “We went into a recession in 2008. People forget why. They thought it was a housing bubble. The housing bubble was caused because of a dramatic spike in energy prices that caused the housing bubble to burst,” Santorum told the audience. “People had to pay so much money to air condition and heat their homes or pay for gasoline that they couldn’t pay their mortgage.”

      It wasn’t the subprime mortgages, or the no doc “liar loans”, or the fraudulent inflated apprasals, or the bogus mortgage backed securiries, or the bond agencies rating this junk AAA, or MERS that facilitated the fraud……..it was high energy prices.

      This guy’s denial is akin to those who deny the holocaust.  

        1. the past . . .

          This boy is Ignorance.  This girl is Want.  Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.

          . . . too bad so many christian voters can’t recall the lessons from their own holidays.

    7. He’s against amnio’s because pregnant women might find out their fetus might have 1 of 40+ abnormalities or genetic conditions.  Amnios are not taken lightly and are not an advised procedure unless there are other mitigating factors deemed by medical consultation.  But I’m sure in Frothy’s mind amnios are done on a whim by flighty knocked-up tarts all in the hopes that the test finds something/anything to give a reason for an abortive procedure.

      Just when I think the GOP & religious right can depart any further from reality they open their mouths and amaze me again.  Frothy doesn’t really think women are anything but baby vessels; there purpose is to procreate and further populate the earth so man can prove dominion over nature (’cause that is God’s intention).

      Your baby has congenital defects — so what. It’s God’s will and now your responsibility to provide (since he’ll also cut social & medical & educational services to assist special needs children). Frothy is sure he knows what God wants and he’s gonna bring home for the maker.  Remember he’s different from you & I … he follows a different theology.  Hell, per Frothy even Protestants have strayed too far and are no longer true Christians.  Frothy is his own Holy warrior crusading against wombs & women across the land.            

    8. Right now the RNC is stocking up on Depends ® because they realize what him being the candidate means to the party. Their big concern is the majority of R’s are not freakin’ nuts enough to vote for weird uncle Rickie. If they vote they may go for a third party, if there is one, or in their mind even worse – Obama.

      I think the RNC party is going to be a bloodbath if it goes brokered. The best they can hope for is to hire the Iowa and Maine vote counters to ensure anyone but Weird Uncle Rickie wins.

    9. Not as president, but as the candidate opposing Obama. For sure he will drive women into the voting booth, and all but a few air heads will be voting against the attack on women. That might lengthen Obama’s coattails enough to flip a few Western Slope races from red to blue.

      1. giving Rickie the mic to rant about  contraception, homosexuality, religion, women’s roles, education, presidential theology, US economy, climate change, environmentalism … works to turn off most any independent or moderate voter.

        As long as he keeps it up and is considered an almost GOP contender then the crazy crap keeps gets headlines.  For the general public to hear again & again that our majority opinions are morally wrong and ethically corrupt (per the purvey of GOP schoolmarm Rick) does nothing but alienate independents and moderates.

        Isn’t it great to have the GOP poll leader scold us again & again on the sins of sex? Sex, yes any sex, inside or outside of marriage is wrong unless for the purposes of procreation. Per preacher Rickie, we are what’s dooming Man on this earth ’cause we’re not doing our share in destroying this earth quick enough. Per Rickie, it is Man’s God-given right to hold dominion over Mother Earth and it’s creatures & resources and by damn he and his will not be denied.  

        Give Rickie the mic and let his mouth help the GOP lose come November.          

    10. Because anti-choice is just too much technicality based parsing right?

      Among the most contested provisions of the bill is the section that would exempt a doctor from a medical malpractice suit if a woman claims the physician withheld information about potential birth defects to prevent her from having an abortion. In addition, a woman would not be able to sue if she suffers health damage from a pregnancy as a result of information withheld from her to prevent an abortion. A wrongful death suit could still be filed, however, if the mother died.

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

      It’s all of a piece.

  2. Don’t attack Iran-use every diplomatic avenue available. Let’s make sure our intelligence is correct. With, you know, actual intelligence in the WH, maybe there’s actually a chance that will happen.

    The economic effects of violent Middle East disruption (as if there isn’t already enough!) would be severe. We don’t need that.

    Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously – and use at least 100 planes. That is the assessment of American defense officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon, who say that an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran’s nuclear programwould be a huge and highly complex operation. They describe it as far different from Israel’s “surgical” strikes on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981. “All the pundits who talk about ‘Oh, yeah, bomb Iran,’ it ain’t going to be that easy,” said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who retired last year as the Air Force’s top intelligence official and who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Gulf War. Speculation that Israel might attack Iran has intensified in recent months as tensions between the countries have escalated.

    In a sign of rising American concern, Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem on Sunday, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, warned on CNN that an Israeli strike on Iran right now would be “destabilizing.”

    By Elisabeth Bumiller

    The New York Times (sorry, link wouldn’t work)

    1. that after ’81 when Israeli air forces blew up the Osiriak reactor in suburban Baghdad,  Iraq was busy fighting a bloody, expensive war. Too busy to bother retaliating.    

      Likewise, the last serious effort Iran made to block the Hormuz (Hormuz and Banda Abbas)  was hindered by the same war.  

      Yes, armed with American weapons and support Iran and Iraq were fighting the biggest bloodiest war of the region in some time.  It’s why Iraq was so convinced they should occupy Kuwait in 1990.  Kuwait wanted to collect on the “loans” made to Iraq, their Arab brethren, during the war. Iraq wanted those “grants” to be multiplied by the oil revenues from the Kuwaiti oil fields.

      “Warns” of destabilizing?  That’s funny.  The major part of US foreign policy in the region for 70 years has been about destabilization.  We inherited it from the Brits.  And none knew it better than President (arms for hostages) Reagan and his former director of national intelligence Vp George Bush.

      1. stability in the middle Eastbwe would announce clearly and forcefully that we would treat an unprovoked armed attack, by any country, on any country in that area in EXACTLY the same manner we would treat an armed attack on Israel.  

        1. I would think it far better that we not get involved regardless of what happens.  There will always be hatred, tension and violence in the Middle East.  Why should we be involved at all ?

          I see the orchestrated saber rattling about Iran and it is disturbing.  From my point of view it is WMD all over again.

        2. in a misguided and doomed to fail attempt by the idiotic neocons based on misinformation, disinformation and wishful thinking and out of a burning desire to take over and install a puppet government under Cheney buddy Chalabi (what ever happened to that clown, anyway?) would have been quite helpful too.

          Unfortunately that greatest of all strategic disasters, aided and abetted by cowardly Dems afraid of being accused of being squishy, unpatriotic, scared terrorist appeasers (not that Iraq had any connection to the attacks we suffered in the first place) did so much damage to our interests and the interests of the entire western world, there really isn’t a good way to fix it.

          The Cheney/GW administration’s neocon misadventure pretty much screwed things up irreparably for the foreseeable future.

          And of course there’s the question of how exactly, since neocon wars and GOP economic policy such as the first wars not only not paid for by raising taxes but accompanied by tax decreases have so impoverished us, would we put real muscle behind the sabre rattling?  We don’t have the public will or resources to run around mounting all that many more wars these days, do we?

          And the idea that we could just go in easily and surgically with a couple of bombs in a country like Iran is one the brass will be happy to disabuse us of. Israel is even less capable of pulling it off. This ain’t 1981 in Iraq or more recently in Syria. So we’d better hope sanctions and diplomacy accomplish something. It’s pretty much all we’ve realistically got thanks to letting the neocons bamboozle us and bankrupt us and destabilize the hell out of the whole region in the first place.  

      2. Let’s see-in 1912 the Titanic went down, the marines invaded Nicaragua, and the Republic of China was established. There was the short Balkan war, and Alaska was made a state.

        This got my attention: A meteorite with an estimated mass of 190 kg exploded over the town of Holbrook in Navajo County, Arizona causing approximately 16,000 pieces of debris to rain down on the town.

        Back to reading these links.

  3. Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator’s Dilemma

    The best professional managers – doing all the right things and following all the best advice – lead their companies all the way to the top of their markets in that pursuit… only to fall straight off the edge of a cliff after getting there.

    …

    They can do it because Apple hasn’t optimized its organization to maximize profit. Instead, it has made the creation of value for customers its priority. When you do this, the fear of cannibalization or disruption of one’s self just melts away.

  4. In TNTSNBN it talks about millions funneled to failing schools in Pueblo. And it’s not helping. There has to be ways to improve these failing schools, but the districts don’t seem to be able to figure it out themselves.

    I’m hoping they do an article on how DPS is using this money and the results they are getting. They had really good improvement last year and if that is due to their efforts, then their use of the additional money should have had a positive effect.

      1. North HIgh School and Lake Middle School have evidently received a lot for so-called “reform.”

        North High has been “reformed” “turned around” “redesigned”, etc. over the last ten years.  Result?

        collapsing enrollment and no improvement in achievement.  This is using kids for guinea pigs…but I digress.

    2. Nah, that only works for enrollees in the legislature.  What the schools need are more mandates.

      Two birds with one stone — let’s pay legislators a bonus for each additional new mandate they can inflict upon the public schools?  (. . . It’s this kind of value-for-customers thinking that made Apple great, huh?)  

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