No Words Needed

What can you say except RIP or Peace be with you?

I can post a new thread if it seems wrong to post 'blog-style' on this one.

Someone just let me know.

Roseanne Barr lambasts 'evil' Angelina Jolie, 'vacuous' Brad Pitt on blog

By KORIN MILLER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Monday, August 18th 2008, 9:55 AM
Roseanne Barr, left, revealed her distaste for Angelina Jolie, right, over the weekend.

Roseanne Barr, left, revealed her distaste for Angelina Jolie, right, over the weekend.

Brangelina fan, she isn't.

Roseanne Barr came out swinging against Angelina Jolie and her partner, Brad Pitt, over the weekend.

The comedienne called Jolie an "evil spawn" and labeled Pitt as "vacuous" on a blog posted on her Web site, Roseanneworld.com.

According to Barr, the power couple, "make about $40 million a year in violent psychopathic movies and give away three of it to starving children trying to look as if they give a crap about humanity as they spit out more dunces that will consume more than their fair share and wreck the earth even more."

The 55-year-old also attacked Jolie for announcing last week that she's still undecided about the upcoming presidential election.

"Aren't you supposed to be somewhat enlightened, or do you not know that the African daughter you hold in every picture had parents who suffered and died because of the Republican party's worldwide economic assault on Africa over the last few decades since Reagan?" Barr wrote.

Barr wrapped up her post with a final message to Jolie: "Now go back to making your movies about women who love to handle big guns that shoot hundreds of people to death."

Oops - wait! There's more!

"P.S.," she added, "It might be good for your Asian and African childrens' self esteem to know you support a brown man for the leader of the free world."

Barr is rooting for Barack Obama, in case there was any doubt.

Her publicist had no comment on Monday.

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2008/08/18/2008-08-18_roseanne_barr_lambasts_evil_angelina_jol.html

"If people can't remember what America is fighting for, Rob told his father, "Tell them to remember what we're fighting against."

What are we fighting AGAINST...?

Honestly, I forget.

And the talking points just don't work anymore.

As a child born into the aftermath of Vietnam, I disagree, there are words needed here. This is the precise place where words are needed most.

Words like....

WHAT IN THE HELL ARE WE FIGHTING AGAINST THEN?

WHY ARE SO MANY DYING? WHY CAN'T ANYONE STOP THIS INSANE PRESIDENT?

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHY?

When did we become MONSTERS?

Well, I meant my own words were not needed, Christy.

HAHAHA! Your words are needed most. People like you.

Just pretend the comp screen is georgie, and feel free to use the english language to its fullest.

Who The Hell Is Ready To Lead, On Day One? Obama I Would Say, From An Outsider Looking In.

It's His Party

Barack Obama might be running on a post-partisan platform, but he is more focused on building the Democratic Party than any other candidate in recent history.

An unassuming building at 430 South Capitol Street, in a forlorn corner between the Capitol and a highway overpass, is the home address of the Democratic Party. But though mail still gets delivered to the Washington, D.C., address, many of the Democratic National Committee's employees--the men and women who make up the party's central infrastructure--are no longer around to receive it. They are in Chicago, where Barack Obama moved them after he captured the Democratic Party's nomination.
It was a peculiar decision for Obama, who had built his campaign, and even his political identity, around an eloquently stated, post-partisan revulsion with the divisiveness of modern party politics. Following the strategy of "outsider" candidates before him, Obama set his headquarters outside the District in order to create distance, both physical and perceptual, between himself and the consultants, interest groups, party hacks, and congressional busybodies who populate the nation's capital.
The effort was so successful that some feared the Obama phenomenon--the millions of young people passionate about his campaign, the thousands who have lined roadsides just to wave at the Illinois senator's motorcade--had become a force unto itself, indifferent to the fortunes of the traditional Democratic Party, unbound by a commitment to progressive ideology, and wholly dependent on the character of Barack Obama. As blogger Matt Stoller writes on OpenLeft.com, "Power and money in the Democratic Party is being centralized around a key iconic figure. [Obama] is consolidating power within the party."
This was a new critique of Obama: not that he was beyond parties but that he had personalized them. That rather than building the Democratic Party, he was building an Obama Party, with all the good and bad that that centralization entailed. Though some were nervous when Obama sent the moving trucks to South Capitol Street, further tightening his hold over the party apparatus, the relocation neatly fit the broader, and rather unexpected, reality of this campaign: For all the talk of post-partisan "unity," Barack Obama has been proving himself the most party-focused presidential candidate in recent history--possibly ever. Paradoxically, although Obama's success has been more dependent on personal charisma than any recent nominee's has, he's been leveraging that charisma to build a broader Democratic infrastructure less dependent on the presidential nominee.
This should be no surprise. Though Obama himself is a newcomer to Washington, the upper echelons of his Senate and campaign staff are populated almost exclusively by experienced Democratic Party operatives. Continuity with the established party infrastructure is a defining characteristic of the Obama campaign. When Hillary Clinton conceded the nomination, Obama's first major staff change was not the incorporation of a former Clinton operative meant to heal the divisions of the primary, nor the elevation of a national-security graybeard meant to reassure general-election voters of Obama's commander-in-chief credentials. Rather, it was to install Paul Tewes, the skilled organizer who served as the architect of Obama's crucial victory in Iowa, at the DNC to head up the committee's election-year efforts. A few weeks later, it was announced that the DNC would cease accepting contributions from lobbyists or political action committees.
Then it came out that much of the DNC was moving to Chicago. In the months that have followed, the Obama campaign has announced plans for training camps that will turn out thousands of new organizers dedicated to electing Democrats, and has signaled that it will spend millions in blood-red states where Democrats haven't seriously invested in building party infrastructure for decades. The campaign has constructed a fundraising machine based around small-donors that promises to end the age-old competition for dollars between different wings of the Democratic establishment, enabling the creation of a unified electoral strategy. It has argued that "real change" requires the sort of legislative successes that only a strong congressional party can produce. In short, the candidate running on his exhaustion with traditional party politics has directed his campaign to build a new kind of Democratic Party--one that may put to shame anything that came before it.
***
The aftermath of the 2002 elections was a low point for the Democratic Party. Much of the blame fell on the shoulders of Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt, the Senate and House party leaders judged responsible not just for the political failure of losing seats in the midterm election but for graver substantive deficiencies: Gephardt was complicit, some would say crucial, in George W. Bush's disastrous invasion of Iraq. Daschle was, at best, ineffectual against it. Both paid for those failings. In 2004, distracted by events in Washington, Daschle lost to Republican John Thune, and Gephardt retired after losing the Democratic presidential primary to John Kerry. Their staffs paid, too; come January of 2005, the experienced legislative tacticians and political operatives who had served the party's congressional leadership found themselves abruptly unemployed.
The bright spot of the 2004 election was the emergence of a brilliant, charismatic, young African American politician named Barack Obama. Obama burst onto the scene with a keynote speech at the Democratic Convention that would probably be remembered as little more than a neat piece of oratory if Kerry hadn't lost and congressional Democrats hadn't been wiped out. But, in a dark moment for Democrats, Obama was one of the very few points of light. Which is probably how he got a meeting with Pete Rouse in the first place.
Often called "the 101st Senator," Rouse, an understated 62-year-old with 30-odd years of Capitol Hill experience, had been Tom Daschle's powerful chief of staff. When Daschle was ejected from the Senate, he hoped Rouse would continue to work with him in the private sector. But Rouse received an expected call from Cassandra Butts, the policy director on Dick Gephardt's 2004 presidential campaign and an old law school chum of Obama's. Butts asked Rouse to meet with the newly elected Obama. Grudgingly, Rouse had lunch with the young senator. Obama asked him to sign on as chief of staff--a demotion of sorts, dropping Rouse from the office of the most powerful Senate Democrat to that of the most junior member of the body. Rouse politely declined. Obama kept asking. Eventually, Rouse accepted.
Most outsider candidates for the presidency recruit an outsider team to deliver it. Bill Clinton's main strategists in 1992 were the little-known Paul Begala and James Carville. His first chief of staff was Mack McLarty, a childhood friend who had risen to become chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party. It was a team untainted by Washington but also unschooled in how Washington worked.
The Obama campaign and Senate staff, by contrast, are full of Daschle and Gephardt veterans--an unexpected rebirth of the power bases and reputations of two politicians who had long been written off. Obama's chief of staff is the aforementioned Daschle associate, Pete Rouse. His deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, managed Daschle's 2004 campaign. His director for battleground states, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, and his director of communications, Dan Pfeiffer, were both deputy campaign managers for Daschle in 2004. Obama's foreign-policy director, Denis McDonough, was Daschle's foreign-policy adviser, and his finance director, Julianna Smoot, was head of Daschle's PAC. Many of those who didn't come from the Senate minority leader's office came from the House minority leader's office. Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, was Gephardt's deputy campaign manager in 2004. His head of delegate operations, Jeff Berman, played the same role for Gephardt. His national press secretary, Bill Burton, was Gephardt's Iowa press secretary. Dozens of others come from related arms of the party, in particular the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
It's a tremendous operation for a first-term senator who hadn't worked a day in Washington before 2004. But it's exactly the team you'd expect a former chief of staff to the Senate minority leader to construct. "The person most responsible for this was Pete Rouse," says Tom Daschle, sounding almost wistful. After all, Obama's campaign was in part based on plans Rouse had drawn up for Daschle in 2004, before Daschle decided to sit out the presidential race. The Obama staff's familiarity with the workings of the party and comfort with its procedures proved crucial in the primaries. Obama won the nomination largely because his team better understood the byzantine mechanics by which the Democratic Party chooses its nominee: The campaign used proportional-apportionment rules to hold down Clinton's delegate totals in large states and pumped resources into caucus states to run up Obama's delegate numbers. The Obama campaign succeeded, in other words, through a superior respect for the party's internal infrastructure.
***
Historically, the Democratic Party has operated less as a strong party than as an uncertain coalition. It has been regionally fractured, racially divided, ideologically torn, and economically disparate, frustrating those who believed that voting for the more-left party should further a progressive policy agenda. A broad ideological range is good for constructing raw congressional majorities but tricky when you're trying to reconcile the fiscal conservatism of the Blue Dogs with the social investment favored by liberals. Rather than acting as a single institution united around a common agenda, the party was all too often a nominal nation-state in which sets of warring fiefdoms protected their properties and sought expansion.
By the early 1990s, this incoherence had left the party bereft of a single agenda and full of tired incumbents interested in little but the protection of their own power and patrons. As a result, the Democratic brand had turned toxic, a scarlet D that national candidates had to hide or publicly burn off. "I was the polling adviser for the Democratic Leadership Council back then," says pollster Stan Greenberg. "Clinton's candidacy, and that effort, was very much focused on addressing the historical problems of the Democratic Party." Those problems included a long-standing perception that the party was soft on crime, captured by an array of entrenched interest groups, fiscally profligate, and, at least in Congress, simply corrupt. Before Clinton could build a new image of the party, however, he had to get elected. That meant not strengthening the party but holding it at arm's length, except as a useful vehicle for fundraising. This was explicit in his campaign: Clinton ran as a "New Democrat," a symbolic break from the actual Democratic Party--especially its liberal wing.
That strategy had its logic, but it also had its drawbacks. "Clinton became very identified with the presidential wing of the party," says a former member of Clinton's famed campaign war room. "But there was a lot of resentment from the Daschle and Gephardt people to the way they were treated by the Clinton people. I think the people who acted in Clinton's name didn't generate an awful lot of goodwill for them." This wasn't widely understood until 2008, when Hillary Clinton ran for president only to find that the party's leadership was devoid of individuals with any connection or loyalty to her husband's administration. Of the three most powerful Democrats—Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Howard Dean—none could be considered Clintonites, and Dean's ascension was, in many ways, an explicit repudiation of the Clintons. The cool relationship between the Clintons and the leadership continued down into Congress. "Obama got more Senate endorsements than Hillary did," continues the Clinton insider. "That's incredible. The guy's been there for three fucking years!" >>>>cont

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=its_his_party_08

Slugbug is hobnobbing with the "celebrities".

I like Rachel Maddow, I watch her almost every evening. Her elevator goes to the top.

Great pictures!!!

Becky is kind of talking about the plan to work herself out of a job and I'm thinking on asking her to just get us started on a stronger footing here before she does that. I have been inviting people to the house party on the 28th.

Monkey, that is a GREAT article about the Rev. Kirbyjohn Caldwell. I know who I'm sending that to..............

Am I the only one who watched "St. John McCain" Saturday night? I rewatched part of Obama's segment this morning, and tonight after work I am having company and we are going to watch the entire tape again. I think Obama did good, but McCain was SOOOOOoooooo smarmy. My personal opinion is that he is a very big phoney, but he came across as sincere. Eeeek.

I did not watch McCain but I don't think he was in "the cone" being objectively ignorant of the questions. I think he was briefed well before hand. I think he's like Reagan in that he can "act" if he has to. The Republicans look for some old puppet like that. Bush II wasn't yet so old but he was a barstool-sitting buffoon who could deliver an occasional line without questioning too much.

I think the Rachel Maddow pictures & story were appreciated by her unofficial fan site, which I hadn't known about. She gets alot of love at MySpace and Facebook too - I didn't know that!

Today I was at Barnes & Noble & I saw the offending anti-Obama books (Corsi & one called "The Truth About Obama" only it's lies) - I made a sign that said "Boycott Barnes & Noble" and put it next to the section & snuck away. I had to do something & even if a few student employees see it, I'll be happy. That particular mall attracts rich frat and sorority kids (that's why it has those corporate branch stores) so maybe they will "question" a little.

One of the Hempfest voter registration photos made the Politico blog! So my weekend wasn't wasted. I like to try to get the message out there and a picture is worth 1000 words sometimes and also it's good to try to get original content when possible.

I did also meet an Obama delegate who was born in Iraq. He did all he could to get rid of Saddam and then he ended up in a refugee camp and he also spent five years in prison. He is against the war and I think has come to see that it created at least as many problems as it solved, as is always the case with war.

Update on my Seoul trip...

Just to let you know that South Korea's right-wing, W-loving, pro-death penalty, and anti-gay Lee Myung-Bak regime decided to go ahead and issue me a multiple-entry, 90-day visa after all. After all, I fit the demographic profile of his supporters.

They are keeping my passport overnight so that they can actually print the visa and affix it inside, but I am approved in any case.

It will be very interesting to say the least, when I arrive in Seoul.

I watched it for a few minutes, and then I came out and announced to my man that McCrazy was going on about his prison camp in a universe far away and that the whole thing was crap because...

"He sounds like he has been coached".

If you can stand watching the first few minutes, you will see. I quit watching about 5 minutes in because it was just so obvious he had been coached it was disgusting.

He has not sounded that lucid since the 80s. I don't think I have ever heard him more prepped.

Agreed Christy, McCain is the new sheepfeeder, and a performance like that is filet mignon.

Where's the beef?

Here is the beef.

When McMumbles came out and was asked by Warren 'Were you comfortable in your cone of silence?'

Now, how is it possible that Warren took the stage with Obama and DID NOT KNOW McQueasy was not in place?

Warren... did NOT know..? Total crap.

He was about to take the stage live on national television with two presidential candidates in THE election of our lifetimes, yet he DID NOT KNOW McMumbles was not in place?

HE HAD TO KNOW he was not in it. Either he is lying and deliberately covered for McCheater. Or he is the dumbest and sloppiest thing ever to sit in front of a tv camera.

I just do not believe he is stupid. But it is either that or he flat out lied.

Seriously, is there anyone here that believes Warren took that stage not knowing where his boy was?

"At 9:49 this morning a caller into C-Span noted that in answering one question McCain referred to and asked to get back to a question he had not been asked yet. The only way he could have known the question was part of the show was if he had either been briefed beforehand as to what the questions would be or if he was able to hear Obama's responses. "

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3815821

Why Christy, are you implying that Pastor Rick was Purpose Driven?

I Scream Cone of Slyness

The Smoking Gun is on Warrens own transcript

Q OKAY. WE DON'T HAVE TO GO LONGER ON THAT ONE. DEFINE MARRIAGE.

A UNION -- A UNION BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN, BETWEEN ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN, THAT'S MY DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE. ARE WE GOING TO GET BACK TO THE IMPORTANCE OF SUPREME COURT JUSTICES.

Q WE'LL GET TO THAT.

A ALL RIGHT. OKAY.

Q YOU GOT ALL MY QUESTIONS, GOOD.

http://www.rickwarrennews.com/transcript/civil_forum_transcript-05.txt

You...got...alll..of my questions....Good!

Don't get any clearer than that.

Rant and Rave
by Joe Jackson

I'm gonna rant and rave
I'm gonna lose control if they get me mad
I'm staring at the tv screen
They're staring right back
I got a bottle in my hand
I think I'll blow them up

I'm gonna weep and wail
I'm gonna gnash my teeth
At the lies they tell
And half the people in the world
Don't even know where they are
Don't even know they're being had
I'm gonna wake them up

Believe me you'll find out...
That everything's rotten
From bottom to top through and through
All gold is just glitter
All gains are ill-gotten
But now what the hell do we do . . .

I'm gonna scream and shout
I'm gonna stamp my feet
'til a policeman comes
I don't care what they say
Don't care what they write down
Book of rules or book of life
I'm gonna tear them up

Now who wants to be just
A bug that they trample
Well you see what has happened of course
'cause instead of using the force of example
Now it's just the example of force . . .

Wait a minute! Someone left something out of both warren and CNNs transcripts.

Go back up a read warrens.... Now read CNNs.

"WARREN: OK, we don't have to beleaguer on that one. Define marriage.

MCCAIN: A union -- a union between man and woman, between one man and one woman. That's my definition of marriage.

Could I -- are we going to get back to the importance of Supreme Court Justices or should I mention --

WARREN: We will get to that.

MCCAIN: OK. All right. OK.

WARREN: You're jumping ahead...

(CROSSTALK)

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0808/17/se.01.html

Why did warrens not reflect the 'Your jumping ahead'... and CNNs does not reflect the 'You got all my questions'...?

Very very interesting.

Yes, "jumping ahead" does imply that there is something known to "jump ahead" to, don't it?

You can rest assured that Pastor Rick will be shocked at such allegations.

The Saddleback Setup

I don't give a crap what he is 'shocked' at.

After he gets over his 5 year old response he can try explaining wtf it is he has been caught in.

Cause it looks like CHEATING. And lies.

Imagine how SHOCKED his followers will be when they realized he stood right up on that stage and lied to them repeatedly about matters of no less than the US Presidency.

'We will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last pope.'

I heard that somewhere once and imagine how shocked I was to realize, I agree.

And a 3rd transcript...

REV. WARREN: We will get to that.

SEN. MCCAIN: Okay. All right. (Laughter.) Okay.

REV. WARREN: Man, you're jumping ahead. You know all my questions.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/08/transcript_of_obama_mccain_at.html

Hmmmmm.

I'm afraid facts will get you nowhere with this electorate...

I wonder if McMindreader could forward me those pesky lotto numbers for this coming weekend?

Sick, sick, sicks.

REV. WARREN: Thank you for coming.

Now, my first question: Was the cone of silence comfortable that you were in just now? (Laughs.)

SEN. MCCAIN: (Laughs.) I was trying to hear through the wall.

AHHH HA! The Sun Times leaves out something too!

This is thiers...

And by the way, in case you hadn't noticed it, the French -- 80 percent -- we love to imitate the French -- 80 percent of their electricity is generated by nuclear power. If they can do it and reprocess, we can too, my friends. And by the way, if you hadn't noticed, we now have a pro-American president of France, which shows if you live long enough, anything can happen in America. (Laughter, applause.)

REV. WARREN: (Audio break.) What's the most gut-wrenching decision you've ever had to make? And what was the process that you used to make it?

This is what is actually on the video, transcribing it myself starting at 8 minutes 43 seconds into it

McMumbles:And by the way, in case you hadn't noticed it, the French -- 80 percent -- we love to imitate the French -- 80 percent of their electricity is generated by nuclear power. If they can do it and reprocess, we can too, my friends. And by the way, if you hadn't noticed, we now have a pro-American president of France, which shows if you live long enough, anything can happen in America. (Laughter, applause.)

Warren: Well, you just took the, urmmm.. I had that question for later on, but now, we don't have to ask it! Ummm. What's the most gut-wrenching decision you've ever had to make? And what was the process that you used to make it?

It is on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1h38cs7rcM&feature=related

Cnns transcript has it too.

... nice pickup Christy...

and by the way, isn't it disrespectful as hell to the French to continue to make these kind of snide anti-France comments? I've heard him use that line before, and it's disgusting... unless of course you think demeaning others is ok no matter what (good Christian question!)

Crooks and liars does even better.

Warren says to question it is to question the INTEGRITY OF THE SECRET SERVICE!

And he keeps just going and going. Obama is the one who got an advantage, there was a tv monitor in the green room, and he says his repeated refrences to 'the cone of silence' WAS A JOKE!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/08/19/rick-warren-admits-mccain-was-late-for-forum-and-then-says-were-attacking-the-secret-service/

Popcorn is what we need!

Warren says to question it is to question the INTEGRITY OF THE SECRET SERVICE!

~~~~

Huh? What does that mean?

WAIT! IT GETS BETTER!

Carl Cameron on Fox KNEW McCrazy would not arrive till 'Halfway through Obamas conversation with WRIGHT"

Ok he meant warren, but the monitor clearly says it was 1 pm at the time, so how did Carl Cameron know McSleezy would arrive late?

See for yourself

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x171461

"Under the rules, Mccains not suppossed to be able to hear the questions. So he doesn't have any unfair advantage by going second. They were going to put him in what they euphamistically call the cone of silence, here on the grounds. Uhhh. But he is not going to actually arive until about halfway through Obamas conversation with Wright"

Wow. He really did know at 1:08 pm CT that McMumbles would be late.

Large U.S. Bank Collapse Seen Ahead

By Jan Dahinten

The worst of the global financial crisis is yet to come and a large U.S. bank will fail in the next few months as the world's biggest economy hits further troubles, former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff said on Tuesday.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20557.htm

YAY! They gave Rachel Maddow her OWN SHOW! YAY!

Ok. Who wants to bet that she's only allowed to have conservatives 2 to her one--just like they did to Phil Donahue. It's they only way they win--by making sure they make it that the conservatives out number the smart ones.

KO at Kos

BOOO...they eliminated Dan Abrams in order to give Maddow a show. I wonder why they only allow 2 lefties when every other show is solid core Republican?

I'm not a big Dan Abrams fan, he comes off as totally insincere and rehearsed in his tone, and there is always the obligatory left/right surrogate shout over each other segment which I loathe, so I won't miss him much... plus going from Keith to Rachel will make for a good 2 hours of something I can actually use.

Wham bam thank you, Dan.

I liked Dan Abrams "BushLeague Justice" and his scrutiny regarding Rove's involvement in the Seigelman case.

I hate all the shows that have the obligatory right/left because they ALLOW LIES and SPIN to go without the host saying, "NO LIES, NO SPIN ZONE!"

I don't want the shouting heads. I want every person who appears on that show to not be allowed to perjure themselves in order to score points.

~~~new thread.