..and just who would that be? Why,Bristol Palin of course. The unwed,teenage pregnancy, mother of one. She,of course is the arbiter of morality when it pertains to this issue. As an example of her sage wisdom, she says that childern need a father’s influence to be well adjusted.

“we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.”

ok, well not her kid. Just everyone elses. Her kid doesn’t need to see its father, but ofcourse it wouldn’t, she is a Palin and they are real Americans ya know.

Here’s why my ass is chapped..I get it, Obama said he thinks,for himself, gays should be able to live like the human Americans they are, and be allowed to marry like white folk.. er, real folk..instead of having to jump the broom..uh, I mean get a notarized letter saying they can make decisions for their loved one..and to counter this postiton… Cnn gives us..

Bristol Palin..

What the fuck??

Why in the hell is anyone putting this numskulls words up?.. and why in the fuck are they put up opposite of the President of the Unites States like she is somehow his equal,somehow more knowing and worldlier and we should take hers as if from some old wisdom that has been lost and only recently found..This person is 21 years old, she is known only because she was the unwed,knocked-up, teenage daughter of a Vice Presidential candidate in a failed Presidential campaign. Kim Kardashian or Lindsey Lohan have more to say that this ijit. But now, CNN is using two opposing opinions on gay marriage, the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama.. vs.. Bristol Fucking Palin like she’s some wonderment we should hear from when she speaks, and by God, somewhere out there is the mad mad mad world of ours someone is saying, right now, “Of course she’s his equal and should be taken not with a grain salt, but as manna from Heaven.” “Sarah and Bristol Palin 2012!”

and if I’m sure if I cared to watch Fox news tonight, I’d see that someone…

What the hell is wrong with us? Over a Black man?

We’ve lost our fucking minds.

I get the need to protect children from the media. In most cases, it’s a really great idea. We don’t want the little heathens to get the idea that if they want to be famous all they have to do it is get pregnant as a teen or commit some crime and get their name and/or face splashed all over media-dom. We have enough Kardashians and Hiltons and even that 17-year old year old who seems to only know how to pout and pose, but I think we’ve, or more specifically CNN, has just taken this practice of protecting children from their selves and their desperation for fame a wee bit to far…..

See if you can spot the problem with this story from CNN.Com

Police in California seek boy, 14, in sexual assaults

(CNN) — Police in Oakland, California, are asking the public for its help in finding a 14-year-old boy wanted in connection with two sexual assaults.

The teen is suspected of attacking two 28-year-old women, in separate incidents on January 6 and January 12.

In the first case, the teen approached the woman while she was walking, pretended to have a firearm and demanded her wallet, before forcing her to an isolated area where he sexually assaulted her, police said.

In the second case, he approached the woman on a bicycle, again pretended to have a firearm and demanded the woman’s purse, before forcing her to an isolated area and sexually assaulted her, they said.

The teen, whom CNN is not identifying because of his age, should be considered armed and dangerous, police said.

That’s right, police are looking for this rapist that CNN isn’t identifying..

“Be on the look-out for this criminal, he is armed and dangerous..really, stay away from him, he will hurt you!”

“Who is it?”

“Can’t tell you that, just be on the lookout for him”

“ummm, ok… here’s your sign”

Nice work CNN.. I would love to see this on Anderson Cooper’s ‘Ridiculist’, but somehow I don’t think he’s going to go up against the mother-company like that.

Related articles

• Police in California seek boy, 14, in sexual assaults (news.blogs.cnn.com)
• Oakland Police Release ID Of 14-Year-Old Sexual Assault Suspect (sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com)
• Kim Kardashian Charity Sales Send Very Little To Charities (inquisitr.com)
• Teen Choice Awards: Kim Kardashian (fabsugar.com)
• Anderson Cooper Puts Stephen Colbert on his “RidicuList”. (colbertnewshub.com)

and  it’s all going to be down hill from here.

I’ve seen this president mocked and belittled for his ears.. not altogether unfair or unheard of (no pun intended) to mock the physical characteristics of a person.

I’ve seen him de-legitimized for his teleprompter usage… strange, considering most every other speech giver also uses a teleprompter, unless it’s Sarah Palin, she just uses her hand because she’ so environmentally  friendly.

I’ve seen every criticism there is thrown at this man, some deserved, some over the top and some just plain stupid, hateful, bigoted and biased.  Until today, I thought I’d seen it all.

Language guru: Obama speech too ‘professorial’ for his target audience

(CNN) — President Obama’s speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.

Tuesday night’s speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. The Austin, Texas-based company analyzes and catalogues trends in word usage and word choice and their impact on culture.

Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence “added some difficulty for his target audience,” Payack said.

Well, there you have it folks.. the guy is aloof,uncaring, not up to par, unemotional and disconnected because he talked to the country like 10th graders.

Let’s just impeach the guy and get it over it with. Seriously people, if we’re going to take our criticism of the man to the point of  “he talked smart to people” what the hell is there left to criticize him for?

What a sad, fucked up society we are when it comes down to finding fault with our leader, not because he can, but because he did have an educated and adult conversation with us. It’s no wonder so many in this country love the Sarah Palin’s of the world…  It isn’t that we think she should talk like an idiot because we find it charming, it’s because we are idiots and want everything spoon-fed to us by mommy.  If we have to think for ourselves.. well that’s just too much work! Gimme the guy who I can drink a beer with instead of the guy who can not only spell the word ‘Brewery’, but use it in a 19.8 word sentence.

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• Obama Blasts BP Leaders In Oval Office Speech, Will Meet Them At The White House Wednesday (huffingtonpost.com)
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• Vintage Palin Moment: She Reads Answers Off Her Handprompter (atomiurl.com)

Mr Hayward [BP’s chief executive] reiterated a promise that BP “will honour all legitimate claims for business interruption”. Asked for examples of illegitimate claims, he said: “I could give you lots of examples. This is America — come on. We’re going to have lots of illegitimate claims. We all know that.”

Yes, and you are an oil executive who is responsible for one of the worst oil spills in US history so you are going to make illegitimate claims of safety… come on-we all know that.

What a smug reply from a person who should be on bent knee with head bowed in every interview he gives at the moment. Yes, this is America and your oil rig has just destroyed a large swath of it, so is this really the right time to start insulting it’s inhabitants? It would seem that not only is this the right time to insult the country their product just destroyed, but it’s also the time to threaten the president with the oh-so-subtle yet ballsy statement..

He urged the US Government to pursue a policy of “absolute co-operation” with BP. “We will only succeed if we work together,” he said — a day after President Obama’s press secretary promised that the White House would “keep a boot to the throat of BP” to ensure that it fulfilled its responsibilities.

Is that right? How about BP pledges “absolute co-operation” with the US Government. Wow, it’s the US Government who should cooperate with the ones whose oil is destroying our coastline.

Ok, well.. or what?

Corexit was 54.7 percent

effective at breaking down

crude oil from the Gulf,

and Dispersit was 100 percent

effective.

What am I saying? Or what… HA! Or nothing. BP was ordered by the EPA to start using less of dispersant called Corexit 9500 because of it’s toxicity and to start using a more environmentally friendly one. There are quite a few others out there and besides, Corexit is banned in BP’s own country. It’s not just that this stuff is toxic to the oceans, workers at the Exxon Valdez clean-up reported “respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders,  that were linked to an earlier version of the Corexit dispersant.” So the EPA gave BP 72 hours to switch to a less toxic product. BP said, ‘Umm.. no’ and still continues to use the highly toxic dispersant over a more effective and ecologically friendly  one.

No, really. After being ordered by the US Government to stop using a chemical known to be less effective than the product recommended by the EPA and more toxic to ocean and humans… BP issued a statement saying in essence, “Up yours”

“Based on the information that is available today, BP continues to believe that Corexit was the best and most appropriate choice at the time when the incident occurred, and that Corexit remains the best option for subsea application.

Well hey, they believe they are right.. so why should they follow an order from the US government? Like Carl-Henric Svanberg, the chairman of BP, said, “The US is a big and important market for BP, and BP is also a big and important company for the US…..So the position goes both ways.”

See, the position of importance between BP and the United States goes both ways. I am really glad it was James Carville to respond  to that delusion of grandeur.

Carville: “BP is not the equal of the United States government. This president needs to tell BP ‘I’m your daddy, I’m in charge, you’re going to do what we say. You’re a multinational company that is greedy and you may be guilty of criminal activity.’ It’s time that we understand, BP does not wish this thing well. They have been negligent. They need to whip out their checkbook and start moving into action and the president needs to push them.”

I understand that “stuff just happens” and when it’s oil or nuclear power plants  that “stuff” is  going to be ugly.. very ugly. The problem here is this is looking less and less like an accident and more and more like a criminal act. Each new day brings another startling revelation about some of BP’s questionable  practices add that in with their feelings of superiority and this is getting really ugly.

Yesterday we learned that in the hours before the explosion, there was  ’skirmish’ between the BP ‘company man’ and the rig operators. Bp was ready to shut down that well because they were done with, but they were still paying $500,000 a day rental fees. When told of the process they had to go through to shut down the well, things got heated. Part of the process  involved “removing the mud from the drill pipe. That mud is used to keep pressure down on any gas that might come out of the pipe. The question was how quickly you remove that mud safely to do that”. Time was money, the BP “company man” was interested in getting the process done a little faster than the rig operators wanted.  This is not to say either, at that time, was more right than the other. As a lessor who is paying by the minute.. when you’re done, you’re done and you want your tab closed out as soon as possible, but when you’re the leasee, getting paid by the minute, you want that time to drag out. What we did know at that time was the BP man stood up, after hearing the procedures,  and said “‘No. We have some changes to that.’ Going by the superiority complex we see  today, this comment doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is that the oil rig acquiesced  to BP’s demand. The excuse could be as simple as they knew where their paychecks and the helicopter ride home were coming from.

After the skirmish,  Doug Brown, one of 115 rig workers, “recalled top Transocean man Jimmy Harrell saying,”

“Well, I guess that’s what we have those pinchers  for.”

“Brown said he assumed Harrell was talking about the shear rams on the blowout preventer, the devices that are supposed to slice through a drill pipe in a last-ditch effort to close off the well in case of an emergency. The implication was that the Transocean employees expected they might have to take emergency action because of BP’s push to remove the drilling mud.”

Looks like we needed more than those ‘ pinchers.’ Which leads us to look at the the blowout preventer or, BOP. The last and only time this BOP was inspected was just before it was installed in 2005. At the same time it was inspected, we’ve learned that the MMS was allowing oil companies to do their own inspections, written in pencil, so  the MMS could trace over the written record in ink and attach their name to it.  So one thing we can be grateful for is that the ones doing the inspection was not MMS. But, why did the BOP fail? Why was there an explosion? Why did 11 people lose their lives and untold miles of coastlines and marshes suffer irrevocable  harm?

BP has promised to pay for any and all damages, sure, along with putting themselves on the same importance level as this country, demanding our complete cooperation,ignoring our environmental standards, and insulting us by saying.. ya know, this is America, so there are going to be a lot of illegitimate claims, and that looks  to be a breeze.

Ironically, there seems to be a lot of those illegitimate claims going around and they’re coming from BP. One of the most frustrating aspects of this entire debacle is the crazed policy of allowing BP to not only do all the clean up, but letting them decide what information is  given out, what photos are seen, what reporters have access and to where and the exclusion of experts that aren’t BP people.. Jean-Michel Cousteau, Jacques Cousteau’s son was denied entrance in the the “Land of BP” because BP also controls the air over the spill and Cousteau had an aerial photographer with him. Reporters from Mother Jones tell of their experience of being blocked and then yelled at to get approval and an escort from BP. While you may say “Well, ok it’s Mother Jones, it’s not like it was CBS or anything”, think again. CBS was barred from the scene by the Coast guard telling them “This is BP’s rules, not ours”

It’s not just the air, land,sea and press BP has control and say so over, they are in charge  of the water testings done in any of the Gulf states. An environmental official for Escambia County, Florida was ordered to send water samples to a lab in Texas whose biggest clients are BP.Is this not the craziest thing you’ve ever seen? Oh yeah, you aren’t seeing it because everything you are seeing has been cleaned and filtered through BP first.

But hey, they are going to pay for the damages and really, they’ve been straight with us so far. When they first said it was only 1000 barrels a day, when it was really 5000 barrels that was just another unintentional mistake. It’s not like they have an incentive to have anything other than complete transparency here. It’s not as if there is something called a Natural Resources Damage Assessment that’s done after a spill and relates to how many claims can be placed and how much is paid out. Of course the lower the spill the lower the payout, but hey BP promised to pay for all of it, they wouldn’t low-ball spill amounts. If you don’t count the complete ban on information or the repeated readjustment of the oil spill amount,  then today’s news is really nothing to be concerned with either and you can go back to the “Land of BP”. For the rest of us, today Government scientist have finally be able to verify  that it’s not 5000 barrels like we’ve been told repeatedly by BP, it’s worse.. much much worse..

government scientists said Thursday that the undersea gusher was spewing oil at a rate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, more than twice the 5,000-barrel estimate given by BP.

To put this into perspective

That would mean 260,000 to 520,000 barrels had been leaked as of 10 days ago. The Exxon Valdez leaked about 250,000 barrels into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989.

10 days ago we surpassed the Exxon Valdez and it’s still not over.
From day one BP has insulted the people in this country, demanded cooperation from our government, taken over operations and barred the press,independent scientists,volunteers and experts from the scene and the data. They have knowingly misjudged the amount of flow by repeatedly low-balling the numbers and have told their own media outlets in Britain after the explosion and the death of 11 men that the leak is “relatively tiny” compared with the “very big ocean.”

Yesterday, Lt.Gen Russel Honoré, who commanded the military response to Hurricane Katrina, had this to say(emphasis mine)

(CNN) — It’s interesting how many people have swallowed the BP public relations’ bait to call the explosion from Deepwater Horizon oil rig the Gulf oil spill. We need to call it what it is: the BP oil spill. The federal government needs to take control and take punitive action against BP and any negligent government regulators immediately.

As a concerned citizen, preparedness speaker and author, and former commander of federal troops in disaster response, I watched with interest as BP brought out its big PR guns to protect its brand and its platoon of expert engineers, paid by BP to talk about how it happened and how they intended to fix it.

BP’s reaction was much like Toyota’s when it was confronted with safety issues. It, too, focused on PR to protect its brand, versus telling the truth, and sent out its engineers to talk about the problem and the fix.

The U.S. Coast Guard was the first responder. The Coast Guard’s priority always is to save lives. They spent days looking for the 11 missing men. Meanwhile, BP took advantage of this time to make itself the authoritative voice in the news about the spill and blame other companies.

The U.S. government response was based on laws and rules that were created after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. After Valdez, the law changed to make the offending company responsible for the cleanup. A fund was created that all oil companies contributed to. If there was an emergency oil spill, a company could draw up to $75 million from this fund to fix the problem. But the fund was meant to help small wildcat operations, not huge conglomerates like BP.

Sticking to that regulation was part of the problem. The No. 1 rule when dealing with disaster is to figure out which rules you need to break. Rules are designed for when everything is working. A democracy is based on trust. BP has proved it can’t be trusted.

The government needs to change the game and make this a punitive effort. The government has been too friendly to oil companies.

The government should immediately freeze BP’s assets and start to charge the corporation — say $100 million — each day the oil flows. The money could be held in a fund that U.S. government draws on to take care of the people along the Gulf Coast and pay the states for doing the cleanup.

Next, BP and the government bureaucrats who broke a law and put the public at risk need to go to jail.

Gen Honore’… James Carville…  they’re right. It’s time we stop letting the fox clean up the hen house and tell the farmer he’s just as important as the farmer is. It’s time for President Obama to take over this mess and start the punitive effects. While he says the government is in charge, everything we’re seeing contradicts that the government has done anything except give complete trust in BP and their actions. I know we will hear nothing but outrage that here is another industry Obama is socializing, but for right now those people can go pound sand and watch Palin and Beck re-runs. They don’t offer anything to the conversation  as it is, so let them sit on their couch in their foil-hats crying about how they want their country back. No one with a brain can watch the Anderson Cooper piece from last night and not see that this has gone far too long enough. BP, private industry, you were once again given a chance to police yourself, prevent catastrophe and clean up the mess you made, and once again you have failed. Once again it is us, the people of this country who will suffer from your destruction and it’s our government who has to step in where they are rightly loathed to step in, an act like the adult and fix your mistake.  We would demand a thank you, but we’ll be too busy arguing with the lunatic fringe who will be having more apoplectic fits that this is just more proof that this president is a Muslim,Nazi,Socialist.

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In another discussion with Lil Mike, I’ve come to realize that I just talk to freaking much-LOL.. But seriously, it struck me that if he doesn’t understand.. then maybe others don’t see the big deal either, and that scares me. If we could for once.. just once take the political party out of the equation and base our verdict on the facts, I don’t think any of us would see things differently..  But we can’t take the (R) and the (D) out of the equation because then our entire world crumbles when we find out we’ve been duped and in the end supported a lie. Where we should be angry at the one who made us into the fool, we are angry at ourselves and not many of us like the idea that we were taken for a ride. It’s why ponzie schemes work so well.. Who wants to admit that they really believed the 40% return they were promised was real and legal..

I wrote a blog the other day

The special powers an (R) next to your name gives you…

In it, I talk about the mess we find ourselves in today, the news that the Investigators General found that the White House inserted it’s own wording into a threat assessment from the CIA and then used that paragraph to enact an unconstitutional doctrine..

To explain it more would take to much space and this reply isn’t about the paragraph as much as it’s about how that deceitful act is more detrimental to the principals this country was build on.. Life,Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness then anything we’ve seen so far.

Once again, my reply to Mike..

“That[inserting of the paragraph] opens a whole can of worms, but the actual paragraph, I don’t find a lie or contraversal. Do you? How would that change anything?”

The easiest 1st.. How does it change anything? If the White House is allowed to make up what they want, to get what they want.. how does that NOT change anything?  Please explain how you support any President doing this? Because I think you are slowly realizing that just because we had an (R) President for awhile, doesn’t mean we will always have an (R) president, we will eventually get a (D) and you can’t be ok with allowing this to continue when a (D) has the precedent..

But more than that… where do you draw the line?  The President can make up what he wants for security reasons that hamper constitutional rights… he can hold false PC hearings that tell us the ‘news’ he wants us to hear… he can use ‘plants’ to steer the topics of real PC’s to the direction he wants..   where do you draw the line? You don’t like the MSM being liberal, but you’re ok with the complete fabrication coming from your oval office?

Now the other part of your justification…that you don’t find it a lie… How do you know this paragraph is true? Because  it fits in with your opinion?

Had it been true (or a true threat) the CIA would have put it in there right? But they didn’t find anything like that so, the White House made it up.. at that time atleast, you were made to believe a falsehood that the Oval office told you.. and worse than that.. that falsehood was then used to convince you the NSA program (and so many others just because of the butterfly effect-) was needed, because that statement saying it was needed, was also inserted falsely..

In this instant, I won’t make your head swim at how much of a can of worms it is because I don’t think you would ever acknowledge it.. but in this instant, you..we were hoodwinked.

Bush/Cheney wanted the NSA program.. we’ll leave off the ulterior motives for that right now and just stick to that.. They wanted it and asked the CIA to give them a reason.. The CIA did what it was supposed to do, it investigated and put together a threat assessment.But, it wasn’t threatening enough to get Bush/Cheney what they wanted so they made up their own assessment and then used what they made up to bring to Congress and the American ppl to get that NSA program..

I really can’t believe you don’t see the implications of this. I don’t care whats going on in the world.. a President of the United States cannot make up a story, attach the CIA’s name to that story… and then steal rights from the citizens of the country because of that story.. That’s not what this country is build upon!

I won’t get into the problems this creates for the CIA… but take a minute and think about that…

Let’s look at the broad implications.. If, as you say, the paragraph was true then how can anything from the CIA ever be useful again? If they can’t get the threat right,  and it takes someone from the White House..(and we both know there might be 2 people in the White House who would know as much as the CIA on any given intelligence assessments)..but if it takes someone from the White House to see the real threats and tell people about it, then how do we believe anything from our intelligence division again? How can we trust their competence?

Ask yourself this, if it was so true, why didn’t they(the White House) put that paragraph out there themselves? Why did they attach it to  the CIA’s briefing. They had to have some intelligence from somewhere saying these things right? So why did they have to put it in a CIA memo? Why didn’t they make the intelligence division who gave them  the information, put out their own memo? Who was that intelligence division anyway and why are they to be believed over the CIA?

Or did the White House just make it up?

You can’t ignore those scenarios because they are the only two that exist.

Let’s go farther..
You will admit that the NSA program is a massive invasion of privacy.. one that, in your opinion is needed though..-yes?  Well, now you’ve just been told that the CIA did not find  reason enough for it and  the President made up a reason on his own and stole privacy from the American people.. your reason for it was made up! You may have felt there was a good reason, you may have been happy that the CIA report backed you up.. but the truth is, it didn’t!  I may love the idea that a chocolate diet helps me lose weight, but I can’t write my own little paragraph and insert it into Jenny Craig’s website saying it..

Bring this down to an easier level. You’ve been accused of killing someone. The local PD gets involved and investigates you, sure you look guilty and you probably did do it, but while everything looks bad against you, there really isn’t much to report. At an internal briefing on the status of your case the DA says.. Ok, well I want this guy wire-tapped.. The cops say, “well..we do too, but we can’t find a reason for it” .. So the DA decides to write a paragraph that does implicate you, it’s not  based on anyting he’s been told-he just makes it up on the spot and he hands it to the cops and says.. “Now go get your wire-tap“. The cops go to a judge and say “Judge, read this paragraph right here, that’s why we need this wire-tap” and the judge says “Ok”..

Is this legal? and more than that..is that what you are saying you are happy to go along with in this country..

Is this what you want your President to do and will you ignore it now that you know what he did?

Is this the level of power you wish to give to the already most power office in the world?

If you want to allow a President and Vice President to arbitrarily make up their own reasons to do things that are unconstitutional…then why are you fighting government run health care.. why are you fighting government   run anything?

You didn’t’ serve this country for the last 25 years to allow your president to make up a fantasy to get something he wanted..did you?

I know this is difficult.. because to admit this opens a can of worms that could devour a country. You wouldn’t believe a liar who lied to you, or a thief who stole from you in your personal life.. but to believe this?  Wouldn’t this alone make you question.. What else did they do this on?

and I think that is why you will ignore this as a problem, because the  answer to that.. is something you don’t want to know..

Let’s face it, larger picture is extremely  frightening.How many other times did this happen? Besides just the NSA program, what other things did the White House insert it’s own wording into and then use that wording to get their way on… Is it possible it’s all been a lie or based on a lie? and what do we do about it? To investigate further might tell us the scariest truth we’ve ever dreamed up.. but to ignore it–well, that blesses every President from now until we resemble Russia Circa Stalin, which on that path, would be in our lifetime.

This can’t be what you and thousands of others like you served their country for..your oath didn’t say to protect the President when he lies to get his way-even if you agree with that way… did it?

It always seems like there is something in an (R) and (D) psyche that is almost like they feel if they acknowledge this.. like a house of cards, the whole thing will crumble. But if that house of cards is an illusion built on a lie, why would you want it to stand in the 1st place?

Where is your anger over what was done in your name?

Where is the line? Would it be OK for the Oval Office to make up a threat assessment with the intelligence community’s name on it, that says we must nuke a rival country and then go out on every “Meet the Press” tv show that will have them and promote this insertion?

Where does your tolerance end?

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I’m sitting here refreshing Drudge and Cnn while simultaneously flipping through all the headline news shows… and no hoopla!

You’d think with months of screaming, ranting,crying, and those  tea-parties, someone would have mentioned that we are now  ‘less Socialistic’ …

If I could stomach listening to Boss Limbaugh, I would see if he was sweating and dancing to the tune of Beck’s  “Loser”. Since President Obama has most certainly failed in his attempt to turn the USA into the county of the New National Socialist Party,  with his ingenious take over of the banks and car companies.. whilst driving the rest of the country into the shittier by stealing our wealth and spreading it amongst the elites…

but nope, nothing.. instead I get the news from my favorite ‘Mo…

Chrysler Financial repays $1.5

bln US gov’t loans

DETROIT, July 14 (Reuters) – Chrysler Financial said on Tuesday it has paid off $1.5 billion in loans it had received from the U.S. Department of Treasury in January to fund vehicle loans and incentive programs for Chrysler consumers…

BB&T repays TARP money

Seven months after it accepted $3.1 billion from the federal government, BB&T Corp. – a longtime opponent of big government – repaid the money with interest Wednesday.

$93 million in profit was made off that investment.. Not too shabby in my opinion.

FirstMerit repaying TARP

loan this month

An Ohio bank with more than a dozen branches in the region announced plans this week to repay the federal government’s more than $125 million investment under the Capital Purchase Program.

In fact, if it had not been for the ‘mo..and the 2nd story I never would have known that American Express, Bank of New York Mellon, Capital One, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Northern Trust, State Street and U.S. Bancorp also announced that they had repaid their loans from TARP, or the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

I should be surprised that I haven’t heard anything from the biased and untrue liberal MSM.. right?

Then again, if the media really was a ‘liberal slanted monster’ this would be on every headline news crawler and program just to rub it in to the faces of the Chicken Littles who were screaming that we were being taken over by our government…ironically while ignoring that were already  ‘taken over’ by our government..

I guess they are moving on to make more accusation about the Democrats evil attempt to bring socialism to the shores of the country by giving every baby born, house cleaner working, and any one else who likes to choose things for themselves instead of having someone else choose for them, that deplorable option of…. Health Care. So like everything else we’ve seen ignored in the last week.. Chrysler’s repayment will go unnoticed because it’s easier to keep throwing the kitchen sink of accusations than it is to actually give it a minute to see if it just might work.. It’s more patriotic to wish failure for the Government attempt to stop the slide into another depression era than it is to say “OK, that was my bad.. Carry on”.

Anyway, thank you for the $93 million in profit BB&T.. it was a pleasure doing business with you.. Come again soon.

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TMZ is reporting

Michael Jackson is dead.

We’ve just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50.

Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back

A source tells us Jackson was dead when paramedics arrived.

Once at the hospital, the staff tried to resuscitate him but he was completely unresponsive.

We’re told one of the staff members at Jackson’s home called 911.

La Toya ran in the hospital sobbing after Jackson was pronounced dead.

Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince “Blanket” Michael Jackson II.

Pop singer Michael Jackson

has suffered cardiac arrest,

CNN affiliate KTLA reports

Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Steve Ruda said paramedics responded to a 911 call at Jackson’s home around 12:26 p.m. He was not breathing when they arrived. The paramedics performed CPR and took him to UCLA Medical Center, Ruda says.

TMZ has updates HERE
UPDATE: The 911 call came in at 12:21PM at his Holmby Hills home in L.A.

UPDATE: A Jackson family member tells TMZ Michael is in “really bad shape” and the brothers are headed to UCLA.

UPDATE: We just got off the phone with Joe Jackson, Michael’s dad, who says “he is not doing well.

Yesterday, on the MucheDumbre forum a great question was asked..

What Kind Of Healthcare Reform Do You Want? (If Any…)

Healthcare reform is gonna be the big subject this summer. Rather than just bash one party’s ideas over the other, I thought I’d just express what I would like to see. Personally. And invite others to do so as well.

My health insurance is employer-based. I am unhappy with it. The insurance I had with my previous job was less expensive and I had developed a relationship with my doctor, who is not on my current plan. Now, I could opt out and get insurance on my own, but it would be considerably more expensive for the same level of coverage.

Right now I am pretty much locked into my employer’s choice. I want a system that provides real choice. I choose my insurer. I choose my doctor.

I don’t think a government-run system is the answer for everybody, but I do think there should be a safety net for the uninsured and under-insured.

For me, I just want something affordable and portable.

Let’s face it, health care is broken. Blaming who broke it or who wants to fix it  isn’t doing a bit of good for anyone. It’s time to finish the dialog on whether people want reform.  Those options have been weighed, they have been measured and they have been found wanted!

The question asked on the Muche forum is a good one and my list is probably on par with most people’s list, to put it simply…

I want a plan that allows me to have a yearly well-being check for me and my family, office visits with a reasonable co-pay until a certain deduction( based on income), is met for the adults. Children under 19, if still in school full-time, have a much smaller deduction if any at all, prescriptions with a co-pay(even the ones that are ‘free’ now unless you just cannot afford them), hospitalizations decided by doctors(after they have been reformed) and major medical disasters covered… I want all of this for a reasonable monthly price based on your income. The biggest thing is  an end to the “pre-existing  condition”, if you’ve had cancer, you can still get coverage  but you might have to pay 5-10% more a month than the person who’s never had cancer.

So how do we decide who pays what? The complaint is “He doesn’t pay as much as me waaa-waaa-waaa, so why should he get what I get” !  How can this be done in a fair way? Ask the student loan program! It’s not perfect, but if you can pay back your loans at X amt, you pay them back at that amount. If you can’t make those payments, do an ‘income contingency’ payment that’s based on your income.  Can’t do that payment.. you get deferred for 6 months to year at a time and the minute you start making more you get on one or the two above payment plans.

As I said,it’s not perfect and I am sure there are people screaming how wrong this is,  but the Federal Student Loan program  is able to set up re-payment plans  for millions and millions of people and still have the money to ‘loan’ out for more loans.

What else do I want in my health care reform? I want my medical records put in a huge super-computer system so that any doctor, anywhere can see what I’ve been treated for, what medications I’m taking and what I’m allergic too… if I can walk into any Wal-greens in the world and get my prescription history, I should be able to walk into any clinic/ER in the world and they know my medical history. Seriously, if Wal-green has mastered this Einstein-like algorithm.. so should the federal government.

Health care and Education are not ‘rights’ guaranteed  to every citizen of this county by decree of some document,  but they should be. Capitalist and Socialists alike, we are all only as strong as our weakest/dumbest link and right now we are in serious trouble and headed towards an all out ‘class warfare’ and  eventual destruction from within.

It’s not like I’m explaining some foreign concept to you, some… “Obama liberal socialist” movement that no one really cares about.. On the contrary, 72% of Americans polled say they want a Private plan and  PUBLIC plan, a plan similar to Medicare, offered. 72%! That’s not 72% of Obama Democrats, no their numbers are at 87%, those numbers are Americans.. ALL Americans, even 50% of only Republicans polled want a Private and PUBLIC plan offered, most amazingly is 50% want the government to run it. Even more astounding are the numbers who will for vote for a tax increase to pay for it. 57% of Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so that everyone can have health insurance. Has there ever been an issue that 72% of the combined political population agreed on something and 57% said “tax us” to get it?  If we can’t agree on this, there is one thing we can agree on..

(CBS)

Democrat senator Dianne Feinstein from California said that she doesn’t think the Democrat caucus will support President Obama’s agenda on installing a ‘public’ plan… Well guess what, when 87% of your constituency says they want it.. and the democratic senators won’t give it..I think we can all agree it’s time to get new Democrats.

53% of the American population has already done more than answer a CBS/NY Times phone call… They walked their happy ass into a booth and voted. I’m sorry conservatives, but you lost. These Democrat Senators are afraid that they won’t have their Republican constituencies  support when they go up for re-election next year, well guess what? You won’t have that support anyway, but with the support of 87% of your own people and 50% of the Republicans,  giving them what they want is not the road to retirement from your coveted seat.

But, ignoring them is.

I’ve seen many an argument on gay marriage come down to “Well, the Gays need to get it through their heads that this is a democracy and all you have to do is look at California, the most liberal state in the Union, and see that people just don’t want gay marriage. The Gays need to respect the voice of the people” To  you I say, sit down and shut the fuck up, or pick up your phone and tell your senator that even though you don’t agree with it, 72% of the American population does.

There isn’t an excuse anymore. The question is no longer.. “what kind of reform in health care would you like to see?” The question is when are you going to do what almost 3/4 of the American public and your president is demanding you do? The only place this is a ‘bi-partisan’ issue is on Capital hill, the American people have spoken…it’s as simple as that. If those on Capital Hill  aren’t listening to the majority of Americans demanding change, then who are they listening to?  The Insurance lobbyist? The Pharmaceutical lobbyist? When it’s time for their re-election, Congress had better have listened to the ones who actually put the votes in the ballot.. instead of listening to the ones who put the money in their pockets.

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