BuelahLady’s Adventure Into Looney World

BuelahLady was sitting in a doctor’s office this afternoon and (of course, it was N MS) they had Fox News on. There was some clip about Bill O’Reilly (BuelahLady hates all things Faux News, but especially the Big Headed fool) and the lady in the couple across from her said, “Bill is such a hero, I wish he would run for president.”

BuelahLady snorted and seriously laughed out loud.

The couple looked at her and the woman shrunk down and didn’t say a word.

My ole lady just looked at them and smiled, but a smile that begged them to “just say something!”.

She’s sweet like that.

You don’t fuck with my ole lady.

Oil Change USA

more about “Oil Change USA“, posted with vodpod

h/t chip at AfterDowningStreet.org for sharing this great tool from www.OilChangeUSA.org:

Below is a description of the free tools we have to offer and a bit more detail about how you can use them. Take a look at them and I’ll follow up in a couple of days to see if we can work collaboratively on using these tools this fall. I hope to work with you soon!

• Follow the Oil Money (www.FollowTheOilMoney.org) is an exciting tool that tracks which companies are pumping their dirty oil money into politics, who is receiving it, and how it correlates to key climate, energy and war votes. For the first time ever, you can see exactly how members of Congress who vote in favor of Big Oil also accept over four times more oil money than those who vote in the public interest.
• Our Presidential Follow the Oil Money (www.PrezOilMoney.OilChangeUSA.org) tool is an essential resource for anyone interested in the presidential election. Just how far into the pockets of Big Oil has McCain fallen? Is Obama really free of PAC money from Big Oil? Drill down to find these answers and more.
• The Oil Dollar machine (www.OilChangeUSA.org/oily-dollars) lets you download, save and print oil dollar bills that feature your member of Congress or Presidential candidate. Oil dollars show your member or candidate in the middle with their total dollar amount from Big Oil. Use them for both your online and on-the-ground advocacy!
• Follow the Coal Money (www.FollowTheCoalMoney.org) is a collaborative project that tracks coal money in Congress. As Congress debates how to address two of coal’s biggest problems — mountaintop removal and global warming — you can find out how polluters are influencing lawmakers with their dirty coal money. Check out our widgets to help spread the word!
• The Separation of Oil & State Pledge (www.OilChangeUSA.org/sign-the-sos-pledge) is a call to action, a call for change, a call for an end to government run by the interests of Big Oil. Join the movement for an SOS!

How can I use your tools?

Organizations such as True Majority are working with us to create hard-hitting email campaigns that connect their online actions to our FTOM tools. The attached image shows you how we built a custom action page with True Majority that linked their supporters’ zip codes to our database so they could see exactly how much their representatives have taken from the oil industry and how often they vote for Big Oil. We can do an email action mash-up for Congress or the Presidential race—whatever your need is, we’ll make it work for you. And by linking directly to our tools from your website or email alerts, we’ll list you as a participating organization in the Alliance for a Separation of Oil & State.

As you take a look at our tools, be sure to check out our Oily Mystery flash video (www.OilChangeUSA.org) that integrates all of our tools to reveal Big Oil’s influence in politics. You can embed it on your website or blog, link to it from an eblast, send it to your friends, or feature it on your social networks. While you’re at it, check out and join our new Oil Change USA Facebook group [http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20616734308].

If you have any questions about how to use our tools, feel free to email me, Trina, or you can call us at 202.518.9029. I’ll touch base with you in the next week to see how you can utilize our tools to support your online and offline campaigns!

Grace Interviews Sarah Palin

h/t ThatGayBloke

Jen’s Update: More Chemo

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 08, 2008 01:06 PM, EDT

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Stable but … Only Stable

Entry by TRH from Ohio

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GREETINGS JEN NATION!

Sorry I’ve been asleep at the switch. Hasn’t been much news good or bad in the last two months — we’re certainly thankful for the latter.

Visited TN briefly last week and saw my sister. Her attitude remains amazingly joyful and unflappable. Unfortunately, her body and strength are not faring as well. Her left side is shut down for the most part, and her right knee is strained and swollen from trying to compensate.

Mom & Matthew are never far from her side, and therapists visit periodically to keep her as active as possible.

Matthew has hired a contractor to remodel their main bathroom over the next couple months to better accommodate Sis’s needs.

Sis goes to Nashville this week for another dose of chemo, then she may see Dr. Edgeworth and undergo another MRI on her next visit.

Notre Dame and fantasy football season are sure to boost her spirits. Matthew, Sis, myself and several friends from Accu-Router have an online NFL fantasy league, so we’ll be jockeying over the next few months for supremacy.

My mom’s foot is healing on schedule, and hopefully she’ll shed her boot in the next few weeks. I’ll be heading back down in late September for a week to help out before going to a boatbuilding tradeshow in Miami Beach. We’re taking a machine and hope to attract several prospects looking for a head start out of the downturn.

Our current hope is for the chemo to keep containing new growth, and that my sister’s energy and strength may improve. Thanks for your continued prayers and support — ours are with you! – Love, TRH

Read Journal

RNC Lies: Evaluating The Pit Bull’s Speech

I have come to the conclusion that anyone believing the Republican Platform lies is either a crazy, brainwashed fool or a maniacally complicit Evil-doer. Anyone who is open minded (or not quite fully taekn over by the reTHUGlican koolaid) and capable of logical thought simply cannot listen to the bullshit and believe it. (And such is the case for the Democratic Party, in case you feel I am partisan).

But in this case, how can any sane person listen or read the speech that Sarah Pit Bull Palin gave and not come away with a feeling or question like, “how can she get by with the blatant lies?”

Lynda and I have been following this lady since she was first heard and I believe that it is evident that this woman is a joke as a leader. So, how is it that so many people could look at what I see and come to a different conclusion? What would make what is evidently a seriously bad move into such a well-received circumstance from the reTHUGlican followers?

How Insane Is John McCain delves into Sarah’s RNC lies with this article:

Republican Convention Lies: Sarah Palin’s Acceptance Speech

The lies were flying fast and furious at the RNC this past week, and a post that catalogued all those lies would probably break the Internet. Instead, I’ll merely start by listing the falsehoods, fudges and straight-up lies in Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech.

McCain, you’re next. Watch out, old fella.

SARAH PALIN

LIE: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.”

TRUTH: Barack Obama worked as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago after he graduated from college. He received a $13,000 salary, foregoing a more lucrative career. He worked for the Developing Communities Project, which “protected community interests regarding landfills and helped win employment training services, playgrounds, after-school programs, school reforms and other public amenities.” Residents and organizers who knew him at the itme recall Obama’s efforts in glowing terms.

When Sarah Palin was elected mayor of Wasilla, the town had no long-term debt. Instead of investing in local infrastructure needs, Palin raised taxes for the construction of a multi-million dollar indoor sports facility. However, the city began construction before it had received title, which resulted in years of (still ongoing) litigation that cost the city $1.3 million. Palin left Wasilla $20 million in debt, and was nearly recalled.

LIE: “I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment.”

TRUTH: When Palin was mayor of Wasilla, she hired a lobbyist with ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. She also ran Senator Ted Stevens’ 527 political action committee (he is currently indicted for corruption charges), and made a public appearance with him to support him politically.

LIE: “This was the spirit that brought me to the governor’s office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau … when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-ol’ boys network.”

TRUTH: As previously noted, Palin had close ties to lobbyists in Alaska. Palin also supports drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a position heavily favored by oil companies, and believes we can drill our way out of the energy crisis (which is not true). To be fair, she did raise taxes on oil companies while governor amid record oil prices.

LIE: “I came to office promising major ethics reform, to end the culture of self-dealing. And today, that ethics reform is the law.”

TRUTH: Palin did help pass an ethics reform bill. However, she stands accused of her own ethics violation stemming from the firing of a public safety officer who refused to fire her brother-in-law, a state trooper. She is also accused of improperly accessing the trooper’s personnel file, which could carry criminal charges.

LIE: “That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.”

TRUTH: Palin suggests that she actually sold the jet on eBay, but in truth it never sold on eBay, and was eventually sold at a $300,000 loss to a Palin campaign contributor. Far from being a “luxury jet,” it had mainly been used to transport criminals.

LIE: “I suspended the state fuel tax, and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress.”

TRUTH: Palin was actually a major proponent of earmark spending, and in fact, Alaska was the recipient of more earmark spending per capita than any other state in the nation. Palin’s requests for earmarks included $499,000 to assess halibut harvesting.

LIE: “I told the Congress “thanks, but no thanks,” for that Bridge to Nowhere.”

TRUTH: This is such a blatant lie it’s incredible it made it into the speech. Palin repeatedly expressed support on the Bridge to Nowhere, and was even photographed with a satirical t-shirt in support of the project.

LIE: “But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform – not even in the state senate.”

TRUTH: Obama has only written one memoir, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER. His second book, THE AUDACITY OF HOPE, was a campaign book. But guess who has written two memoirs? John McCain! He wrote the memoirs FAITH OF MY FATHERS and WORTH FIGHTING FOR with Mark Salter, as well as his other books WHY COURAGE MATTERS, CHARACTER IS DESTINY, HARD CALL, and more.

It’s also false that Obama did not sponsor any major legislation. He wrote over 110 bills as a Senator, including an important nuclear noproliferation bill and a bill (co-sponsored with John McCain) that established transparency in federal contracts. His bills in the Illinois State Legislature have also been praised.

LIE: “America needs more energy … our opponent is against producing it.”

TRUTH: Obama’s own website calls for investing $150 billion in new clean energy sources.

LIE: “Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America … he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights?”

TRUTH: Honestly I don’t know what this even means, but it should be noted that Obama is the only candidate who supports incursions into Pakistan if there is actionable intelligence on Al Qaeda, a position John McCain did not support because he was worried about Pakistani sovereignty (despite claiming that he would pursue Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell).

LIE: “The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes … raise payroll taxes … raise investment income taxes … raise the death tax … raise business taxes … and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that’s now opened for business – like millions of others who run small businesses.”

TRUTH: Obama only plans to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and calls for $80 billion in tax breaks to the middle class.

LIE: “Senator McCain’s record of actual achievement and reform helps explain why so many special interests, lobbyists, and comfortable committee chairmen in Congress have fought the prospect of a McCain presidency – from the primary election of 2000 to this very day.”

TRUTH: I’m sure there are some lobbyists who aren’t supporting McCain, but his campaign manager, Rick Davis, is a former lobbyist, and a huge portion of his campaign staff are lobbyists.

Breaking News: DEA Chief Judge Finds That Doctors Should Be Required To Prescribe Pot

Errrr. Excuse me, but that finding was twenty years ago, yet the bogus war goes on, while people get sicker and sicker.

Lunatic Drug Warriors Still Ignore Powerful Pot Science

By Rob Kampia, AlterNet

Twenty years ago, on Sept. 6, 1988, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s chief administrative law judge issued a landmark ruling, but don’t expect any celebrations or commemorations in Washington, D.C. Our government has ignored this historic decision since the day it was issued, inflicting needless misery on millions.

Indeed, most Americans don’t know it ever happened.

In response to a petition asking that marijuana be moved from Schedule I of the federal Controlled Substances Act, which bars medical use, to a lower schedule that would permit physician prescriptions, Judge Francis Young held extensive hearings that began in the summer of 1986. He heard from an impressive array of expert witnesses, resulting in thousands of pages of documentation.

Young laid out his findings in a detailed, 69-page ruling, walking readers through the scientific evidence. He concluded that the law didn’t just permit moving marijuana to Schedule II, but required it.

“Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man,” he wrote. “By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care. … The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record.”

Remember, this was no pot-addled “legalizer” writing. It was the chief administrative law judge within the top federal agency responsible for enforcing our drug laws. Unfortunately, the ruling had no legal force. In legal terms, it was a recommendation, not an order that had to be followed.

And the DEA chose not to follow it. Six years after top DEA officials rejected Young’s recommendation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit ruled that the agency did have the right to ignore its own administrative law judge.

Because the federal government chose to disregard the results of its own investigation, the medical marijuana controversy continues to rage today. Losing patience with the feds, 12 states have acted to permit medical use of marijuana under their state laws. If Michigan passes the medical marijuana initiative on its November ballot, that number will increase to 13, comprising roughly 1 in 4 Americans.

But while those state laws provide considerable protection for medical marijuana patients, states cannot provide an exemption from federal law. Even in the 12 states that have medical marijuana laws, patients and caregivers have been arrested, terrorized and even had their children taken away.

Meanwhile, the medical evidence continues to mount. Another federally commissioned study, this time by the Institute of Medicine, confirmed in 1999 that marijuana has legitimate medical uses.

More recently, newly published clinical trials have found that marijuana effectively relieves certain types of hard-to-treat pain, including the nerve pain that often accompanies multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Other research suggests that by relieving the nausea and vomiting often caused by the harsh drugs used to treat hepatitis C and HIV, medical marijuana can help patients stick to these challenging drug regimens — and live.

Because our government has ignored science, needless suffering has been inflicted on millions of Americans who have benefited or could benefit from medical marijuana. In 2009, we will have a new president and a new Congress, and they should move quickly to end this sorry record of federal stonewalling.

America’s Number 1 Problem: Military Imperialism (and you don’t know or don’t care)

From TomDispatch.com (one of the finest progressive blogs available):

Tomgram: Being in Base Denial

Going on an Imperial Bender

How the U.S. Garrisons the Planet and Doesn’t Even Notice
By Tom Engelhardt

Here it is, as simply as I can put it: In the course of any year, there must be relatively few countries on this planet on which U.S. soldiers do not set foot, whether with guns blazing, humanitarian aid in hand, or just for a friendly visit. In startling numbers of countries, our soldiers not only arrive, but stay interminably, if not indefinitely. Sometimes they live on military bases built to the tune of billions of dollars that amount to sizeable American towns (with accompanying amenities), sometimes on stripped down forward operating bases that may not even have showers. When those troops don’t stay, often American equipment does — carefully stored for further use at tiny “cooperative security locations,” known informally as “lily pads” (from which U.S. troops, like so many frogs, could assumedly leap quickly into a region in crisis).

At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans had an estimated 37 major military bases scattered around their dominions. At the height of the British Empire, the British had 36 of them planetwide. Depending on just who you listen to and how you count, we have hundreds of bases. According to Pentagon records, in fact, there are 761 active military “sites” abroad.

The fact is: We garrison the planet north to south, east to west, and even on the seven seas, thanks to our various fleets and our massive aircraft carriers which, with 5,000-6,000 personnel aboard — that is, the population of an American town — are functionally floating bases.

And here’s the other half of that simple truth: We don’t care to know about it. We, the American people, aided and abetted by our politicians, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media, are knee-deep in base denial.

Now, that’s the gist of it. If, like most Americans, that’s more than you care to know, stop here.

However, to know the truth, read the rest here.

Conservative Lying Points: Corporate Taxes

From CAF:

Corporate Taxes
————————————————–

Conservatives think they’ve found a way to sell middle-class voters on a corporate tax cut. John McCain has been touring the country telling displaced factory workers that their jobs will come back if corporations get to keep more of their profits through lower taxes. That might be a compelling argument… if it weren’t completely false. Progressives can’t let conservatives distort the facts. We need to tell the truth about corporate taxes and lead on a real plan to strengthen the American economy.

The problem is not that corporations are overtaxed. In fact, a whopping two-thirds of American corporations and foreign corporations doing business in the United States pay absolutely no federal income taxes—despite taking in $2.5 trillion in sales. Sources

Compared to our competitors’ corporate tax rates, the U.S. rate is low. According to the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the United States’ total corporate tax burden ranks 76th of over 100 countries. When conservatives claim that the U.S. tax rate is high, they’re talking about the “statutory rate.” But corporations treat the statutory rate as just a guideline—they use offshore tax havens and accounting loopholes to pay much lower actual rates. Sources

Corporations should pay their fair tax share. American workers carry more of the tax burden than corporations do. In 2005, a worker with an income in the middle of all taxpayers paid income taxes at an effective rate of 3 percent—and he or she also paid taxes for Social Security and other insurance programs. A midrange corporation, on the other hand, paid 2005 income taxes at an effective rate of only 0.7 percent. Sources

Progressive solutions:

We need a tax code and business investment strategies that reflect America’s priorities and values. Corporations should be rewarded with tax breaks for creating jobs, not for finding offshore tax loopholes. Our tax code should encourage companies to invest in America’s workers and communities. To help companies manage the costs of doing business and pass savings on to consumers, we need to invest in clean energy technologies that will help keep energy bills low.

For more discussion:
See Robert Borosage’s post on “The Great Corporate Tax Heist” and the Making Sense fact sheet on the Bush tax cuts.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008083312/great-corporate-tax-heist
http://www.ourfuture.org/makingsense/factsheet/taxation

Karl who is working for FOX. LOL LOL LOL– “don’t cover the kids”

STEVE SCHMIDT, John McCain’s chief campaign strategist, told The Washington Post last week that the news media were “on a mission to destroy” Sarah Palin and that The Times in particular had written “an absolute work of fiction” about how she was vetted before becoming the Republican vice presidential nominee.
Karl Rove, the architect of President Bush’s two presidential campaigns and now a commentator for Fox News, said The Times “got it wrong” about the vetting of Palin. Former Senator Fred Thompson accused the newspaper of trying “to drag her down” by focusing improperly on her children.
Scores of readers joined the chorus. The Times was on a “witch hunt, covering every rumor available, even the basest,” said Gene Jemail of Santa Rosa, Calif. Denise Wagner of El Paso said 17-year-old Bristol Palin’s pregnancy was “none of your business” and accused the newspaper of using it as “fodder for political purposes.”
I heard from only a few who seemed to agree with Thomas Hilton of San Francisco, who worried that, because “The Times has long been under attack by conservatives trying to ‘work the refs,’ ” the paper might be gun shy about reporting the negative parts of Palin’s record.
In our instant-news and celebrity- obsessed culture, Palin went from Sarah Who to conservative rock star in less than a week. In less than two months, she could be elected vice president to serve under the oldest president, at 72, ever elected to a first term, and one with a history of recurring melanoma. Intense, independent scrutiny by The Times and the rest of the news media of Palin’s background, character and record was inevitable and right.
And, yes, it was inevitable, and right to a more limited degree, that her family would come under the spotlight, too. As Bill Keller, The Times’s executive editor, said, “Senator McCain presented Mrs. Palin’s experience as a mother as one of her qualifications for the job.”
It was also predictable that party professionals would object vigorously to stories that might undermine the image they were trying to project of Palin as an accomplished governor successfully juggling her “hockey mom” family duties while fighting corruption in Alaska.
But the Times article that drew the strongest complaints from the McCain camp was the one that questioned not her record but his judgment. Published on Tuesday’s front page, the morning after Palin announced her daughter’s pregnancy, the article said that revelation and a series of lesser disclosures called into question how thoroughly McCain had examined Palin’s background.
The article, researched by five reporters and written by Elisabeth Bumiller, quoted anonymous sources as saying that McCain had been holding out hope of choosing Senator Joseph Lieberman instead, and that a campaign team assigned to vet Palin more thoroughly had not arrived in Alaska until the day McCain asked her to be his running mate. A number of Alaska political figures said on the record that they had not found anyone who had been asked anything about Palin by the McCain campaign.
The Times article seemed dramatically at odds with one in The Washington Post two days earlier. The Post article quoted McCain advisers as saying that Palin had been thoroughly vetted, including an F.B.I. background check, and that, “Far from being a last-minute tactical move or second choice when better-known alternatives were eliminated, Palin was very much in McCain’s thinking from the beginning of the selection process.”
So was The Times story wrong, as the McCain camp said? It did contain one error. It said that one potentially embarrassing revelation about Palin was her membership for two years in the Alaskan Independence Party, which favors a vote on whether the state should secede. The assertion was based on an announcement by the party’s chairwoman, Lynette Clark, which The Times failed to tell readers. That was a mistake. “We should have attributed it,” Bumiller said. The next day, Clark said she had been wrong. It turns out that Palin’s husband, Todd, had belonged to the party for a time, and she had addressed its annual convention. The Times corrected the error in two follow-up stories.
But the main thrust of its reporting on the vetting process appears to be holding up. The Post said the next day that a lengthy in-person background interview of Palin by the head of McCain’s vetting team did not happen until the day before she was chosen. It also acknowledged that it had been incorrect when it reported that the F.B.I. had checked out Palin. In her home state, the Anchorage Daily News reported that it had found only one person who was asked anything about the governor before McCain selected her. That was the attorney representing her in an investigation of whether she had abused her power in office.
“We stand by our reporting,” said Richard Stevenson, the editor in charge of Times election coverage.
Many readers, like John Southerland of Ocala, Fla., compared The Times’s handling of John Edwards’s extramarital affair and Bristol Palin’s pregnancy and accused the newspaper of a double standard. The newspaper did not seriously pursue the story about Edwards, a populist Democrat, for months, but it put three stories involving Bristol Palin on the first page of its Web site and two on the front page of the printed paper.
I took The Times to task for not trying to report the Edwards story until he acknowledged his affair, but once Edwards came forward, The Times put it on the front page and continued digging. In Palin’s case, the first hint of the daughter’s pregnancy was the family’s announcement of it, and once that happened, it was front-page news everywhere, including the conservative Washington Times. Palin was the anointed Republican vice presidential candidate, and her family was very much part of the biography she was presenting to voters. Two of the New York Times articles were not directly about Bristol Palin: they were about how well McCain researched his choice and about women’s discussions on how Sarah Palin could balance the demands of the vice presidency with the demands of having a pregnant teenager, a baby with Down syndrome and two other children at home.
By choosing a running mate unknown to most of the nation, and doing so just before the Republican National Convention, John McCain made it inevitable that there would be a frantic media vetting. It turns out that Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it, that she sent e-mail complaining about a lack of disciplinary action against a state trooper who was going through a messy custody battle with her sister, and that she never made a decision as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard, one of her qualifications cited by McCain.
The drip-drip-drip of these stories seems like partisanship to Palin’s partisans. But they fill out the picture of who she is, and they represent a free press doing its job, investigating a candidate who might one day be the leader of the Free World.