BartCop.com Volume 2077 – Death Cab For Rudy
In Today’s Tequila Treehouse…
 |
WaHoPo’s Obama Bigotry |
|
Rudy’s ho’s Cop Cab  |
|
Does Leahy have Bite? |
|
Is Bush Stupid |
|
Sex w/ Jesus’s Wife? |
|
How gay is Trent Lott? |
|
Biden’s wild-ass threats |
|
Power to the People? |
|
Kate Beckinsale’s Mouth |
Paul Krugman, The New York Times, November 30, 2007
From the beginning, advocates of universal health care were troubled by the incompleteness of Barack Obama’s plan, which unlike those of his Democratic rivals wouldn’t cover everyone. But they were willing to cut Mr. Obama slack on the issue, assuming that in the end he would do the right thing.
Now, however, Mr. Obama is claiming that his plan’s weakness is actually a strength. What’s more, he’s doing the same thing in the health care debate he did when claiming that Social Security faces a “crisis” – attacking his rivals by echoing right-wing talking points.
The central question is whether there should be a health insurance “mandate” – a requirement that everyone sign up for health insurance, even if they don’t think they need it. The Edwards and Clinton plans have mandates; the Obama plan has one for children, but not for adults.
Why have a mandate? The whole point of a universal health insurance system is that everyone pays in, even if they’re currently healthy, and in return everyone has insurance coverage if and when they need it.
And it’s not just a matter of principle. As a practical matter, letting people opt out if they don’t feel like buying insurance would make insurance substantially more expensive for everyone else.
A man claiming to have a bomb walked in to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign offices Friday and took hostages, police and witnesses said.
The man had what appeared to be a bomb strapped to himself, said Bill Shaheen, a top state campaign official. He took two hostages, both volunteers, and released others, Shaheen said.
Witness Lettie Tzizik told television station WMUR of Manchester that she spoke to a woman shortly after she was released from the office by the suspect. The woman was carrying an infant, and crying.
“She said, ‘You need to call 911. A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape,” Tzizik said.
Clinton was not in the New Hampshire office Friday. She was scheduled to give an address at the Democratic National Committee meeting in Vienna, Va., but it was unclear if the address would go forward as planned.
Authorities were sending a tactical bomb unit to assist local police, and the area was evacuated, said Maj. Michael Hambrook of New Hampshire State Police. A nearby school also was in lockdown.
The Clinton office is located in the downtown area in a strip of several storefronts.
Workers for Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign office in Rochester also were evacuated, a campaign spokesman said. The office is four doors away from Clinton’s. Staffers in John Edwards’ office, a few buildings away, evacuated as well.
The Luck of the Irish?
“Ireland: home of the blarney and the brave.”
How do they know this was a man and not a leprechaun? HERE’S something at the end of the rainbow worth finding!
National police said a lone man drove into the brewery – a Dublin landmark and top tourist attraction – on Wednesday and hitched his truck to a fully loaded trailer awaiting delivery to city pubs.
And, now, on to our main attraction…
As Hillary Clinton slides in Iowa polls more accusations have surfaced about the Clinton campaign’s attempts to control caucuses and debates. The freshest accusations are related to Saturday night’s Brown and Black Presidential Forum. Several people that have been involved in the past with the Forum but were not invited to participate this year have made allegations that the co-chairs of the event, Wayne Ford and Mary Campos are Clinton supporters and are working to ensure that the event is full of supporters of her campaign.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chase-martyn/accusations-that-clinton-_b_74729.html
Robert Scheer, TruthDig, November 27, 2007
It was a very good week for Saudi Arabia. The royal family’s favored Pakistani “president-in-exile,” Nawaz Sharif, returned in a triumphant homecoming, throwing down a major challenge to the rule of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who’s still favored, for the moment, by the United States.
Although Sharif can claim to be the true pro-democracy choice, given that he was deposed as prime minister by Musharraf’s 1999 military coup, the U.S. is hoping to throw the deeply corrupt but Westernized Benazir Bhutto into the mix out of fear that Sharif is soft on Muslim fanatics in his own country as well as on the Taliban.
Those fears are well founded, given that Sharif, inspired by Saudi-style Wahhabism, attempted to introduce sharia, Islamic law, in his last years in office. It was his administration that green-lighted the test of the Muslim nuclear bomb and condoned bomb builder A.Q. Khan’s nuclear proliferation efforts, which aided the nuclear weapons programs of North Korea, Libya and Iran. Finally, it was Sharif who strongly supported the Taliban, sponsors of Osama bin Laden, in securing power in Afghanistan.
Now, to be fair, Musharraf and Bhutto also favored Pakistan’s nuclear program and actively supported the Taliban. I am not referring to the fact that Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the only countries to extend full diplomatic recognition to the Taliban. No, Pakistan’s sponsorship of the Taliban, under all three leaders, goes far deeper than that, as revealed by the release in August of declassified portions of seven years’ worth of cable traffic between the U.S. State Department and its embassy in Pakistan. As the National Security Archive, based at George Washington University, summarized the new information, “The declassified U.S. documents … clearly illustrate that the Taliban was directly funded, armed and advised by Islamabad itself … including the use of Pakistani troops to train and fight alongside the Taliban inside Afghanistan.”
Okay, so maybe it’s not as juicy as the Shag Fund scandal*. But former fellow Open Source Politics blogger Richard Silverstein has just successfully defended himself from a libel lawsuit brought against him by Rachael Neuwirth for content on his blog**:
Tonight is not a good night for Rachel Neuwirth. Like Casey at the bat, she took a mighty swing & like Casey she struck out.
She sued me for libel in Los Angeles Superior Court because I called her a “Kahanist swine.” Her claim was that this was the same as claiming she was a Jewish terrorist since Kahane Chai, Meir Kahane’s Israeli political party, is designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a terrorist organization.
This week a two part Scribe. Part 1 today, Part 2 tomorrow… hopefully…
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh….
…and again…
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh……
The sound of Henry Hyde plummeting into Hell.
Yes, the evil as^%$#@hole is dead.
The landing is hard. VERY hard. Henry stands up and faces the giant red one.
The Associated Press, November 29, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Rep. Henry Hyde, the Illinois Republican who steered the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton and was a hero of the anti-abortion movement, died Thursday. He was 83.
Mary Ann Schultz, a spokeswoman for Rush University Medical Center, said Hyde died Thursday at 2:30 a.m. CST at that hospital. She said Hyde, who underwent open-heart surgery in July, was admitted for persistent renal failure related to his cardiac condition and suffered from a fatal arrhythmia.
Hyde retired from Congress at the end of the last session. Earlier this month, President Bush presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
”During more than 30 years as a congressman, he represented the people of Illinois with character and dignity — and always stood for a strong and purposeful America,” Bush said in a statement Thursday. ”This fine man believed in the power of freedom, and he was a tireless champion of the weak and forgotten. He used his talents to build a more hopeful America and promote a culture of life.”
House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said in a statement: ”In his respect for the institutional integrity of the House of Representatives, Henry took second place to no one.”
Mitt Romney former governor of Massachusetts has claimed to be a true Boston Red Sox fan. Problem is during last night’s GOP debate Romney said that Red Sox fans had waited 87 long years before winning another World Series. Any Red Sox fan or even a baseball fan knows we only waited 86 years. What a moron!
Powered by WordPress
The Tattlesnake — Huckabee and Paul Prosper While GOP Field Implodes Edition
It was inevitable that Rudy and Mitt would start snarling at each other like two starved pitbulls chained up in the yard overnight and the Bile Factory has been cranking overtime as Giuliani tried to ‘Willie Horton’ Romney by accusing him of appointing a ‘liberal’ judge that let a guy out of jail who later committed murder, and the Mittster snapped back that Mayor Il Duce is no solid Republican family man, considering how many times he’s been married to hookers he casually picked up in Times Square. At the last GOP debate they brandished daggers, even over the New York Yankees; no fatal thrusts, but each one was bleeding from shallow cuts. Rudy is showing the hot breath of desperation here; he was trying to run an ‘ignore the small change’ campaign and beat up on Hillary, as if he were already the nominee, but he’s losing badly in Iowa and New Hampshire; his staff is now even having trouble herding the deluded into his soporific speeches. (“I just came in for the free donuts.”) Romney’s still polling ahead in both states, but his support is seriously eroding with Christopublicans as they discover bright, shiny religious fanatic Mike Huckabee, weird Chuck Norris ads and all. Besides, I have a feeling regular folks on the campaign trail only slap Mitt on the back to make sure he doesn’t have a key there; at least Huckabee appears to be a warm-blooded mammal, descended from apes or not.
(more…)