This Should be Getting Lots More Attention
 

"mensch"

GOP family values
 

I might agree if he wasn't her youth pastor. Based only on what was in the link, even if she was 17, he was in a position of authority over her.

ETA: Yet further evidence that one should strongly discount the political views of anyone whose profession is "youth pastor."

This Should be Getting Lots More Attention
 

in a PM one morning, after one night when you were working late, Atticus said the term was cornudo, but that's just hearsay.

GOP family values
 

do you think they'll give him a library once he's left office?

GOP family values
 

Why would a "youth" pastor be in a position of authority over her. She's 17. To paraphrase my cousin Vinny, she aint exactly a "youte"

Old Europe forgets what Old Europe Really Did...
 

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...=1102432932687

This is non-immigrants. Kerry wanted to partner with these guys. Happy Hanukkah!

GOP family values
 

Heh. That thing reminds me of an e-mail I got in the mid to late '90s - one of those "everyone the Clintons know SUSPICIOUSLY DIES!!!" things: they murdered Vince Foster, some secretary who had access to Hill's billing records, Jesus, whomever, and you know it's true because Bill/Hill KNEW all of these people, and then they DIED. 'Cause people never die unless it's because of some rich guy's evil plan, of course.

Anyhow, I responded (to the entire group of recipients), demonstrating that I was at the center of a secret evil cabal because various people I knew died sometime after they either (i) did some favor for me or (ii) pissed me off. (Since most people I meet at some point either do something nice or something mean, and everyone eventually dies, that meant there were a lot of people.) Ergo, I was in the center of a mass conspiracy and willing to bump people off to keep my secrets & execute my petty revenge.

I actually, apparently, got the Repub. sender of the original MS to admit, when I put it like that, that the conspiracy thing was pretty stupid. Marks what may be the only time I've ever changed someone's mind in political debate.

GOP family values
 

Spoken like a godless heathen.

"Youth" ministers in almost every church are the head of programs for middle and high school congregation members. Depending on the church and the minister, they can hold a lot of influence over their charges, even the 17 year olds.

This is almost exactly the same as, but perhaps slightly more reprehensible than (if it's possible) a high school teacher having a sexual relationship with a student.

Stop trying to defend the guy. It makes you look slimey.

GOP family values
 

I proved to Fluffer that more than 1 PT boat sunk in WWII

Old Europe forgets what Old Europe Really Did...
 

Is Western Europe even part of the Western world these days? Seems to me they line up more closely with the ME than with the US, UK and Eastern Europe (minus Russia).

Lieberman for DCI
 

He's on the shortlist. Think he'll take it if offered?

GOP family values
 

And let me just say, you were the shit.

Lieberman for DCI
 

If Bush is willing to give that job to Lieberman, does it not prove that this intelligence reform bill is a joke?

Lieberman for DCI
 

Why? Lieberman has lined up with the Bush Admin on the WOT/Iraq. Or are you saying that because he has no CIA experience?

And why do you think it's a joke? I may agree with you, but I'm curious. The 9/11 commission, which apparently speaks the gosphel, has backed it, as have a majority of both parties in congress.

Lieberman for DCI
 

I don't know that it's a joke, but given Bush's propensity, especially of late, to appoint people who are loyal to him and who will know when to keep their mouths shut, it's hard for me to see him appointing a Dem senator and former vice presidential candidate to the job unless it is a job of absolutely no consequence whatsoever.

I don't think I know enough about the bill to say one way or the other, but Fred Kaplan says the new job will be a "toothless figurehead" and I haven't seen anything else refuting his view.

GOP family values
 

THIS makes me like slimey? Sheesh.

smoke & mirrors
 

Kevin Drum has a particularly good pair of posts here and here about the assumptions behind the numbers used to sell Social Security privatization.

In brief, the projection that Social Security will go insolvent in (e.g.) 2042 is based on assumptions about GDP -- that GDP will decline because, inter alia, population growth will decline. On the other hand, the projection that privatization can plug the gap is based on assumptions about annual returns -- that annual returns will be at least 5% and (according to most advocates) 6%-7%. But these are not independent variables, and it would seem to be difficult to conjure up a world in which the economy is growing at less than 2% but investments are steadily gaining 7%.

As Drum says in the comments to one of those posts:

• Historical real returns on stocks have been in the neighborhood of 4.5-5%. However, that's because (a) GDP growth has been about 3.5% and (b) PE ratios have increased, meaning that stock prices have grown even faster than GDP.
  
  However, lower population growth means lower GDP growth. No way around that. And there's no good reason to think that PE ratios are going to go up yet again. In fact, it's more likely that they're going to fall a bit.
  
  But privatization advocates keep claiming that stock returns can be high withough acknowledging that this assumes continuing high GDP growth. And even if they're right, this high GDP growth negates the very reason for private accounts.
  
  It's a real shell game.
  
  (FWIW, productivity growth has been very high for the past few years, and it's possible that it might stay higher than historical averages for a long time. If it does, GDP growth might very well be in the 2.5-3% range. I find this quite plausible myself — although I don't know if I want to bet the farm on it just yet — but if it's true then Social Security is in great shape. No need to do anything at all.)

GOP family values
 

We are watching you. Keep up the good work.

No Comment Dept.
 

• Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, for example, of the 278th Regimental Combat Team that is comprised mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National Guard, asked Rumsfeld in a question-and-answer session why vehicle armor is still in short supply, nearly two years after the start of the war that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
  
  "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.
  
  Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.
  
  "We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson said after asking again.
  
  * * * * *
  
  "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up," Rumsfeld said.

AP, via SF Gate

GOP family values
 

That's incredible. Penske rarely admits he's wrong.

caption, please
 

caption, please
 

"You have to dig through the landfills," Rumsfeld replied, "because we're conducting an experiment in nation-building that has neither gone as planned nor was really planned for very well. Now we are trapped in an intractable ground war with an insurgency we created. Oh, and we're fighting it using a woefully understaffed, undersupplied fighting force we deployed on erroneous assumptions. We fucked up, Tommy. Now I must ask you to re-enlist."

[from Wonkette, I wish I could take credit]

Caption, Part The Next One
 

http://www.wonkette.com/images/inter...position-2.jpg

"Look, you're a fantastic candidate, and were very close to the top of the list, but for Education Secretary someone having the name "Spellings" was really too perfect to resist. Hope you understand."

Caption, Part The Next One
 

(tweaking Gatti--)

"You're just what I'm looking for in a cabinet secretary, but I couldn't resist havin' an Education Secretary by the name of 'Spellings.'"

Caption, Part The Next One
 

Yes, the English-to-Texan babelfish is working well these days. Nice job.

Caption, Part The Next One
 

"I just loved you in Avenue Q -- "The Internet is For Porn" is my favorite song!"

Caption, Part The Next One
 

"Jenna? Barbra? You girls alright?"

S_A_M

Rummy 4-eva
 

Wow. I had no idea that Meyerson of WaPo was such a liberal weenie.

• WASHINGTON, Dec. 8, 2016 -- President-elect George P. Bush announced today that he would reappoint Donald Rumsfeld to another term as secretary of defense. Rumsfeld has served in that position since he was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001. After serving two terms in George W. Bush's administration, Rumsfeld served an additional two terms in the subsequent administration of President Jeb Bush. His 16 consecutive years heading the Pentagon is the longest uninterrupted tenure of any defense secretary, and that doesn't include the nearly two years he served in that post under President Gerald Ford. Rumsfeld is 84.
  
  Sources close to the president-elect say that failing to reappoint Rumsfeld would be taken as a criticism of his uncle, former president George W. Bush, whose decision to invade Iraq in the spring of 2003 has bogged down U.S. forces there in a bloody and ongoing conflict that has lasted nearly 14 years. "George W. is mighty proud of independent Kurdistan," said one former official who is close to the Bush family. "He may have regrets about the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Basra, particularly since they got the bomb, and the PTCZWBOS [Permanent Temporary Curfew Zone Where Baghdad Once Stood], but he'll never admit it."

nukes? what nukes?
 

What you thought you knew about North Korea's nuclear program may be wrong.

Now, who would believe that this White House would hype another nation's nuclear program to get people riled up? Impossible. Improbable.

caption, please
 

How you like me know motha fucka

nukes? what nukes?
 

I agree with this guy! We should do what Europe did with Iran. Make an agreement with NK where it agrees its all good and it'll stay good! Let's maybe get JC back in the picture. Bush is good for talking to puppets, but we need liberals to deal with this kind of thing.

nukes? what nukes?
 

Haven't they admitted to having them?

nukes? what nukes?
 

"Dear Leader" Lied, People Died!!!!

nukes? what nukes?
 

so did Sadaam.

nukes? what nukes?
 

Some people think that nuclear weapons are a deterrent. That, in fact, is how we defended Europe from the Communist Menace in the '50s, '60s and '70s. Which is to say that a statement that's not against your interests isn't really an admission.

BTW, I admit that I am smart and good-looking.

Maybe we can get a supercomputer or the Detroit chapter of MENSA to tell us why Hussein might have wanted everyone (or just Iran) to think he had WMD.

Freedom on the March?
 

• Yesterday in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai was sworn in as that country's first democratically elected president.
  
  In Ukraine, the Kremlin-backed ruling party's attempt to steal the election for Viktor Yanukovych appears completely stymied by the peaceful Orange Revolution. At minimum, it seems likely that there will be a re-vote on December 26.
  
  In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 1.3 million Palestinians are registered to vote in the January 9 election of one of ten presidential candidates seeking to replace the marvelously dead Yasser Arafat. In Iraq, nearly 14 million Iraqis are registered to vote for one of 156 parties running in the January 30th election. As Bill Kristol has pointed out, commentators in the Arab world are starting to wonder aloud why the Arabs with the most significant voting rights are those under American or Israeli occupation.
  
  Would it be pollyannaish, at this point, to be tremendously optimistic about the march of democracy and freedom?

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7483

nukes? what nukes?
 

Yes, but the admission also isn't cost-free.

Freedom on the March?
 

Commentators in the American world have long been wondering what this country is doing to promote the voting rights of Arabs living under regimes we support, from Morocco to Egypt to Saudi Arabia.

Freedom on the March?
 

Which reminds me -- I wonder what conclusions we are to draw about the state of Palestinian democracy if they end up electing a president whose jail sentence is not yet completed.