RT @NYCAviation "CNN passenger interview: Heard pop like champagne cork, moments later saw flames shooting out of suspect's crotch."
When the dinner was over, "I don't think I'm dying. I go to sit down and nobody's meeting my eye. Only [the late journalist-turned-White House spokesman] Tony Snow comes over and says I'm doing a great job." Then Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia came his way and told him he was brilliant.
"I said, oh, s-, don't let me like Antonin Scalia!"
Wondering what exit he should use, Colbert recalls being approached by actor Harry Lennix, whom he knew from their days at Northwestern University. Colbert indicated that he sensed some of the audience wasn't happy. "And he [Lennix] said, 'f- these people."
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Throughout the nation, there are going to be thousands of more people enrolled in Medicaid. And every state, except one, is going to have to come up with matching money.
I have 12 percent unemployment in South Carolina. My state is on its knees. I have 31 percent African-American population in South Carolina.
It would help a lot if he reached out personally to those few Republicans who might still want to improve the bill rather than sink it.
In an effort to calm growing tensions with Jewish groups, the Vatican said Wednesday that Pope Benedict XVI had not moved the wartime Pope Pius XII closer to sainthood as an “act of hostility” against those who believe Pius did not do enough to stop the Holocaust.Huh? What does that even mean? Is Lombardi a canon lawyer?
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, issued a statement saying that the beatification process evaluated the “Christian life” of Pius, who ruled from 1939 to 1958, and not “the historical significance of his choices.”
The legacy of Pius is particularly sensitive for the Jewish community in Rome. More than 1,000 of its members were rounded up in 1943, and deported to Auschwitz. Documents in the Vatican archives indicate that Pius knew of the deportation and did not act to stop it.He was pope and he did nothing to stop it? Sounds like a Christian life to me.
And for all the heated rhetoric being thrown at him [President Obama] these days -- socialist, sellout, soporific, yadda yadda yadda -- I don't think anyone has accused him of a racial approach to politics. People want to know what he's doing about unemployment and health care and climate change. In a very real sense, he seems to have transcended race.
(I was going to make a Tiger Woods analogy here, but at the moment that seems like a decidedly bad idea.)
And let’s also not fail to take note of those who had a chance to join in this historic moment, and punted.
I’m not talking about the progressives who have rejected this bill because they don’t think it’s good enough; I disagree, but I respect their motives. I’m talking instead about the self-described centrists, pundits and politicians, who have spent years lecturing us on the need to make hard choices and actually come to grip with America’s problems; you know who I mean. So what did they do when faced with a chance to help confront those problems? They made excuses.
Health care costs are, as everyone serious acknowledges, at the core of many of our difficulties, very much including long-term budget deficits. What reformers have been saying for years is that the only way to tackle health care costs is in the context of a reform that also tackles the problem of uninsurance; and so it has proved. As Atul Gawande and others have pointed out, the Senate bill tries a wide variety of approaches to cost containment — in fact, just about everything that has been suggested. We don’t know which of these approaches will work or how well, but that’s more than anyone has managed to achieve ever before.
Oh, and the legislation is fiscally responsible from the start.
So did the deficit scolds, the people who preach the need to rein in entitlements and start paying our way, rally behind the cost-containment plans? Um, no. As I said, they made excuses, whining that the bill doesn’t do enough (as if there were any chance of passing a bill with everything they want), or insisting that even though the legislation does do the right thing, it doesn’t matter, because Congress won’t let the cost cuts go into effect — which turns out to be a claim at odds with the evidence of history.
And the lesson I take from that is that these people are insincere. They like posing as defenders of fiscal rectitude; they like declaring a pox on both houses; but when push comes to shove, their dislike of social insurance, their refusal to consider any government economy measures that don’t involve punishing people with lower incomes, trumps their supposed concern about acting responsibly.
I have over the past couple of months been watching DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show I missed completely in its run of 1987 to 1994; and I confess myself amazed that so many conservatives are fond of it. Its messages are unabashedly liberal ones of the early post-Cold War era — peace, tolerance, due process, progress....
...my favorite part of the Baker spiel was when he announced at the top of the hour that even though Jesus is his Lord and Savior, he had no Christmas spirit this season, none. This health care extravaganza, moving toward a vote and what looks like inevitable passage, had ruined Christmas for him, and not just this Christmas, but every Christmas going forward, because each future Christmas will only serve to remind him of the health care bill that was foisted on the American people this Christmas...if he can shepherd a huge, contentious, complicated bill to the president's desk that will ruin this Christmas and future Christmases for blowhard Glenn Beck wannabees, then Harry Reid is my hero.
CNN will be changing things up on January 18th, when Rick Sanchez will get a second hour, anchoring a new show called "Rick's List" from 3-5PM. He currently anchors the 3PM hour but the hour is not branded as his show.
"The Situation Room" will be cut back an hour, and will air from 5-7PM.
Politico's Michael Calderone reports that "CNN president Jon Klein, on the morning editorial call, told staffers that both Wolf Blitzer and Sanchez are pleased with the decision."
That [Rudolph W. Guiliani] always will find a good table at a restaurant or a seat in a television studio is assured. But the political executive suite now most likely lies beyond his grasp.Thank you God, Joe Biden, Mike DuHaime, and Bernie Kerik.
As a teenager, one of his former girlfriends once told The Daily News, Mr. Giulani [sic] would stand before a mirror and pantomime his presidential swearing in, beginning with “I, Rudy Giuliani.”Bye, Rudy.
So long, Rudy.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani is expected to announce Tuesday he is not running for U.S. Senate or anything else in 2010, effectively ending his storied - and often stormy - electoral career, The Daily News has learned.
Still up after 911 days.Robert Byrd has been around a very long time, and his many decades of service have made West Virginia a wonderful state in which to manufacture methamphetamine or frame the locals for murder. But it's time for Senator to do the right thing, and expire.
It isn't too much to ask for Byrd to step off for that great klavern in the sky before the Senate vote that may force this nation to accept government-rationed health care. Even a nice coma would do.
We learned, again, forever, that the Senate is broken. There are 60 votes to pass the bill but no chance of that happening before Christmas. They had to meet at 1 a.m. in a blizzard to pass a procedural motion. Do you think a climate bill is happening? Hah. Sure. Whatever. Olympia Snow and Susan Collins got everything they asked for and they voted against it. Lieberman and Nelson promise to attempt to kill it again if it ends up looking too generous. Here is a chart that proves that it was not always thus.
So, let's talk about Harry Reid. It is dumb to have a party leader in danger of being unseated! And yet, the Democrats keep doing this! Remember Tom Daschle, our last Democratic Majority Leader? He lost reelection, because he was a moderate Democrat representing a Republican state.
...But Reid, who we have criticized a lot, did an admirable job with what he was given. He did basically sacrifice his Senate seat for this legislation, and he never actively attempted to water it down, his role in the various compromises notwithstanding. It's just that a majority leader shouldn't have to sacrifice his seat for legislation. That is idiotic...
So, yeah, it would be nice to see a tougher leader, from a more liberal state. One who would maybe force through a reconciliation vote on the various nice liberal things that were stripped from the bill—most of those things, like the public option, are things that would work in reconciliation. It would be nice to have a leader who would threaten to blow up the rules of the Senate, which needs to be done by someone. The "political reality" is that everything needs 60 votes and every single compromise was necessary to add or retain every vote, but "political realities" change when politicians change them, which is why there is a 60 vote floor to begin with...
It is nice, really, to have billions of dollar for uninsured people to afford insurance, and the new regulations are long overdue. But christ, the country is pretty broken, right?
2010 is going to be fun! There will be like three more of these year-long soul-destroying battles over every little thing!
It’s fitting that James Cameron’s “Avatar” arrived in theaters at Christmastime. Like the holiday season itself, the science fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess wrapped around a deeply felt religious message. It’s at once the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, and the Gospel According to James.
In my judgment it's a tragedy for the country to have a bill this important, a historic piece of legislation, pass with only one party voting for it.
Though the American left and right don't agree on much, they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama's brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger's public image — a marketing scam designed to camouflage either his covert anti-American radicalism (as the right sees it) or spineless timidity (as the left sees it). The truth may well be neither, but after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can't be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything. As we say goodbye to the year of Tiger Woods, it is the country, sad to say, that is left mired in a sand trap with no obvious way out.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ripped into the president on Sunday for abandoning his pledge to foster bipartisanship in Washington, accusing Obama of creating a more toxic political environment than that which existed during the Clinton administration.
Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.
"Death panels."
After months in which the Senate health care bill was held up over efforts to find some form in which she would agree to sign on to it, Sen. Snowe (R-ME) now says she will oppose it because it is being "rushed."
I think Obama deserves more help than he is getting from his fellow Democrats in Congress, given the boost he provided them in the last election, the difficulty of the problems he inherited and the stiff-arm he has received from Republicans.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has struggled to find the necessary 60 votes to beat back a filibuster, which Obama blamed on the insurance companies’ heavy lobbying.
“They’re spending millions of dollars to kill health insurance reform, just like they’ve done so many times before. They want to preserve a system that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people,” Obama said in his address.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The D.C. | ||||
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The story goes that Will yelled "what are all these niggers doing here" one night when all the members of the Black Arts Company where there to celebrate a show they had performed.
Griff Harsh (Meg Whitman's son) throws beer in Guy's face.
Guy: You can't do that to people.
Griff Harsh (points at himself): Billionaire.
A Congressional tax standoff has opened a window of opportunity for wealthy Americans determined to avoid paying up post-mortem.
With lawmakers unable to agree on a year-end fix for a quirk in the Bush-era tax cuts, the federal estate tax is set to be repealed for one year as of Jan. 1, meaning that those who suffer a timely death could escape the usual certainty of taxes.
The situation dates to 2001 when Republicans, with President George W. Bush newly ensconced in the White House, sought to realize their goal of eliminating a tax on assets being passed on to heirs. The tax became an iconic issue among Republicans who labeled it the death tax and rallied around its repeal in the mid-1990s during their push to win control of Congress.
Backers of the tax cuts wanted it eliminated altogether. But because that would have proved too costly, Congress instead devised a convoluted scheme that gradually raised the value of estates exempt from the tax and reduced the tax rate to the point — for the next two weeks — that an individual estate valued at $3.5 million or more is taxed at the rate of 45 percent. (This year, the tax will bring in an estimated $25 billion).
At the beginning of the new year, that tax is eliminated entirely, only to be restored in 2011 at a rate of 55 percent on estates of $1 million or more — essentially the law in effect before the 2001 change.
James Bain used a cell phone for the first time Thursday, calling his elderly mother to tell her he had been freed after 35 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit.
Mobile devices didn't exist in 1974, the year he was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping a 9-year-old boy and raping him in a nearby field.
Neither did the sophisticated DNA testing that officials more recently used to determine he could not have been the rapist.
He was convicted largely on the strength of the victim's eyewitness identification, though testing available at the time did not definitively link him to the crime. The boy said his attacker had bushy sideburns and a mustache. The boy's uncle, a former assistant principal at a high school, said it sounded like Bain, a former student.
The boy picked Bain out of a photo lineup, although there are lingering questions about whether detectives steered him.
Obama and Tiger Woods are so alike!
This issue is just too serious for preening or ranting
There’s enormous disappointment among progressives about the emerging health care bill — and rightly so. That said, even as it stands it would take a big step toward greater security for Americans and greater social justice; it would also save many lives over the decade ahead. That’s why progressive health policy wonks — the people who have campaigned for health reform for years — are almost all in favor of voting for the thing.
The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll coming out later today will show opposition to the health care bill growing -- mainly from disappointed liberals, who are very much disappointed to see the public option getting thrown out.
...people are pissed right now less at the fact that they didn't get what they wanted, and more at the fact that they feel like their people didn't really fight for it. Leaders don't always get what they want. But people recognize when true leaders at least give it a shot. And people judge that leadership by what they say in public and how hard they see them publicly pushing for it. Closed door negotiations don't count.
Half a brain, half a brain,
Half a brain onward,
All in the Panel of Death
Wanked the six hundred.
"Forward Tea Bag Brigade!
Charge for the left!" she said.
Into the Panel of Death
Wanked the six hundred.
Forward, Tea Bag Brigade!"
Was there Obama dismay'd?
Not tho' the socialist knew
Some one had blunder'd.
Theirs not to blog reply,
Theirs not to twitter why,
Theirs but to wank and lie.
Into the Panel of Death
Wanked the six hundred.
Naught to right of them,
Truth to left of them,
Cameras in front of them
Blather'd and blunder'd;
Storm'd at with snot and gel,
Boldly they squawked and fell,
Into the Panel of Death,
Into, uh, logic? oh hell
Wanked the six hundred.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down | ||||
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Asked if Obama is as demanding of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn), whose opposition to a public option and Medicare buy-in provision led to their removal, as he has been of progressives like Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), both staunch supporters of a public plan, Gibbs affirmatively replied: "Yes."
"The president was clear with members of the democratic caucus, including independents who caucus with the Democrats," he said.
...the urge to get closer to cocktail waitresses and denizens of dimly lit hotel lounges is in some way linked to the drive to conquer, to prevail — to succeed. It could explain why all this time into the Age of Feminism, years after women were liberated, women make up less than 20 percent of Congress and only 3 percent of those top CEOs.
The reason the Glass Ceiling has not broken is that women have other priorities — maintaining relationships and being a mother. This is the way it is, and this is the way it has always been.
Pope Benedict XVI called for urgent action to protect the environment, saying Tuesday that climate change and natural catastrophes threaten the rights to life, food, health — and ultimately peace.
In his annual message on the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Peace, the pope argued that the world's economic, social, and environmental problems are moral crises that require mankind to rethink its way of living.
"We can no longer do without a real change of outlook which will result in new life-styles," he said, touching again on a theme that has earned him a reputation as the "green pope."
The country twang guy in a cowboy hat performed an impromptu rap with Will Smith after the Nobel Prize ceremony, and—hey—did he just make "Chinese" eyes during a verse about "yellow" people?
...
Keith appears to be pantomiming Smith's words. He points at Will for "black," himself for "white," flourishes his wrist during "the red and the brown." During "yellow," he gestures to the outer corner of his eye with his pointer finger, and for "bang bang" he makes a finger gun.
As a longtime Santa Claus at a suburban Chicago mall, Rod Riemersma used to jokingly tell children they would get socks for Christmas if they were naughty.
This year, he stopped telling the joke. Too many children were asking for socks. "They've probably heard their parents say, 'Geez, I wish I had some money to get them clothes,' " says Mr. Riemersma, 56 years old.
A wintry measure of hard times can be found this holiday season on the knee of white-bearded, red-suited men around the country. A couple of years ago, children were shooting for the moon, asking St. Nick for Xboxes, iPods and laptops. But with the economy still fragile, many children are requesting basics such as shoes, library cards and even eyeglasses, say dozens of Santas who work at malls or on the party circuit.
Rising Hegemon
