This was taken last week, but I still think it’s hilarious. I heard something at my front door, it sounded like someone talking, and yet when I opened my door, this is who was standing there.
This rooster crowed all day long. He came back for several days, and two of the days, he brought a friend.. Yes, another rooster.
They finally left, and I had to hose down my icky-fied front porch.
“First Class not good enough for auto execs..”
Hard to feel sorry for these 3 CEOs (who each make tens of millions of dollars a year in salaries) who flew to Washington to testify before Congress – with hats in hands begging for a public bailout in the amount of $25 billion, and yet they flew there in their private jets at a cost estimated at $20,000 round trip..
Each…
Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford, understands the importance of symbolic gestures and public relations. Yesterday, for example, when he arrived on Capitol Hill, hat in hand, hoping to convince lawmakers to help bail out American auto manufacturers, he arrived in a new Ford Fusion Hybrid. Ford’s media team, of course, made sure reporters knew about this..
Hello… What’s the point..
ABC News Report: Watch video at the source – It’s quite telling.
At the Congressional hearing today:
Some lawmakers lashed out at the CEOs of the Big Three auto companies Wednesday for flying private jets to Washington to request taxpayer bailout money.
“There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they’re going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses,” Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York, told the chief executive officers of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee.
“It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. It kind of makes you a little bit suspicious.”
He added, “couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it.”
Rep. Brad Sherman, D-California, asked the three CEOs to “raise their hand if they flew here commercial. Let the record show, no hands went up. Second, I’m going to ask you to raise your hand if you are planning to sell your jet in place now and fly back commercial. Let the record show, no hands went up.”
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Senator Arlen Specter responds to questions by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell regarding the choice of Eric Holder by President-elect Barack Obama for the US Attorney General.
Specter said, “This business of wiretapping is not in order in accordance with Constitutional rights and where you have the immunity granted to the telephone companies, that is still a festering wound and some speculation as to whether that will be asserted by a new administration.”
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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TDS: John Oliver must run before John King finds out he knows too much about CNN’s magic touch screen.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
If you all remember, Tim Robbins’ name had been ‘purged’ on election day from the voter rolls in New York where he had voted since 2004.
He has written An Open Letter to the New York City Board of Elections. Wow..
He ends his letter with this:
I must also thank you for sending your letter not to me but to all the major newspapers in the New York area and across the internet. I understand it was your way of clearing up this matter and for that I am grateful. I am particularly appreciative of your sending a copy of my voter registration card with my home address and driver’s license number to all the newspapers and, by extension, to millions across the internet. What celebrity dilettante wouldn’t want his private information made public? What kind of snob gets angry that his family’s safety might be compromised? It comes with the territory, right? I was thinking of returning that favor by publishing your home address in this letter but then I thought that maybe one of the thousands of New Yorkers that were taken off the voter rolls in the last two months might not understand what a patriotic upstanding man you are and might show up at your doorstep with the misguided assumption that you are a petty vindictive corrupt scumbag.
Ya think he’s mad..? I would be..
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As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.
Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.
I’m bathing in holy water as I type.
To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.
Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.
The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it…
This was a really good piece by Parker. She’s going to take heat for it.. (such as from Jonah Goldberg and Daniel Larison).
Kathleen Parker has it exactly right.
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Tough times on the morality business front too, it seems.
Published reports in Colorado say that Focus on the Family, the conservative evangelical group founded and headed by Dr. James Dobson, is laying off about 200 of its employees.
It’s the second time in recent months the influential group that does so much mailing it has its own ZIP code has released workers from its mountainside headquarters in Colorado Springs. The latest cuts leave the national organization with about 950 employees from a onetime high of some 1,500.
The cutbacks come after Focus, formerly headquartered in California until 1991, spent a reported half-million dollars to successfully support Proposition 8 in the Golden State, overturning a state court decision to allow same-sex marriages…
More from Pensito Review (Jon Ponder):
Elsa Prince, Mother of Blackwater Founder, Was Fourth Largest Prop 8 Donor
Michigan billionaire Elsa Prince’s second greatest claim to fame is that she was a founder in 1977 of Focus of the Family, a nonprofit group that, despite its warm and fuzzy name, is in tenor and in practice an anti-gay hate group.
Prince’s top claim to fame, however, is that she is the mother of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater Worldwide, the scandal-plagued BushCo mercenary group that, since 2004, has been paid at least $323 million on a $1 billion no-bid government contract. Blackwater is in the headlines now because six of its mercenaries may be facing charges for the massacre of 17 Iraqi civilians in September 2007. Earlier scandals have included the abrupt resignation of State Dept. Inspector Howard Krongard over Blackwater-related perjury charges, allegations that Blackwater employees were traitorously recruiting U.S. troops in the war zone and that and Blackwater security shot a dog belonging to the New York Times Baghdad bureau.
In August, Elsa Prince made two donations that totaled $450,000 to Proposition 8, the California initiative that narrowly passed on Nov. 4, and will amend the state constitution to revoke the right of gay people to marry, if it is not overturned by the California Supreme Court.
Around the same time, Focus on the Family reportedly donated over $439,000 to the anti-gay cause. In October, just months after Prince and Focus on the Family donated a combined $889,000 to the California hate initiative, Focus on the Family announced it would lay off or reassign 46 of 1,300 employees. Now it says there will be more layoffs due to restructuring of its distribution arm.
It’s a dead cinch the families of the dozens of employees who are about to be fired would have preferred that the nearly $900,000 donated to Prop 8 by Prince and their bosses had gone toward salaries.
It’s all about priorities.. (/sarc)
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Pinch me!! From YouTube:
Cheney is accused of investing some $85 million in the Vanguard group that houses federal inmates. The grand jury accuses Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez of engaging in organized criminal activity.
AP: Cheney, Gonzales indicted in South Texas county
Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on state charges involving federal prisons in a South Texas county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles under the outgoing prosecutor.
The indictment returned Monday has not yet been signed by the presiding judge, and no action can be taken until that happens.
Ted Kennedy asks Hillary Clinton to head Senate healthcare team
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y), considered a prominent contender to become secretary of State in the Obama administration, was offered an alternative Tuesday — to be a senior member of the Senate team aiming to overhaul the nation’s healthcare system.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who has announced plans to craft sweeping healthcare legislation next year, asked the former presidential contender to head a working group focused on insurance coverage.
The potential assignment comes a decade and a half after Clinton led a controversial effort to reshape the healthcare system as first lady during her husband’s first term in the White House. That campaign collapsed amid bitter opposition from many in the healthcare industry and accusations that Clinton ran a secretive process that ignored input from important stakeholders.
Hillary Clinton has not responded yet to this request..
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The Bush administration’s push to nail down a bilateral agreement governing the future US presence in Iraq faces serious stumbling blocks. Despite the agreement’s near-unanimous passage in the Iraqi cabinet, fueled by deepening pressure from the Bush administration, it faces firm opposition from legal scholars and US Congress members, who say it undermines President-elect Barack Obama’s powers and illegally bypasses Congress, and from Iraqi parliamentarians, who are not satisfied with its withdrawal provisions. The pact, termed a status of forces agreement (SOFA), is being read this week in the Iraqi Parliament.
Juan Cole of Informed Comment has more.
McClatchy has the English translation of the agreement: Unofficial Translation of U.S.-Iraq Troop Agreement from the Arabic Text (translated from the Arabic by Sahar Issa, Jenan Hussein and Hussein Kadhim of the McClatchy Baghdad Bureau.)
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Three sources close to the transition and in a position to know tell CNN that former Sen. Tom Daschle is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be Secretary of Health and Human Services and the former Senate Majority Leader has indicated he wants the job.
Good man…
UPDATE: From Ezra Klein
CNN is reporting that Tom Daschle will not only be Health and Human Services Secretary, but also health reform czar under the Obama administration. This is huge news, and the clearest evidence yet that Obama means to pursue comprehensive health reform. You don’t tap the former Senate Majority Leader to run your health care bureaucracy. That’s not his skill set. You tap him to get your health care plan through Congress. You tap him because he understands the parliamentary tricks and has a deep knowledge of the ideologies and incentives of the relevant players. You tap him because you understand that health care reform runs through the Senate. And he accepts because he has been assured that you mean to attempt health care reform.
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To Palin & McCain: GO AWAY!! 😀
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I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.
William Penn
TheZoo