For Dems only.

[FlaSoxxJim]

True.  That's not what I meant, but that's how it reads.

 

Crap.

 

I jest. I should have used green but I ran out.

[Queen Prawn]

The bean counters, rather than the doctors, are deciding what is a necessary procedure.  But when you see my daughter struggling to read because she has one eye not playing nice with the other and inverting letters, etc., you know damn well that she has a medical need.  So we're shelling out about half my wife's takehome pay for 14 weeks to get her the treatment she needs because Blue Cross considers it elective therapy now.

 

Sounds like the therapy my brother had for several years - it does get expensive. I have yet to get my knee checked out because of the BS I went through with the doctors when I was 18. I just don't want to hear "live with the pain" then go through a physical for a job and have the doctor tell me I need care so I don't cripple myself.

 

insurance companies ->

[FlaSoxxJim]

The Abramoff interview in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair is going to be a hoot. The guy is going down smiling and singing away.

 

One of my favorite excerpts on one of the many members of what Abramoff is calling the "chorus of amnesiacs":

 

Newt Gingrich, whose spokesman Rick Tyler tells Margolick that "Before [Abramoff's] picture appeared on TV and in the newspapers, Newt wouldn't have known him if he fell across him. He hadn't seen him in 10 years." A rankled Abramoff says "I have more pictures of [Newt] than I have of my wife." Abramoff shows Margolick numerous photographs: "Here's Newt. Newt. Newt. Newt. More Newt. Newt with Grover [Norquist, the Washington conservative Republican Über-strategist and longtime Abramoff friend] this time. But Newt never met me. Ollie North. Newt. Can't be Newt ... he never met me. Oh, Newt! What's he doing there? Must be a Newt look-alike.... Newt again! It's sick! I thought he never met me!"

[kapkomet]

The Abramoff interview in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair is going to be a hoot.  The guy is going down smiling and singing away.

 

One of my favorite excerpts on one of the many members of what Abramoff is calling the "chorus of amnesiacs":

These guys had better stop lying through their teeth, say they were involved with him, and move the hell on, or they ALL are going down, and down HARD.

[Rex Kickass]

The whole Vanity Fair article is linked in the Abramoff thread BTW.

[Balta1701]

These guys had better stop lying through their teeth, say they were involved with him, and move the hell on, or they ALL are going down, and down HARD.

What you're not realizing is that when they look at their careers...it may be that fighting and denying his statements will stand them a better chance than admitting they knew him...if they more than knew him, and knew some level of the things he was doing. If there's something indictable in what they knew...then admitting they knew him is a big mistake.

[Balta1701]

Oh by the way, I'd like to take today as a chance to swear at the U.S. health care system one more time. 14 days before the Fiancee can get into the place her HMO referred her to in order to get an exam she needs.

[Balta1701]

Former Naval Secretary (under Reagan) James Webb has thrown his name into the senate race in Virginia. Bush stays in the 30's and we have a real shot at that one now.

[Balta1701]

Chris Matthews...from that liberal bastion of MSNBC...blames the church burnings today on "Liberals."  This man really seems to admire O'Reilly.  Wow.

 

Pardon this interruption for a brief Indie comment.

 

Bwroooooaaaaah  Bwroaaaaahhhhh Bworaaaaaahhhh.....

 

"liberal" church person and "liberal" politically are two different things.  VERY different.

 

We now bring you back to your regularly scheduled Dem only thread.

 

bweeep bweep bweeep.

 

/carries on

 

NYT

 

Three college students from the prosperous suburbs of Birmingham, Ala., were arrested yesterday in the burning of nine Baptist churches last month in rural Alabama. Federal officials said the fires were a "joke" that spun out of control while the students were deer hunting.

 

After initially setting ablaze five churches in the county just south of Birmingham, two students burned four additional churches days later in more remote areas, hoping to divert investigators, the authorities said.

 

Two students, Benjamin N. Moseley and Russell L. DeBusk Jr., both 19, from Birmingham-Southern College, were arrested on the campus after admitting their involvement in the fires to federal agents, officials said.

I'd say the gap between liberals and liberal church people is smaller than the gap between a few college students with some sort of amazingly insane prank and liberals motivated by conservative churches. Although, they were theater students...

[Balta1701]

Sometimes they just make it too bloody easy.

 

After saying in January that he would end his regular meetings with lobbyists, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, has continued to meet with many of the same lobbyists at the same time and on the same day of the week....

 

But in the month since his announcement, Santorum has held two meetings attended by the same core group of lobbyists, and has used the sessions to appeal for campaign aid, according to participants. Both of those meetings were convened at the same time as the previous meetings -- 8:30 a.m. -- on the same day of the week -- Tuesday -- and they lasted for about as long as the earlier meetings -- one hour.

 

Instead of being held in the Capitol, however, the recent meetings were conducted nearby. The first was held about three blocks away, at the headquarters of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the second was held around the corner from that building, at the Heritage Foundation.

Well, that's one way to move the corruption out of the halls of Congress. Move it down the street.

[Balta1701]

You know...there's got to be something slightly askew when Moveon.org sends out an email with the subject header:

 

"What winning would mean".

[Balta1701]

So, right now Alaska is cleaning up the 6th largest oil spill in the state's history, after a pipeline just west of the border of ANWR began to leak. Just figured I'd point that out.

[FlaSoxxJim]

So, right now Alaska is cleaning up the 6th largest oil spill in the state's history, after a pipeline just west of the border of ANWR began to leak.  Just figured I'd point that out.

I thought about posting a few days ago when the story broke, but figured you and maybe two others would cere.

 

Yessirree, we have that footprintless petroleum extraction thing down cold. I feel downright silly abjecting to opening up ANWR all this time. . .

[FlaSoxxJim]

This is not a GOP thing, or a Dem thing. It's a scumbag thing. It probably just didn't need it's own thread.

 

White House Aide Caught In Shoplifting Scheme.

 

Claude Allen, the former Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, resigned suddenly a few weeks ago. The standard "spend time with his family" line was proferred, but yesterday it turns out Allen was arrested and charged in a “retail theft scheme.”

 

The Target Loss Prevention Manger contacted Montgomery County Police and through the police investigation it was learned that Allen had been receiving refunds in an amount exceeding $5,000 during last year. Some of the fraudulent returns were made at Target stores and some at Hecht’s stores. He would buy items, take them out to his car, and return to the store with the receipt. He would select the same items he had just purchased, and then return them for a refund. Allen is known to have conducted approximately 25 of these types of refunds, having the money credited to his credit cards.

 

Throughout 2005 he obtained refunds for items ranging from clothing, a Bose theater system, stereo equipment, and photo printer to items valued only at $2.50.

 

Dude was making $161K, as much as Rove and Hadley. What the hell was he thinking?

[Balta1701]

Bush nominated that guy twice to the 4th U.S. Circuit court of appeals. The Democrats filibustered his nomination both times.

 

Thank God for the Filibuster.

 

He also was in charge of the first few weeks of the White House's Katrina task force.

Edited March 11, 2006 by Balta1701

[Balta1701]

In 2004, Rumsfeld made $5 million selling shares of Gilead Sciences, the company which manufactures Tamiflu, the drug governments around the world are stockpiling as the only current defense against the Bird Flu.

[Balta1701]

This is only to draw laughs...Roll Call.

 

After a news conference in the Capitol ended Thursday and lawmakers and aides were shuffling out the door, a young woman asked Burns, "How ya doing today, Senator?"

 

Without batting an eye the Senator replied, "I'm ready to go get knee-walking drunk!"

[Balta1701]

Keith Oblermann during an interview on C-Span.

 

    LAMB: We have got some other quotes about Fox from you: "Fortunately for the free world, News Corp.," which owns FOX, "is very aggressive but ultimately not very bright."

 

    OLBERMANN: Yes, they are somewhat self-destructive. And that's the best hope for mankind, relative to them. In other words, you know, Bill O'Reilly, who has an audience at 8 o'clock [p.m. ET] that even with recent programming gains on the part of my show, the total audience that he has is still, what, six, seven times what we are doing. Even -- as Fox and News Corp. put it, the "money demo," the 25- to 54-year-old news viewers who don't watch news, even there they are still about double what we are doing.

 

    When I attack Bill O'Reilly or criticize him for something that he said on the air, some ludicrous suggestion like, you know, we should let Al Qaeda go in and blow up San Francisco because he doesn't like San Francisco, I mean, just lunatic things, if I punch upwards at Fox News, the clever response, the cynical and brilliant response is to just ignore. Like, well, why do we have to worry, they have one-seventh of our audience? They attack. Bill O'Reilly's agent calls the head of NBC week after week saying, you have got to get Olbermann to stop this, as if for some reason there are rules here. We have -- these are the people who have suspended the rules, and they want the referee to step in protect them against my little pinky.

 

    LAMB: More quotes. This is about Rupert Murdoch: "His covey of flying monkeys do something journalistically atrocious every hour of the day."

 

    OLBERMANN: Yeah. I think that's probably true. I think -- well, sometimes they miss. They are sometimes -- there are a few hours in a row where there might not be a flying monkey appearing, devastating society.

 

    LAMB: Doesn't this work for both of you?

 

    OLBERMANN: I don't think so. I haven't met a lot of flying monkeys at NBC. I have met people who -- and by the way, this is the great freedom and the great protection of American broadcasting, commercial broadcasting -- we made a mistake in the '20s. We let broadcasting in this country develop with commercial broadcasting taking the lead and all other kinds of information on radio or television secondary or tertiary. But the protection of money at the center of everything, including news to the degree that it is now, is that as long as you make the money, they don't care what it is you put on the air.

 

    They don't care. There are people I know in the hierarchy of NBC, the company, and GE, the company, who do not like to see the current presidential administration criticized at all.

 

    Anybody who knew anything about American history and stepped out at any point in American history and got an assessment of this presidential administration would say, "Yeah, I don't know how much they need to be criticized, but they need to be criticized to some degree."

 

    There are people who I work for who would prefer, who would sleep much easier at night if this never happened. On the other hand, if they look at my ratings and my ratings are improved and there is criticism of the president of the United States, they're happy.

 

    If my ratings went up because there was no criticism of the president of the United States, they'd be happy.

[Balta1701]

Ed Helms on the Dems, this Admin, etc (said to Paul Hackett).

 

I got mugged the other day... and this bum was beating me with a bottle. And I said, you know what? I'm going to sit back and wait for him to accidentally hit himself with the bottle. Sure enough, he did! I mean, I was unconscious, but I think I won that battle.

[Balta1701]

So, remember that "Big Dig" in Boston, the one that anyone concerned about government waste has bashed for running like $10 billion over cost?

 

The guy in charge of it? Bush is bumping him up to head of the Federal Highway Administration.

[NorthSideSox72]

So, remember that "Big Dig" in Boston, the one that anyone concerned about government waste has bashed for running like $10 billion over cost?

 

The guy in charge of it?  Bush is bumping him up to head of the Federal Highway Administration.

Actually, I think this is a John Kerry Bush-bashing expedition, with little foundation.

 

For one thing, this guy came onto the Dig when it was already way-overbudget, and he was the ONLY chief executive on it to keep costs close to the same during his tenure. He made a questionable call on a few severance packages, but that is all he seemed to do wrong. And he actually met some dates, which is more than could be said elsewhere in the project history.

 

I am starting to tire of Kerry's lack of material input in the political arena. I really hope he isn't the Dem nominee for Prez in '08.

[Balta1701]

I am starting to tire of Kerry's lack of material input in the political arena.  I really hope he isn't the Dem nominee for Prez in '08.

I hoped he wouldn't be in 04.

[NorthSideSox72]

I hoped he wouldn't be in 04.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[kapkomet]

I hoped he wouldn't be in 04.

In retrospect, who would you have chosen?

[Balta1701]

In retrospect, who would you have chosen?

Well, my pecking order before Dean's collapse went Dean, Clark, Edwards, Kerry, others.