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Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
A Day Of Transitions For Everyone!
Everything In The News Will Piss You Off Today, Puppies And Presidents Edition
Speculative Cabinetry Redux: Clinton, Geithner and Richardson To Come On Board
That Was Quick: Madonna Is Single Again
Conventional Crap: Joe Lieberman Is Made-Up But Not Imaginary
Liveblogging Fred Thompson's Speech
Talking About The Campaign Could Destroy Your Marriage!

Presidential Campaign Continues Ruining Our Law & Order Reruns

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♥AntiSocialSocialite♥
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
I disagree with nearly everything Eric Cantor has to say, but he looks good on television, especially when he doesn't wear those glasses (sorry, I have a *THING* for politicians and pundits..... mmmmm James Carville....).
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kityglitr
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
Calling bullshit on the weed story... I live in Humboldt County! I know where mine comes from. About 20 minutes away from my house. That's the beauty of California and it's Medical Marijuana clause!
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Grim Reaper of the Forest
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
I really hate this whole claim that executives are working for $1 a year "salaries", when they all apparently have secret contracts guaranteeing them $1 million "bonuses". It seems like the only reason they have the "bonus" structure is so they can pat themselves on the back for giving up their salary. No one should expect the employees to work for $1 a year, so why not be up front about it?
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dianersb was bit by a zombie
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
Dostoevsky hotel, where a large number of passengers checked in and ended up murdering a guest

This has me in hysterics.
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JohanPaladin
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
To be fair, doesn't Clinton point out America's anti-narcotics sanctions and policies as the culprit, more so than any individual American citizen's habit?
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LaFemme
03/26/09

@JohanPaladin: Kin of, which is odd. It is not the case for Mexico, but US anti-narcotics sanctions against the Colombian cartels are pretty widely acknowledge to have helped ENORMOUSLY in getting rid of the major cartels that stifled indutry, corrupted government, and fueled the incredibly high levels of violence. Colombia now isn't perfect, but it will probably never again see the days where the country was divided up between cartels and citizens lived in crippling fear.

Now, has a lot of this transferred to Mexico? Yes. But I don't think the policies themselves, or at least some, were necessarily a huge failure.

It is also kind of odd she would say this considering how her husband was behind "Plan Colombia"
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SomeAuthorGirl
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
Is it wrong of me to imagine a crazypants Discworld-esque GOP ticket in 2012? Palin-Jindal?

Also, I did the near-spitting of coffee thing on the video. "Travelers complain lost luggage is sent to the person they hate the most."

I love the news at 10.
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NefariousNewt
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
I'm perfectly willing to wait to do anything about sanctions to Cuba, while we cut our chops on Burma. The Burmese government makes Cuba look like rainbows and sunshine.
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scullymurphy
03/26/09

@NefariousNewt: Srsly. At this point waiting on Cuba is just putting off the disney-resortification of the island a little longer.
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LaFemme
03/26/09

@NefariousNewt: The sanctions aren't even that hard-hitting, and at this point aren't meant to be...

Personally, to not add fuel to Castro's fire, I would rather not get rid of them; we don't need hours and hours going on about how America has turned Cuba into the new Cancun.
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Snowbunny
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
...I'll go to Cuba, you know, if the government is having a hard time deciding who to send. Meaning I am willing to sacrifice myself for the good of our country. By going to Cuba. Let me just get my white linen suits out of the attic.
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Saltine
03/26/09

@Snowbunny: For all that actually want to go to Cuba, they haven't cited anyone in a year, as long s you og through another country, no one cares right now... Hypothetically.
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NefariousNewt
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
As to the drug war in Mexico, it isn't just weed. This is a battle for control of all narco-traffic across the border. Juarez was not a place to go when I was in college -- it's a thousand times worse now.
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saintbernadette
03/26/09

@NefariousNewt: Yeah, that article mostly referenced cocaine and heroin -- not marijuana.
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morninggloria
03/26/09

@NefariousNewt: Yes! The hard stuff like cocaine and heroin are much more lucrative and therefore lead to more profit and more war over said potential profit.

Also, thanks to a US focus on cracking down on rural meth dealers and meth labs, the Mexican meth industry has absolutely exploded (that was not intended to be a poor-taste meth lab explosion joke, but it is still sort of unintentionally funny) in the last few years. Hillary should be chastizing Levi Johnston's mom and the Wasilla meth lovin' Alaskan lot before she wags her finger at the Birkenstock loving crew.
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morninggloria
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
Both parties are guilty of wanting the policies of the opposing party to fail so that they can be proven right. The smug satisfaction of being the one who was right all along has taken a premium to living in a country where shit works. No, we don't care if things improve, as long as the opponent's shit doesn't have the desired effect and we can sit back with a shit eating grin and say "I told you!" Thing is, there are more than two ways to do anything, and just because one way fails doesn't mean that the second-most-popular solution was sent down from heaven to fulfill our wildest dreams. People can't even look to history without being blinded by the "I was fucking RIGHT and you are fucking WRONG" lens.

We're fucked until we can stop acting like a nation of Monday morning quarterbacks.

Thinking about this really makes me want to rip phonebooks in half with my bare hands.
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yellow_dog
03/26/09

@morninggloria: I hear what you're saying, but over the past eight years I never heard anyone say, "I hope the Bush policy fails in Iraq, more people die and we can say I told you so." The people who are saying this now about the Obama policies are failures as Americans and failures as human beings.
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HarpMadness
03/26/09

@morninggloria: But the thing that really gets me about the Republicans right now is that we have been living their economic wet dream for YEARS and, really, a very good case can be made that it's THEIR own policies that got us into this mess and yet they still think they can be shown to be right if Obama's policies fail? They don't seem to think logic or reality applies to them.
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NefariousNewt
03/26/09

@morninggloria: I live in what has to be the capitol of partisan politics, New Jersey. The state's in a hole so deep it would be easier to keep digging and come out the other side of the Earth, and both sides cannot get their act together and make the truly hard choices. Of course, the Republicans want to slash and burn the budget, while Corzine and his Democratic cronies act as if there's no fiscal crisis going on, even as they create policies designed to kill the middle class, the elderly, and the special needs community.
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Hazel
03/26/09

@morninggloria: I don't know.. I didn't support Bush's policies because I didn't think they would work, but I didn't want him to fail. I would've been thrilled if his policies had actually worked. If abstinence-only education had actually reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies, I would've been fucking delighted.
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morninggloria
03/26/09

@yellow_dog: Wanting soldiers to die is a sort of extreme example, but a good point. I don't think that most liberals wanted soldiers to die, but I do think that many liberals have difficulty looking back and identifying conservative policies that have ended up working out for the better. Liberals and conservatives both have EXTREME difficulty looking back on the last 10-15 years and saying, "Wow, you know what? Everyone shit the bed and that's why we're in this mess."

Republicans' screw ups that led to this mess: deregulation of markets

Democrats' screw ups that led to this mess:
policies that favored lending to people who were straight up not credit worthy. Mortgages were bundled, securitized in markets that, thanks to Republicans, were unregulated, and models were run using default statistics of a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, much more credit worthy group of people than the ones with the new mortgages. Demand for these securities rose exponentially, due to their very favorable credit ratings. Wall Street demanded more mortgages from main street. And then people started not paying. And boom.

There! We both fucked up! Now let's admit it, learn from our mistakes, and move forward.
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morninggloria
03/26/09

@morninggloria: *securitized AND SOLD in markets that were, thanks to Republicans, unregulated.
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HarpMadness
03/26/09

@morninggloria: The line about the "not credit worthy" defaulting on loans is what's being pushed, but there's a lot of evidence that this isn't really the case. In fact, I would put more blame on the culture that has been pushed that everything must "grow grow grow" so the stockholders can get more dividends. I'm over-simplifying it, of course, but I think when this is all sussed out at the end, the people who took out the mortgages isn't going to turn out to be the people who ruined the economy.

Anyway, I'm feeling like I'm thread-jacking here, and I do agree with your basic point which is that everybody has a hard time looking back without prejudice to see where things went wrong.
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Cardbross
03/26/09

@morninggloria: I don't know, I think there are a fair number of liberals who look back at the Bush administration and say "wait, didn't we have Congress for 4 of those years? What happened there?" Admittedly, accusations of fecklessness aren't the same as a non-partisan policy analysis, but at least it's a degree of 'yeah, this is our fault too'.

Then again, I guess that's a minority position within the Democratic party, and there's probably a rarely-heard-on-TV segment of the Republican party who can similarly accept criticism of their party and political shortcomings.
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Shelwood
03/26/09

@Cardbross: Two years. The Democrats had congress for two years, 2006(7)-2008. The Republicans held the majority in congress for the 14 years before that (back to 1994).
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NefariousNewt
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
Fred Thompson: good actor, bad politician.
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lilbobbytables
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
Actor, former Senator and epic fail of a Presidential candidate Fred Thompson is brave enough to say that he wants Obama's economic policies to fail because he doesn't like them.

And I am brave enough, Mr. Thompson, to say that you have NOTHING on Adam Schiff (Steven Hill).
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NefariousNewt
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
Well, one can only hope there's a Britney Spears concert going on at the same time Cantor is giving his concession speech after losing his bid for re-election because HE IS A MORON!
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wooden_shoes
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
"One of her dudes met with Burma's foreign minister as part of the review of what to do about Burma since sanctions are an entirely ineffective foreign policy strategy. We're still not sending anyone to Cuba, though."

Immediately what started running through my head was "How do you solve a problem like Burma?"

Also, the other thing that ran through my head was: Dang it, Burma has not been Burma for 20 years.
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TheFormerJuneBronson
03/26/09

@wooden_shoes: I just hear J. Peterman saying, "You may know it as Myanmar!"
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YourScreenplaySucks
03/26/09

In reply to Britney Spears Beats Barack Obama For Eric Cantor
That video needs to become a series, stat. I would like to see the Freud, de Sade, Machiavelli, Orwell, and Dickens Airports featured next, please.
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SkipToMyLou
03/26/09

@Your Screenplay Sucks: Dickens? Really? Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls deified among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats.

No thanks. Imagine the delays?
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SkipToMyLou
03/26/09

@SkipToMyLou: The awful punctuation of that comment makes me miss the preview function ever more. Apologies. I can imagine those delays without a question mark.

*Imagine the delays!
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YourScreenplaySucks
03/26/09

@SkipToMyLou: I was imagining the hilarity of destitute passengers cringingly approaching cruel stewardesses with their empty peanut bags outstretched & meekly asking, "Please ma'am, May I have another?" only to be rudely shoved back into their rickety wooden seats.

I would also like to see the David Mamet Airport, because it would involve a lot of snappy dialogue & "Listen, motherfuckers" being tossed around.
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mauvelous
03/26/09

@Your Screenplay Sucks: I'm surprised no one mentioned a Jane Austen airport! It would be full of balls, dinner parties, and of course, flirtatious witty banter.
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YourScreenplaySucks
03/26/09

@mauvelous: You are too right. Looking over my choices, it seems that I should reconsider my decision to stop taking antidepressants.
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