Thursday Open Thread

Filed in National by on October 22, 2009

Thursday’s open thread: PHILLIES!

Courageous blogger Mike Stark attends a press conference by the ACORN video producers and learns:

Some things you probably don’t know about James O’Keefe (“the pimp”) and Hannah Giles (“the prostitute”):

[…]

1. You know that ridiculous pimp outfit O’Keefe was filmed wearing? Well… he never wore it into an ACORN office. Instead…
2. O’Keefe posed as an aspiring Congressman trying to help a young woman caught up in prostitution and abused by a vicious pimp… They told the ACORN staffers that it wasn’t just her, but many other young immigrant girls that needed a safe place to get away from their pimp.
3. O’Keefe was thrown out of his Rutgers dorm after repeating – and failing to cease using – racial slurs
4. O’Keefe and the miscreants he works with have refused to release full copies of their unedited video. Every production is highly edited; nobody outside their team has seen their raw footage.

As Jon Stewart broke it down for us – the priority of the GOP is stopping ACORN while real crimes, like rape, are ignored:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Rape-Nuts
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Tags:

About the Author ()

Opinionated chemist, troublemaker, blogger on national and Delaware politics.

Comments (24)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. cassandra_m says:

    TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    FROM THE WEBSITE:

    CAPS LOCK DAY IS A CELEBRATION OF LIFE AND FOREVER SCREAMING TEXT FOR ALL ETERNITY.

  2. THANK YOU FOR BRINGING US THIS IMPORTANT NEWS. I CAN’T BELIEVE I ALMOST MISSED IT!

    WHEN IS INTERNATIONAL EXCLAMATION POINT DAY? !!!!!!!!!!!

  3. Delaware Dem says:

    Yeah, this is not annoying at all. 😉

  4. i’m celebrating international ee cummings day

  5. Von Cracker says:

    Ha! That dude is going to jail.

  6. MJ says:

    yad sdrawkcab gnipyt gnitarbelec m’I

  7. RSmitty says:

    Er, UI, you stated that wrong. You should have said:

    .JM, revelc yreV

  8. cassandra_m says:

    Now this was an excellent read today — a Baptist newsletter takes on the habits of some Christians to spread rumors and lies. You really should read the whole thing (our local wingnut christianists won’t):

    Some Christians are so willing to believe rumors that reflect well on their heroes and poorly on their opponents that they abandon even a modest concern for the veracity of the rumors. Yet the Bible clearly prohibits “bearing false witness” and spreading rumors and gossip. Perhaps Christians who spread such rumors think they serve a greater purpose, as if the end justifies the means, some ethicists speculate.

  9. lizard says:

    UI, your obsession with ACORN is pathetic. (ht Nemski)

  10. lizard says:

    Poll: Sarah Palin Respected More Than Oprah Winfrey

    Citizen Palin 4 President ^
    Apparently so and it is not even close. With nearly 21,000 votes cast Sarah Palin has a commanding lead of 63% to Oprah’s 37% on Which of the two women do you have a more favorable opinion of? and Are you interested in watching Oprah Winfrey’s interview of Sarah Palin? 59% say yes and 41% no. Going on The Oprah Show is clearly a very smart decision by the best selling author in the country, Governor Palin. She is not going on to sell her book but rather to reach and meet a very large audience of women. Most Americans…

    Sarah & Oprah! tune in November 16 for the big show!

  11. cassandra_m says:

    The perfect Christmas Gift for the conservative in your life.

    It will be funny as hell and they’ll never know they’ve been punk’d — they won’t read either book, anyway!

  12. Jason330 says:

    Awesome. Palin could be the savior of a country in a way that I’m sure will not please her fans. While mid-term elections are usually good for the party that is out of power, high profile nutbags like Palin, Beck and Boehner are changing the conventional wisdom.

    Less than one in five voters (19 percent) expressed confidence in Republicans’ ability to make the right decisions for America’s future while a whopping 79 percent lacked that confidence…

    Among independent voters, who went heavily for Obama in 2008 and congressional Democrats in 2006, the numbers for Republicans on the confidence questions were even more worse. Just 17 percent of independents expressed confidence in Republicans’ ability to make the right decision while 83 percent said they did not have that confidence.

    That is from an ABC News WaPo poll. (Which is an actual poll, not the nonsense presented as a poll in comment number 12)

  13. Jason330 says:

    Harry Reid now says that he has the votes in the Senate to pass HCR with a public option. Here is the plan according to ABC news via MYDD:

    And Democratic critics of the public option would get a chance to go on-the-record with their opposition by voting for an amendment to strip it from the health care bill. Under Senate rules, such an amendment would need 60 votes to pass. And while there may not be 60 votes in favor of a public option, there are also not 60 votes against it. So, it would remain in the bill.

    So a-hole dems like Tom Carper and Joe Leiberman can vote against the public option on that motion (that will fail) and say “Well, we tried” to their corporate constituents.

    The House also has the votes. The only question now is will Obama stick with the “Bi-Partisanship” to the point of passing a bad bill that only Olympia Snowe likes? He gets a fig leaf, but the country gets shafted and weak reform will hurt Democrats in 2010.

  14. lizard says:

    During his quest for the presidency, Mr. Obama repeatedly referred to the campaign against the remnants of al-Qaida and the Taliban as the “central front in the war on terror” and Afghanistan as “the necessary war.” In July 2008, he pledged: “I will send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan and use this commitment to seek greater contributions — with fewer restrictions — from NATO allies. I will focus on training Afghan security forces and supporting an Afghan judiciary. I will once and for all dismantle al-Qaida and the Taliban.” All these things still need to be done. But they haven’t been. Instead, all we have are excuses.

  15. Jason330 says:

    Carper is such a shameless WHORE. It is disgusting. Here is his take.

    How would this plan work? “Among the things that’s important,” Carper said, “is, one, that this not be a government run, government funded enterprise, two, that there be a level playing field so that this non-profit entity that would be stood up would have to play by same rules basically as for-profit insurance companies

    Basically, Carper still wants the existing insurance company cartel to dictate to the public board. A commenter at TMP sums up my feelings:

    The thing that pisses me off the most is this newly created sacred cow of a “level playing field.” Why? Why must a playing field be level. In sports, you want a level playing field so one team doesn’t have to run uphill, while the other runs downhill BECAUSE the competition itself is what people want to see. I don’t give a fuck about “the competition.” I want the best coverage, with the least exclusions, for the most people, for the least cost. I don’t care how we get there, and I don’t think most people will care what the program is, once it is in place and it saves them money and gives them security.

  16. anon says:

    In July 2008, he pledged: “I will send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan and use this commitment to seek greater contributions — with fewer restrictions — from NATO allies. I will focus on training Afghan security forces and supporting an Afghan judiciary. I will once and for all dismantle al-Qaida and the Taliban.” All these things still need to be done. But they haven’t been. Instead, all we have are excuses.

    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/subjects/afghanistan/

  17. xusumo says:

    U/I, if these facts about O’Keefe are true, and I’m sure they are, how come we are only getting this information now! How come all the news channels didn’t tell us that these were edited videos and they had no raw footage. The trouble with corrections so long after the sensationalist coverage is that fewer people see it and the initial implications remain entrenched in so many peoples’ minds. I think the FCC needs to take action, and threaten with large fines and possible removal of broadcast licenses. We own the airwaves, not the media, and they owe us accurate news coverage in exchange for these licenses!

  18. xusumo,

    I think it’s different because the video came through Fox, which is not a real news channel and has different standards. However, it was getting a lot of buzz and then the real news channels started picking it up.

    Jason,

    Amen to that TPM commenter. Americans don’t really care all that much about the deficit and they don’t care much about how the public option is administered. All they care about is getting coverage when they get sick. Our news and henceforth our Congress is so distorted by the bleatings of the bitter-ender 20% of Americans.

  19. cassandra_m says:

    Hey RICO — there is likely someplace out there on the web where just plain ignorance may have its rewards for you. This isn’t one of those places — Obama sent two brigades plus support troops back in February. He’s been asking for more NATO troops without alot of success — the Brits will send a few more shortly, but he has been asking. Troops there now are still focused on counterinsurgency against the Taliban and al-Queda as well as training. So it isn’t as though this has been ignored and if you are paying attention to the news, that doesn’t look to change.

  20. lizard says:

    from the link cassy posted:

    Months ago, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, requested more than 30,000 additional troops this year, and an initial 6,000 arrived last month under orders signed by the Bush administration. But a senior White House official said that no other deployment decisions will be made until the Obama administration completes a strategic review of the Afghan war in late March.

  21. EWRoss says:

    Que Pasa? Been reading for a while and just decided to write!
    </