Monday Open Thread

Filed in National by on March 28, 2011

Welcome to your Monday open thread. Are you ready for another Monday? I know I’m not. (Insert standard complaints about weekends being too short). What’s on your mind?

Ian Murphy, the Buffalo Beast columnist who pranked Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as fake David Koch is running for Congress.

You may remember Ian Murphy as the journalist who called Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker posing as right-wing mega-donor David Koch.

It turns out that Murphy, who is editor of the Buffalo Beast, lives in the New York district formerly represented by Chris Lee, the Republican who recently resigned after it emerged he was posing as a lobbyist and cruising Craigslist for mistresses.

Murphy is now running as a Green in the special election scheduled for May 24. In an homage to Lee, Murphy’s campaign slogan is “Laid back dude seeks votes, maybe more.”

His platform is a mix of standard Green stuff — tax billionaires, slash military spending — and more idiosyncratic material:

I am pro-Craigslist transsexuals. Unlike your last Congressman, however, I am not a terrible hypocrite. And unlike my Republican opponent, I am not a discriminating jerk.

The Republican nominee for the special election, Jane Corwin is expected to win. The Democrats’ nominee is Kathy Hoschul. Corwin has a couple of Tea Party challengers (getting on as a 3rd party is relatively easy in NY) in Jack Davis and also Medal of Honor winner David Bellavia.

This is a weird story. It’s one of those what could they be thinking? stories. Joe Biden’s staff escorted a pool reporter to a closet to wait for the VP’s appearance. Why?

“Scott – You have our sincere apologies for the lack of a better hold room today,” wrote Vice President Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander last Wednesday to Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers.

“Lack of a better hold room” is an interesting way of putting it. In order to keep Powers from mingling with guests at a Democratic fundraiser last Wednesday, Powers was escorted into a storage closet by a Biden staffer.

Powers was the designated pool reporter, there to record the proceedings for the press corps in general.

He told ABC News that he showed up at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday to cover Vice President Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., attending a $500-a-head fundraiser at the Winter Park manse of developer Alan Ginsburg.

A young female staffer met him at the door and brought him to the storage closet.

Yes, they owe the reporter an apology. An hour in a closet? That’s just really weird. Whose idea was this?

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Comments (9)

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  1. Von Cracker says:

    This about sums up everything I feel about the retarded right.

    http://www.stonekettle.com/2011/03/america-you-keeping-using-that-word.html

  2. anon says:

    Libya the next target. Watching Obama tonight justify the invasion of Libya. Libya has huge amounts of oil even more than Saudi Arabia. Already boots on the ground with special forces. CIA guy from VA is now Commander of the “freedom fighters”. If you believe for one second this is a “good war”, you know nothing. Libya has only 6million people, lots of gas and oil reserves and thats why were there. Khadafy is no saint, but meddling in the internal affairs of another country, is a violation of US law and international law. We have not been threatened. This is lawless naked aggression, exploiting their resources, and privatize the oil. Its more imperialism!

  3. socialistic ben says:

    youve got some proof that he CIA is secretly runing the rebellion?
    It has already been demonstrated that this intervention is square with international law, and because of the treaty clause, it is also square with US law.

  4. Auntie Dem says:

    anon,
    “meddling in the internal affairs of another country” when it is required to save hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children’s lives because the dictator has lost his mind probably isn’t meddling. Especially when the international community is fairly united in the rescue mission.

  5. anon says:

    Yes, the CIA guy names is Hifler! Looks like the progressive left isnt buying Obama’s reasons for going to Libya. Today, the Quakers (FCNL), progressive groups, Codepink et all arent buying any of it. One wonders why Gates, Mullen and maybe Biden werent in agreement either. While Obama was out of the country, looks like Hilary decided on this foreign policy scheme.

    Square with international law…how about our Consitution? Those people Obama claims to be saving are the hundreds of thousands of refugees who were working in Libya….and they are still stuck on the border trying to get out…this is another Iraq! Libya will be destroyed just like Iraq and Afganistan. Think you guys are paying more attention to whats going on in Delaware than what going on overseas.

  6. anon says:

    Democratic Underground and DemocracyNow.org reported this from General Wesley Clark: Nov. 2001. “As I went throught the Pentagon meeting with senior military analysts I was told” We are on track for Iraq”. Clark said, “Why Iraq”? He was told there is a 5year plan and a total of 7 countries, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan…looks like we are right on target.

  7. Von Cracker says:

    Dynamics dont exist, ever, for some folks because variables are just too damn hard to understand and place into context.

  8. socialistic ben says:

    ooo maybe code pink will have a rave.. er um… protest

  9. Geezer says:

    “this is another Iraq! Libya will be destroyed just like Iraq and Afganistan.”

    Take it to the bookie shop. Predictions are much worse than assholes — everybody online has waaay more than one, and most of them stink.

    Rejoin reality for a minute and acknowledge that none of us, not even Obama, knows what is going to happen. You’ll retain a shred of credibility that way. And isn’t the present rotten enough, without borrowing disaster from the future?

    Now, just for the record, we are way off target if there was a “five-year plan.” By my count, it’s now year nine, and we’re only on the third of those seven, and where does Egypt fit in? Also, Libya has oil reserves of 41.5 billion barrels; Saudi Arabia has 267 billion. In short, bad information from liberal sources is of no more use than bad information from conservative sources. You ought to consider that from your high-horse perch. The ability to watch Al Jazeera doesn’t make you a genius, especially if you don’t have the ability to interpret what you see and hear.