Friday Open Thread [1.11.13]

Filed in Open Thread by on January 11, 2013

Friday! Yay! Just a few hours until Happy Hour.

You’ve probably heard of the contretemps between Piers Morgan and Alex Jones based on their interview discussing gun rights and the obligation to gun safety. Apparently Morgan pissed off Jones, who started a White House petition demanding that Morgan get deported. This petition was answered by WH Press Secretary Jay Carney, who used it as an opportunity to explain that the First Amendment means something:

Let’s not let arguments over the Constitution’s Second Amendment violate the spirit of its First. President Obama believes that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms. However, the Constitution not only guarantees an individual right to bear arms, but also enshrines the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press — fundamental principles that are essential to our democracy. Americans may disagree on matters of public policy and express those disagreements vigorously, but no one should be punished by the government simply because he or she expressed a view on the Second Amendment — or any other matter of public concern.

Awesome — read your constitution, people!

Have we talked about these people? These are the Sandy Hook Truthers — people who are pushing a story that the tragedy at Sandy Hook did not happen. And it was specifically staged by the Obama Administration (for a variety of reasons) with the participation of the parents of the murdered children. Despicable, is what it is.

This is one great read — from Ezra Klein, an argument for Joe Biden running in 2016.

For a 70-year-old man, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden sure spends an awful lot of time winning the Internet. No other living politician has quite the same ratio of words spoken to memes inspired. Last week’s contribution was the patter of joyously weird, occasionally creepy, one-liners he threw off while swearing in the 113th Senate.[…]

In the continuing drama that is the Obama presidency, Biden often appears as comic relief. He’s the zany neighbor, the adorable uncle. As a result, his presidential ambitions, which burn brightly even today, have mostly been laughed off. Somehow, the sitting vice president of the United States, the former chairman of both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, a man who’s on a nickname basis with many of the world’s most powerful leaders, is seen in many quarters as lacking the gravitas to be president.

Yet just a few days before he was giving dating advice on C-SPAN2, Biden again proved himself perhaps the most effective member of the Obama administration. He reprised his role as the White House closer, the guy who can cut a deal with the Republicans after everyone else has failed. In the end, Biden got Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to strike a deal that the White House was happy with. That’s something neither Obama nor Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had achieved. And it wasn’t the first time. Biden also helped close the 2011 deal that lifted the debt ceiling and the 2010 deal that extended the Bush tax cuts in return for fresh stimulus.

What interests you today?

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"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

Comments (11)

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  1. Jason330 says:

    All this Biden talk makes me queezy. Sure people like him in his current role, but he hasn’t done well in primaries.

    I hope he knows that this is it.

  2. puck says:

    “the guy who can cut a deal with the Republicans after everyone else has failed”

    It’s not hard to do – you just give up more than everyone else was willing to give up. Republicans aren’t complicated.

    In the next deal, Joe Biden better not give up safety net cuts in exchange for more tax increases – because on January 1 he HAD tax increases in hand for free, and inexplicably gave them back. So I don’t want to hear that now he wants to trade something of value for tax increases.

  3. cassandra_m says:

    Fox News is telling its viewers that the teaching of algebra is liberal bias. Apparently it teaches kids how to redistribute wealth.

    “But even worse is the way some textbooks are pushing the liberal agenda,” the Fox News host explained, pointing to an algebra worksheet that Scholastic says gives students “[i]nsight into the distributive property as it applies to multiplication.”

    Can’t wait until they find out that algebra has roots in medieval-era Islamic countries.

  4. fightingbluehen says:

    Just saw the movie Silver Linings Playbook. Surprisingly good movie, and the Eagles are part of the central theme.

  5. Roland D. Lebay says:

    RE: Algebra-

    From Wikipedia (not the most reliable source, but true in this case):
    The roots of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonians,[2]who developed an advanced arithmetical system with which they were able to do calculations in an algorithmic fashion.

    Algebra is from Babylon, therefore bad EVIL in the minds of ignorant Fox News, Inc. and its viewers. I apologize for being redundant.

    The Arabs (who were/are Islamist) invented the concept of ZERO and the WORD “Algebra”.

    Praise Jeebus. God bless ‘Merica. Yee-Haw!

  6. Liberal Elite says:

    Exactly right… When the kings in Europe were still wallowing in mud, there stood the seven pillars of wisdom (libraries) in the ancient muslim world.

    It goes well beyond ZERO and ALGEBRA… HORIZON, ZENITH, AZIMUTH,… and many things astronomical.

    One could argue that the true root of the renaissance was the effective merging of western and muslim knowledge.

  7. Aoine says:

    Not only algebra but modern medicine and the whole idea of autopsies, which the catholic would not allow, therefore medicinal man had no idea who the human body worked, therefore could not cure ills.

    But Islam was a center of learning, culture and medicine, they knew about the circulatory system and other components of the human body.

    Are they going to now say that Med school has. ” liberal bias?” Yeah, until one of THEM gets sick….just like with abolition, wrong for everyone else, ok for a member of their family.

    CONSERVATIVE= hypocrite

  8. Aoine says:

    Whoops. Above should read ABORTION not Abolition

    Although that might apply too….

  9. anonymous says:

    Republicans hate math and science – especially when it tells the truth that threatens their fossil fuel joy ride. What do republicans hate most of all – climate science.

    Fox news and fossil fuel interests et al have taken the small minded republicans for a long ride, even though mankinds’ chance of survival has been greatly reduced. (So much for republican constitutional rights, religion, family values, life, safety, health, homeland security, the economy and everything else they pretend to hold dear.)

    http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/10/24/timeline-fox-news-role-in-the-climate-of-doubt/190906

    Atmospheric CO2 has gone from 350ppm in 1985 to 394.37ppm in 2012. The pre-industrial rate was 280ppm. The highest acceptable rate of carbon dioxide is 350ppm, which was bypassed nearly 30 years ago. Obviously, release of CO2 is rising, rather than decreasing as called for by scientists. Thank republicans and fossil fueled politicians for the ‘business-as-usual.’ Released CO2 can last up to 200 years as a greenhouse gas, so further heating of the planet is in the pipeline. A recent study shows that average global temperatures could climb to 2.5 to 5.4 degrees by 2050 – in the kids’ lifetime. The study findings are based on the results of 10,000 computer model simulations of future weather, overseen by researchers at Oxford University. (Damn that math and science.)

    Even the predicted five degree rise in global temperatures, holds a big probability of a devastating outcome on much planet life.

    2013 – and nonetheless, the climate clowns are still joking in the back of their class. See video:

    http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/01/09/fox-host-shouts-down-first-mention-on-network-o/192140

    The climate itself, has proven the decades of calculations of leading climate scientists were right all along. One tends to think of ‘deniers’ as full blown underwear bombers – their diapers loaded with crap.

    Meanwhile the whining diaper crowd still question the legitimate math and science of CO2 and laugh about the next generations’ fight for survival on an over heated and changed planet.

  10. Dave says:

    And from the world of crazy, we have a new Glen Beck, neither conservative, nor liberal! http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/12/glenn-beck-attempts-a-laughable-make-over-as-a-libertarian.html

    Will the 9-12 Patriots be looking for new principles and values now that their champion has reinvented himself?

  11. Liberal Elite says:

    @Dave “And from the world of crazy, we have a new Glen Beck, neither conservative, nor liberal!”

    Is he still scamming overpriced “fake” bullion gold to his audience?