Comment from timr
Time: July 29, 2008, 9:58 am

Josh, this doesn’t look so bad when seeing it piecemeal, but altogether like this… so the nuts like the guy on Sunday will become nuttier. Freedom of speech does not give one the right to yell “FIRE” in a crowded theater. So the hate speech, or is it just thinly disguised racism, you know.. those liberals.. wink… wink. Either way, seen like this, has to make one wonder. I know that politics back in the day was very very dirty, but the means of mass communication did not exist then, they do now, and therefore hate speech gets right down to the lowest common denominator, the crazy with the gun. The right wing nuts are pulling out all the stops, and if someone picks up a gun and kills in their name, well then the excuses will start.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/03/eliminationism-in-america-appendix.html

Comment from timr
Time: July 29, 2008, 10:26 am

the turd blossom special
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/28/open-thread-881/

Comment from timr
Time: July 29, 2008, 11:55 am

Its not the fact that he-Stevens- was finally indited that is the big surprise, the surprise to me, is just how low his price was. Its like he became corrupt for nickels and dimes. At least “Duke” Cunningham got some money for his actions. It looks like Stevens could be bought for a six pack. I mean, really, a Viking BBQ grill?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/313/story/45824.html

Comment from Josh Hammond
Time: July 29, 2008, 12:12 pm

timr, you go with what you can get. Looks like another seat for the Dems. It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas.

Comment from JerryA
Time: July 29, 2008, 8:04 pm

speaking of corruption, I am reminded of expresident Joseph Estrada of the Philippines. His stated net worth when elected in 1998 was approximately $700,000. When impeached and charged with plunder three years later his net worth had blossemed to about $80,000,000. He was pardoned last year and subsequently asked for his 80 mil back. They of course refused.
I find it strikingly similar to the situation with Darth Cheney. The majority of his net worth of $100,000,000, comes from his 5 year tenure with Halliburton. noteworthy is, that prior to his Halliburton CEO experience, he had never had any corporate managerial experience whatsoever; much less any CEO experience. Now, dosen’t it seem odd that three years after his resignation, KBR gets tens of billions of dollars of no-bid contracts in Iraq?
Sounds like an well orchestrated Estrada deal to me.
Maybe Darth has one of those Viking BBQ grills in his taxpayer financed bunker.

Comment from timr
Time: July 30, 2008, 12:59 pm

JerryA-how about Ferdinand Marcos? His pay as president was, I think, something less than $10K per year, yet he had hundreds of millions when he was kicked out. Maybe Estrada learned his money collecting ways from Marcos.

BTW, found this, thought it might prove interesting-but only if a st john reporter ever gets a spine and actually asks some hard questions
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/45902.html

Comment from Max von Schuler-Kobayashi
Time: July 30, 2008, 2:06 pm

Jerry,

Maybe we should roast Darth Vader in that grill. The only downside is that people downwind would have to put up with odious smoke.

Comment from Max
Time: July 30, 2008, 2:55 pm

Hey Stevens, I remember that guy! He is the one who installed a missile intercept system in Alaska that doesn’t work, to intercept North Korean missiles that hardly ever fly more than a few seconds, for billions of taxpayer dollars! That guy!

Comment from I.B. Lever
Time: July 30, 2008, 8:46 pm

If there were any doubts, of what people on this globe think of us, then the following should remove that doubt … and I quote …

“As a person who lives in another country, one with an actual free press that is not beholding to Corporations and, thus, a media whose obvious bias and agendas are for those Corporations, including ‘polls’, I find your media an absolute farce at best, and a criminal enterprise at worst.

The job of any media in any country is to objectively report facts so that the people living in whatever country can then make choices and determinations based on those facts. When you have a media who primary agenda is to make ‘profits’ for the Corporations themselves you then create a media that lies, deceives, manipulates, and creates propaganda in order to serve the interests of the Corporations themselves. The ‘end justifies the means’ mentality.

This is why your country went from being one of the most admired in the world for many, many years to one of the most hated and feared: a laughingstock of stupidity. And that happened once Bush was “installed” as your president. Once that happened your country became a fascist state: the melding of the Corporations with the government in which the government does the bidding of the Corporations themselves. This is what Hitler did, and it is what Mussolini did. It is what Putin is doing now. China is the most gross example of course. This is the company that your country now keeps. ” … unquote …

” Thank heavens for the Department of Justice and our elected members of Congress.” …… Try to say that with a straight face.

Comment from Max
Time: July 31, 2008, 2:10 am

You on something there Lever-san, I think the greatest hope for political change lies in the fact that many other corporations are mad that Halliburton got all the spoils for Iraq, and the Iraq war has made it hard for American firms to do business.

But if this is the way to get rid of the Bushies, I’ll take it. For heavens sake, we don’t want to KEEP them.