Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

The Lounge: Lunatic Fringe (Open Thread)

The lounge is open for business, and I am sitting back sipping some rum and juice coffee beer, reading teh interwebs, looking for something other than health care reform (blah blah blah) to entertain me…pull up a chair and kick it old skool with me, moosey peeps.

Photobucket

It’s health care reform 24/7, and what a long, strange trip it is becoming.

The lunatic…

Photobucket

And his fringe…

Photobucket

It all has me wanting to scream…

Photobucket

But I fear that I am being followed by…

Photobucket

She took advice from Katie Couric and has been catching up on her reading…

Photobucket

All I want for Christmas is a chance to tell her…

Photobucket

Cheney and freaks thought mercenaries would be cool, but they failed to control these “Christian” thugs for hire…

Photobucket

Cheney never had to play Army game for real though…

Photobucket

So feel free to…

Photobucket

…about all that ails you…but tell me what else you have been up to… 😉

Photobucket


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 118 Comments

118 comments

  5. John Allen

    Oh, that’s right we’re talking about the lunatic fringe. Oh well, I’m going O/T then.

    The city of my birth – Flint, Michigan – has had a really tough time over the last 30 years. At one time, Flint and Genesee county were on top of the world. There was a time when GM was at its peak that the county had the highest median income in the nation. Business was booming and life was good. Those days are long gone. The population of the city has shrunk to less than 2/3rds of its peak and unemployment is over 25%.

    The negative image that Flint has acquired is in many ways deserved. Some is over the top, like the image of Flint portrayed in Michael Moore’s Roger and Me. Still, no one would argue that the city doesn’t have more than its share of troubles.

    However, there are positive stories even in the depths of gloom through which Flint finds itself struggling.

    Last weekend is a good example. The city has an auto festival every year called Back to the Bricks. The festival is named for the short stretch of main street that is still paved with bricks. The residents of this city are quite nostalgic about that short stretch of road and have fought every effort to repave it with concrete.

    The festival is headquartered downtown, but stretches for several miles along that road. The main drag is called Saginaw Street and runs thirty miles north to the city of Saginaw, MI. A nearly 10-mile stretch of that road becomes an auto fashion runway for a few days each year. This past festival attracted more than 100,000 people and featured more than 25,000 classic autos. People come from out-of-state to take part. It has become a huge success.

    As our Canadian neighbors would say, “Not bad for a city at deaths door, eh?”

    Another bit of good news for the city is an area of renovation called Carriage Town. This project is enough of a bright spot that it rated a three-page article in the NY Times. That article was what prompted this comment.

    Stories like these are what help me stay an optimist despite all of the negative things I have endured in my life. I still look for the silver-lining and even if the cup is bone-dry I think to myself, “At least I’ve got a cup to drink from in case I find some water.”

  6. GMFORD

    Why has there not been a class action suit of age discrimation by people over 55 who have been denied health insurance?

  7. HappyinVT

    know and love, and pop into the diary of a popular poster.  It starts out with:

    Despite all our efforts, there’s going to come a day in the not-too-distant future, that our progressives are going to come under severe (I would say, almost unberable and inhumane) pressure from Rahm and the White House.

    Rahm will use every invective known to man. He and others will attempt to threaten, humiliate, punish, destroy, defang, control, and demoralize the progressives into submission and into voting for a compromise bill which will not contain a public option.

     Daily Kos

    Of course, it shoots right up to the top of the Rec List.  To be fair, the diarist has worked her ass off on healthcare reform, but Jesus Christ on a cracker.  Seriously?!  Rahm’s going to basically torture progressives in order to get them to back off of their committment for the public option?

    I don’t know what Rahm’s doing.  I’m not sure anyone does although Glenn Greenwald apparently does (I didn’t read his post because, frankly, I’m tired of the “Rahm sucks” stuff).  One of the diarists at DK and FDL used to work for a House member and knows that Rahm is a progressive-hater so …

    I don’t know why I’m writing this.  I’m tired.  I’m tired of the hourly ups and downs of the healthcare debate.  The White House has had messaging problems which leads to “Obama sucks!” being declared everywhere.  He held his teleconference today which I thought was one of the best events he’s held since the Inauguration but…he only said the public option is “important.”  Must mean he’s going to cave because he didn’t say it is “essential.”  The whole thing is exhausting and exasperating.

    That’s my ranting and raving for today.  In a few minutes I’m going for a run.  Last night I ran six miles in 70 minutes ~ a personal best.  Felt good and right now I want that sweaty, stinky feeling again.

  8. creamer

    reconcilliation for a public option. Or if the House passes a progressive bill with a public option, will Conrad and Baucus have the balls to be the Democrats who kill health care reform.

     Also, if the public option gets done, Democrats everywhere will owe the Speaker an apology. She seems to have found her voice and right now she out in front.

  10. DTOzone

    are going on a propaganda lie blitz this weekend it appears. Two of them sent me the following Facebook message, which is also their statuses;

    White House Statement on the release of the Pan Am Flight 103 Bomber: “we continue to believe that Megrahi should serve out his sentence” BS! I talked with a dozen frustrated current & former DOJ & FBI officials today who worked on the case and said the U.S. brokered a deal with Gaddafi to release him so we can get cheap oil from Libya! People thought Bush was bad…It’s called reality people! Obama is no saint

    Huh? lol

  11. HappyinVT

    Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), one of the “gang of six” Finance Committee members negotiating a health care reform bill, said today that the committee’s bill will not include a public option.

    “We have not had the public option on the table,” Snowe told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “It’s been co-ops, and addressing the availability and affordability of plans through the exchange.”

    TPM

    Can they just get something through the committee so we can end that farce and move on to the next one.

  12. louisprandtl

    is a nonstarter. Here’s Shawn Tully of Fortune magazine explains why “Obamacare without public option” is going dig a large hole in the middle class pocket.

    http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/2…

    It is a mathematical fact that we are digging a bigger hole if we cannot pass a healthcare reform with a public option.

    I’m sorry but if with 60 votes in Senate, majority in the House and the Presidency, Democrats cannot pass a healthcare reform with a “meaningful” public option (not a toothless one), then shame on Democrats, shame on us. Yes, we can surely blame Republicans for being nuisance and disruptive, but the real power to do something was given to the Democrats at the end of 2008. Inability to pass a meaningful healthcare reform with a public option would be a case of severe lack of leadership and initiative shown by the Democrats and their leaders.

     

  14. HappyinVT

    Funny Thing Is, What's Really "Duh" Is That They Misspelled 'Vicksburg'!

    I used to work for the Isle of Capri Casino in Vicksburg.  I no longer work for the company and they no longer own that casino.  I was looking for a picture and found this.  I sooo had to share.  I misspelled Vickburg (sic) once, too, on some table toppers but at least my mistake wasn’t on letters dozens of feet tall.  ðŸ™‚

  16. John Allen

    I’m not a big fan of her writing, but she had me laughing out loud with today’s column.

    Grassley and Mike Enzi of Wyoming, another Republican negotiator, have been busy upping the ante on what counts as truly bipartisan. The magic number for Enzi and Grassley now seems to be 80 votes in the Senate. This would mean getting at least half the Senate Republicans on board.

    Try to imagine what that would entail. The current Republican caucus contains exactly two members (Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine) who might be called moderate. After that you move into people like Grassley, who is part of the smallish Calm Conservative camp. Then you come to the larger Friendly Reactionaries contingent of which Enzi is a member and which has not indicated actual support for anything about health care reform except bipartisan negotiations. To get to 80 you would have to venture even further to the right, into the Clan of the Cave Bear.

  17. fogiv

    …comment #107 of this open thread to say that I had a great night drinking belgian beer, and picking git-tar on an friend’s porch.

    To end the night, I get to read thorugh these comments.  What a great blog this is!  Seriously, well done, one and all.

    P.S. I’m slightly drunk.  Night night Moose!

  18. GMFORD

    Max Baucus is working with some so-called moderate republicans, not to get them to vote for the healthcare reform bill when it finally gets to a vote but to keep them from voting for the fillibuster.

    Baucus and a few other Blue Dogs plus the Republican Senators aren’t really needed to pass the bill with a simple majority.  The theory is nobody remembers who votes for or against a fillibuster, only who votes for or against a particular bill.  So if we can get 60 votes for cloture then we only need 51 to pass it.

    Could that be what’s going on and why the President keeps praising Grassley and others who will never vote for the bill?

Comments are closed.