Yes. Please respond to our complaints in the previous thread about you acting like the election is already over and potentially discouraging Coakley voters.

No exit polls indeed.

Don't know how accurate this prediction is, but www.intrade.com shows Brown winning. His "stock" went up 6.8 today to 83.9. It started the day a bit down, but picked up as the day went on, suggesting that based on the news flow of election turnout at various places, traders are betting that Brown will win this.

We'll find out in a few hours...

Ya know, anyone with half a brain realizes that any sentence that begins "Forty-eight years ago we could -" is simply not going to end well.

You know what else we could do forty-eight years ago, Billy-boy? GET A DECENT FUCKING JOB THAT LET YOU BUY A HOUSE, SEND YOUR KIDS TO COLLEGE, AND RETIRE!

I realize, of course, that O'Reilly misses Ahab way more than those jobs.

Ahab the Arab? What about Guitarzan? Why can't we make fun of white people separated from their parents and raised by animals in the jungle any more? Times have changed, I'm afraid.

Here's an interesting report for the "God machine" weekly post. Michigan weapons company Trijicon takes flak over soldiers' rifle scopes branded with Bible verses. Some troops have complained.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/01/19/2010-01-19_firm_takes_flak_for_rifle_scopes_with_bible_verse.html

Having lived in other countries for most of my life, I have been back in the USA now for 10 years. I have learned one thing - the corporations own this country, they own the government and destroy anyone who does not go along with their agenda which is to get as much profit out of the American people. I have also come to believe something I heard long ago and refused to believe - it is that the right wing stirs up it's followers to assassinate any progressives that stand in their way - such as the two Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Harvey Milk, John Lennon and many others. I am sad to say that there is nothing we can do, they have forced all of our jobs overseas, they will not come back. We seem to be doomed as a country.

"48 years ago in this country we could make fun of Arabs.... What has changed in America?"

You're now an old white man.

According to Talking Points Memo, reports are coming in from several areas in Massachusetts of people receiving ballots that had already been voted for Brown.

Election fraud, anyone?

And forty eight years ago, cops could beat the shit out of civil rights demonstrators, in broad daylight, on national television.

What's wrong with the country, indeed.

Let's not forget about Quinn the Eskimo. Inuits and Aleuts would certainly be offended by that song.

Or Snoopy and the Red Baron. I'm sure those of German ancestry love that one.

Or the flying purple people eater...btw, I was never sure if that was a people eater who was purple or a people eater who only ate purple people. The ETs must surely be offended.

Let's not even get into the parodies of songs like "Chipmunks Roasting On An Open Fire" or "Walking Around in Women's Underwear". The xtians would have a major cow.

Re: Change in uniforms

Good for Gates. I suppose the symbology was nice for a while, for the people of DC, but the rest of us in the country never saw it. So were neither reassured or unassured by them.

Personally, I think is something creepy about people who have to surround themselves with soldiers who dress like combat ready troops in a city unlikely to be attacked by enemy ground troops.

A Harvard Medical School study finds that 135000 Americans will die before the new health insurance kicks in - that was before today, wonder how long it will be and how many will die -Not that the new senator tea bag brown will care. I for one am sick and tired of the whole media , they have been saying Coakley lost for the past week, she may lose but by hearing them say it, it may well have stopped people from coming out to vote.

A crowd assembled, and cheered, "U.S.A., U.S.A."

That should help with international donations. I wonder how the Icelandic rescue team felt?

I blame Coakley for a lot of this but also her handlers (by god, did she even have any?) and then I blame Obama for doing a shitty job on several fronts and trying too hard to be a "Transformational Pres" -- whatever the heck that means...

AND--

There was NO good explanation or effort made as to how Health Care Reform was desperately needed..no key person..and INSTEAD--

Obama waivered from the get go with his wimpy stance and willingness to give up the very public option he campaigned and implied he was absolutely for...

Maybe this MA loss will be a good wake-up call to him once and for all..

Obama claims he's not trying to please everyone..but I'll bet you're bottom dollar that's all he's been attempting thus far.

I have learned one thing - the corporations own this country, they own the government and destroy anyone who does not go along with their agenda which is to get as much profit out of the American people.

This is true, but ironically, the more important point is that they have managed to make working people shareholders in these companies. Anyone with a pension plan or a self-directed retirement plan or something similar is a tiny shareholder and we are thus forced to root for corporations because their stock prices impact our portfolios. Each one of us is a tiny shareholder so we can never really have a say in what the corporation does, because it is the portfolio manager or the fund manager who gets to vote on our behalf and holds some influence on the corporation's actions.

I have been saying this before and will repeat: corporations have managed to convert workers into shareholders. Workers, without thinking about the big picture, demand profits. Compensation is one big part of corporate costs, so corporations relentlessly drive down wages to maintain and increase profits, so workers, at best, move their money from wages to portfolio. Changes to wages are usually immediate and sticky, but growth in portfolio is on paper and may or may not be cashed out by the worker.

Nice gig the wealthy people have in this country!

The guy on MSNBC's "The Ed Show"--Ed, I guess--was telling people in Boston to go vote tonight, cause it wasn't too late to save Coakley.

So what's the big deal about "Fox & Fiends" telling people to make calls. They all just want higher ratings and more money.

I wonder what contribution the health insurance companies are making to the Haiti relief effort. Isn't all this free healthcare a violation of their right to make a profit off the pain of others? Who is going to pay all the medical teams going in to Haiti? And, what about the Cuban medical personnel who were there way before the U.S.A.? Anybody hear Cuba, Cuba, Cuba!? I'm listening...

When regarding the freak-show that is Billo, it's useful to remember just who he's talking to. The archetypal Billo viewer is over 65, lives in South Orange County California, and truly believes that the entire country is going to hell because of all the brown people.

If you keep in mind just who Billo is talking to, he makes perfect sense, no matter how appalling he may be otherwise.

Someone mentioned Cuba over at smirkingchimp yesterday.

Please pass this reconstruction idea along:
Instead of moving and dumping all of the concrete ruble in Port O Prince harbor, use it to build terraces in place. Less moving, better end results. Workers wouldn't even need bulldozers or frontend loaders. Low tech jobs for people with picks, shovels, sledge hammers and wheelbarrows. Appropriate technology.

The marching morons in the new GOP don't even see the irony of being told "the people" are taking back "their country" in a populist revolt, yet their official agitprop organ reminds them that improving stock portfolios is their Party's essential task (in addition to neocon empire building and spreading fundamentalist Christianism.)

"U.S. troops landed on the lawn of Haiti's shattered presidential palace to the cheers of quake victims on Tuesday"

I just read an article in Raw Story about this very occurrence which stated that it wasn't cheers, but jeers, for occupying what the Haitians regard as one of their national symbols. And frankly, given that the place was pretty much destroyed and is nonfunctional, what are the marines doing there in the first place? Maybe it's better that they be there than shooting people who are trying to survive.

And given the manpower that the military has, why are they not more involved in doing what's needed like trying to move pieces of buildings off of people buried underneath? Why are they emphasizing shooting people?

Also, news reports seem to be fixated on looting. While invading someone's house fits that definition, going into a destroyed supermarket is morally the same thing as dumpster diving. Food, especially fresh and frozen food, will spoil if not eaten soon. And it is a lot more important that people have something to eat than a bin of beans can be dug out by the owner of the supermarket at some later date.

I remember after Katrina people were just horrified that survivors broke into stores and took food to eat. Then I read an article about a bunch of doctors at a hotel who set up a makeshift hospital using material and medicine they had "liberated" from local pharmacies, but no one called that "looting." I wonder why.

"Bill O'Reilly is genuinely disappointed about who [we?] can and cannot make fun of"

"Looting"

On the BBC World News broadcast, they referred to it as "self-provisioning."

Methinks we can still learn something from the Old Country...

Hey "Fox & Friends", nice market reaction to the Brown victory.