Obama gave a GREAT speech today!!!

BP spreading it around....Joint liability seems to have more merit if its your --- in the wringer.

Maritza: Do you have a link to it?

please refer to the Wall St Journal by it's correct name to reflect it's ownership and editorial policy:
The Murdoch Street Journal.

Thank you for your time

"The Wall Street Journal would have you believe..."

Personally, I BOYCOTT the Wall Street Journal

It's dated, ugly, biased.

Mark Morford sniffs the crazy...

S.F. Chronicle: Burn a Bible, save a kitten

The GOP, on the other hand, sucks hard from the teat of ignorant extremism, splashes gleefully in the shallow mud puddles of Sarah Palin's battered grammar, draws much of its power from the worst the human spectacle has to offer. Simply put, the modern Republican Party would not exist without its army of high school dropouts drunk on Rush Limbaugh and sexual dread. It's not difficult to imagine "Burn a Quran Day" becoming a new Texas state holiday.

What to make of it? After all, the world has always been speckled with rabid clowns, an endless parade of spittle-flecked sociopaths that make us shudder and sigh, many with "Reverend" before their names or "Show" just after it. American culture is rife with worldviews so narrow and poorly educated, you can be quickly convinced we are but an inch from permanent insanity.

Or maybe not. I prefer to think of these fine denizens of dumb as the darker, skankier parts of our individual consciousness, the red flags of the soul. Should we not be grateful they exist? That they are here to remind us to be ever vigilant and wary? Hell yes we should.

After all, the Fred Phelps, the Glenn Becks, the Terry Jones of the world are but our basest natures made manifest, the bleakest, most paranoid, lazily ignorant parts of each and every one of us. Deny it at your peril. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, "the bitterest contradictions and the deadliest conflicts of the world are carried on in every individual breast capable of feeling and passion." He should know.

These wretched little demons, they are eternal. They have always been here. And they exist to deliver but one message: If you're not conscious, if you don't pay attention, if you don't fill your cup to brimming every single day with laughter and paradox, love and possibility, if you don't deeply appreciate the madhouse irony of this completely gorgeous, impossibly ruthless human experiment, well, they will but fester like a sore on your big toe, and you'll no longer be able to dance.

* Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) tends to have a way with words. Today he described the increasingly radicalized Republican Party as "nuts" and "flat-out crazy." He added, "We are going to turn the reins of the Congress over to these people who are more and more dominated by the whacko right?"

If only these people hated corruption and incompetence instead of other people, we'd have a much better country.

@John Henry: Excellent!

I may not agree with Rendell on everything, but I love what he said. We need to give today's GOP the gift of de-legitimization.

Couple of points:

1. Good speech by the Prez today...may he follow through with action that matches. I won't hold my breath at this point.

2. Agree, WSJ sucks as a source of objective or even reliable information. Be that as it may, I suppose it has to report market figures "accurately" even if the market is rigged in favor of the "haves"

3. getclue, I have no idea what's going on but either there's been a mistake or there's more to it. I've lurked here on and off for the last couple years and have generall enjoyed your comments, but admittedly, I haven't seen em all. I can't really see anything in the comment you were banned for so I'm guessing it's just an error and whoever is responsible has you confused with someone else.

Whoa, no sooner had I posted the above then I noticed getclue's post had been deleted. Not encouraging.

The WSJ is unreliable but the HR folks at 2 local school districts have been presented with proposals for 20%+ premium increases next year. It's an oligopoly, and all the members in the oligopoly know half the media will take premium increases as evidence of the ACA's failure, and all of them feel a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for their shareholders by baking in phony-baloney cost estimates as they negotiate. Don't be surprised if the health care industry doubles down. I think it will backfire, but US business interests still can't see past the next quarter or two much less give a darn about the welfare of their fellow Americans.

Gee and no one could have predicted that THAT would happen. Thanks dems for caving on the single payer plan before it even hit the pavement.

I agree it will backfire, but not in time to help millions avoid bankruptcy, homelessness, worsening illness and possibly, starvation in the streets of what formerly was our beautiful country.

Thereafter I was curtly informed that I was banned for "flinging poo"

I can't explain why this made me laugh so hard. But it did.

But a rational basis for banning me for my innocuous comment that the wealthy use media as a propaganda organ? Baffling!

Certainly is baffling if you insist that it was that comment that got you banned. The author of the poo-flinging remark indicated that it was some past offenses that earned you persona non grata status.

Have you seen this? They are already claiming the right to hike premiums again "because of" the AHCA!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/8/900094/-Insurers-blame-Affordable-Care-Act-for-premium-increases

Now, if democrats are TRULY interested in winning this November instead of getting trounced by a bunch of extremist nutjobs, THIS is the perfect time to revisit the single payer or public option. NOW. I can't speak for others, but it sure would motivate me to vote for Dems. Right now, I have no reason to do anything except sit home.

Well I notice they're banning anything getaclue posts, even his reasonable explanations for his ban. I must say, this makes me feel very uncomfortable about this website.

As I understand it, the guy was just banned today and given some B.S. reason for it, no one seems to be telling him what he did wrong. I feel that especially in this atmosphere, a civilized explanation is warranted and yeah, I have to agree crapping on the wealthy for their control of the media is hardly flinging dung or whatever. I hope Steve provides this guy at least with a credible explanation, otherwise, it seems to reflect poorly on WM. Just saying.

[It was a few weeks ago that we started deleting his/her posts and banning the various IPs he or she posted from, and it had to do with repetitive comments that could only be described as trolling from the left - iirc, it had something to do with denunciations of those who support the president as "mindless Obamabots."]

Uhm... gotta say if that's the reason getaclue got banned, I think it's pretty thin skinned. But I cant find anything on this forum that prohibits such comments-- maybe you should make your policy clear in advance. If we are really to give free speech its due, then perhaps comments like harmless namecalling need to be tolerated. "Obamabots" wow... if using that term can get you banned on a site like this, then I guess we all have to watch what we say.

Oh well, it's your website. Thanks for clearing that up, anyway.

The policy, as has been announced repeatedly, is "Don't piss off the moderators." That's it. Don't like it? Many haven't; it stands. Your option is to deal with it or leave.

"The policy, as has been announced repeatedly, is "Don't piss off the moderators."

Oh, OK... I'll try to read their minds in advance so I know exactly what might piss them off. TY for the response.

[We are actually pretty hard to piss off, but reading the same comment, or a variation thereof, twenty times in one hour on five different threads does the trick and earns a warning. No one gets banned on a whim.]

* An inkling of good news on the job front: "Job openings rose in July after two months of declines, a positive sign that companies could step up hiring in the coming months." The openings are at their highest levels since April.-

Great, so what's the unemployment rate again?

Cracked TeaPot Dumb Partiers.

This is what I'm going to call Republican Tea Partiers from now on, members of the cracked TeaPot Dumb Party, a TeaPot not filled with tea, but with NUTS, and a cracked TeaPot at that.

@Oracle. It ain't a Tea Pot; it's a Pee Potty. But "cracked" I'll give you :)

Isn't it interesting...

Isn't it interesting that when capitalism does one of its periodic nose dives people blame the federal government for the high unemployment rate?

This despite the fact that we are here at 10% employment because of capitalism's greed: The greed of house flippers and the greed of the Wall Street casino owners...

It's all part of the free pass that capitalism gets in our culture: Thou shalt say only good things about capitalism. Thou shalt find it only and always blameless. Meanwhile socialism is considered vile and non-Christian, a dirty word used to slur a enemy...

What a strange country...
What a strange people...
I feel honored to be a stranger to this strange land...

"[We are actually pretty hard to piss off, but reading the same comment, or a variation thereof, twenty times in one hour on five different threads does the trick and earns a warning. No one gets banned on a whim.]"

I'm not trying to piss anyone off here, (a) I have never repeatedly posted comments unless I inadvertently posted them in the wrong article (happens sometime). Today was a rare occurrence, when my comment was deleted, I reposted it a couple of times, mostly because I had no idea why it wasn't posted.. (b) I have never received ANY warning from any moderator on this site about ANY of my comments (c) despite your claim that I have been banned for some weeks now (news to me, I've been posting here almost daily with no worries) today is the first and only time I've ever been aware that I was "banned".

Frankly, its obvious to me you have confused me with someone else... maybe someone using my handle? I have been posting here without hassle for almost the entirety of the bush administration, and through today.

I think you have made an error and it's patently unfair to make me pay for it. Having said that I hope you reconsider.

Regarding the right wing nut in Florida who wants to burn korans, he really seems to have a sordid history in Germany, in fact he seems to have been thrown out of that country. And as for the problems the mainly right wing has with mosques, I wonder if they would have a problem if all the countries with different faiths started a campaign to close down all the christian churches in their countries and ship the American missionaries back to the states.Also, in the 1700's I think the founding fathers signed a statement of friendship with the moslems.They
declared the US -not a solely christian country.