When the three CEOs of the Big Three automakers showed up on Capitol Hill this week looking for government handouts, ABC News noted:
All three CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler - exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM’s $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.
… Wagoner’s private jet trip to Washington cost his ailing company an estimated $20,000 roundtrip. In comparison, seats on Northwest Airlines flight 2364 from Detroit to Washington were going online for $288 coach and $837 first class.
Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, said what everybody was (or should have been) thinking:
There’s a delicious irony of seeing private luxury jets flying into DC, and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands, saying that they’re going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses. It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. Kind makes you a little bit suspicious as to whether or not…we’ve seen the future. There’s a message there. Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled to get here? It would have at least sent the message that you do get it.
Consensual adult sado-masochistic porn? So obscene you can put someone away for nearly four years. Actual sadism and actual torture? You get legal immunity if you do it at the behest of the president of the United States. *
Josh Marshall, who publishes the popular progressive blog Talking Points Memo, asks:
Do I just have issues, or does this ad (which Google is currently running on some of our pages) contain an element of cognitive dissonance?
I think it’s a fair question.
There’s certainly no preclusion from Christians being (very) attractive. Yet, based on biblical principles, is “sexyness” supposed to be the primary draw for a Christian looking for a companion, especially in light of the very public condemnations in recent years by Christian organizations and leaders about the moral decay of this country with all the sex in advertising, in television shows and in movies?
Given all the rhetoric of fear we’ve heard from the Hillary Clinton camp lately, including the now infamous “3 a.m.” campaign ad (see the second video below), it was interesting to hear Bill Clinton say these words…
Now, one of Clinton’s laws of politics is this. If one candidate is trying to scare you and the other one is try get you to think, if one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one is appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.
This flag-pin controversy manufactured by conservatives is absurd on its face and ridiculous in its mountain-making out of molehills. The “right-wing smear machine” has questioned Barack Obama’s patriotism and allegiance to this country because he doesn’t wear an American flag lapel pin.
Setting aside the outrageousness of the controversy itself, which I plan to write in greater length about in the next couple of days, one of the standard bearers leading the charge is the always entertaining (because of his buffoonery) Republican Congressman Jack Kingston. In another entertaining foot-in-mouth moment for the Georgia Republican, as he launched into his absurd attack on Obama’s “refusal” to wear an American flag on his lapel during an interview earlier this week with Dan Abrams on MSNBC, the congressman forgot one very important detail… Continued
There is a passage in the Gospel according to Matthew that is one of my favorite:
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)
Hillary Clinton would do well to take heed as she continues her angry and sarcastic rants of late. Continued
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