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Open Thread * The Rick Warren Bruohaha, Atheists Kicked Out of the Manger, and More Gov’t Waste

By SusanUnPC on December 20, 2008 at 7:30 AM in Current Affairs

Via Special Report‘s “Grapevine” segment:

Poor Athiests! They can’t get any respect! Not even the Humanists!

And how about that shoe-tossing Iraqi reporter? Besides getting his legal fees covered, he may also get himself a wife because he’s such a hero!

And the following segment on “Washington Waste” will BOGGLE your mind, I tell you!

HERE’s the video segment on “Washington Waste”:

  • beebop

    And they all got a raise yesterday. Funny how little press that got, right? The peasants might eventually say, enough is enough?

    I am investing my pennies in trumbell carts and guillotines.

    • Georgia

      I agree!!! this makes me very angry: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/with-economy-in-shambles-congress-gets-a-raise-2008-12-17.html

      Write your representatives and let them know how you feel!

    • Pennsylvania Red

      This BS about 0bama inviting Warren was not “courageous” as Warren stated, but a cold political ploy designed to lull the fundies into complacency just like a snake who hypnotizes its victim before it strikes.

      With Warren accepting the invitation I’m starting to feel like the extreme right and left are joining to royally bone the rest of us.

      Resist Now

      • NoBamaNoWay

        i think you may be on to something, PR; the aristocracy (left or right) care about one thing only: enriching themselves and keeping themselves in power at our expense.

  • http://www.patriotroom.com Bill Dupray
    • BernieO

      I liked that commenter who says union workers should have to work for pay equal to foreign workers’ only if management has to do the same.

  • Sassy

    Open thread musings:
    Merry Christmas to all! And thanks to those of different faiths who are patient with us this season.
    I made my yearly donation to the U.S. Postal Service…shipping is soon going to surpass the cost of the gifts!
    Our city Nativity Scene had a shepherd decapitated. These figures are larger than life, 50 years old, and irreplaceable.
    Our largest employer will be reducing payroll by one million next year, so our services which are funded by sales tax, will certainly deteriorate.
    For the next few days, I am going to remain hopeful, for reality will hit in the new year!

    • Pennsylvania Red

      Merry Christmas to you as well!

      Decapitated shepherd, what happened was St. Joe’s neck too difficult to cut?

    • oowawa

      Our city Nativity Scene had a shepherd decapitated.

      A few teenage boys in a car with a couple of six-packs run across an unguarded nativity scene late at night . . .

      At least I “hope” that is what happened. The other scenarios I can imagine are not so easy to understand.

    • JozefAL

      Sassy, consider this. If the Federal gov’t has its way and makes the Postal Service a completely PRIVATE organization, do you REALLY think shipping will be any cheaper?
      If so, you are incredibly and HOPELESSLY naive.
      As it now stands, the fact that the Postal Service has to PLEAD for rate increases should show you something. Yes, it’s true that prices of stamps have gone up the past few years but compare how rapidly GAS (and other energy) prices went up this past year ALL BECAUSE OF “COMPETITIVE PRACTICES”. Gas stations excused their raising their selling prices by “we had to pay more for our gas”. In turn, other places (mainly grocery stores) increased THEIR prices for things they had to have brought in. Well, gas prices are now down from earlier highs but grocery stores haven’t lowered the prices they charge. (Yes, there are other factors in play–AT TIMES. Produce is largely seasonal but that doesn’t explain why canned fruits and vegetables went up a nickel to a quarter per can and haven’t gone back down.)
      Yes, it IS possible that private companies will charge less for their services–but ONLY until they manage to run a competitor out of the running. (If you want to see how this has worked, just look at Wal-Mart. Cheaper prices than other similar stores and force your employees to be “better” and when you’ve manage to drive out competition, rates go up and service goes down and the customers are left whining that “things never used to be this bad here”.)
      UPS, which has a rate base set against the Postal Serice, COULD offer lower costs IF they really wanted to, but they don’t. Why? They know how much it costs to transport those packages. It costs so much for the fuel to operate their trucks (and planes). It costs so much for their employees–not just the drivers, but also the employees who work at the warehouse. It costs so much for the equipment (the pads and all the related computer hardware and software so that the customer can actually track where the package he’s ordered or sent is at pretty much any moment). And the same thing applies to ANY package delivery service (including the Postal Service).
      Also, you might consider what kind of company is going to be willing to take up a letter delivery service? One that will offer the same type of delivery service as the USPS for the same cost. (To say nothing of a variety of companies competing for the privilege of delivering your letter.) The Postal Service is the ONLY service that is willing to deliver EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR. You want to get a package delivered ON Christmas Day? UPS won’t do it at all; the Postal Service will to more than half of the country (it WILL cost more, of course, but guaranteed delivery on Christmas is part of Express Mail service–there are a few exceptions to this but mostly delivery to a residence is pretty absolute; as to location, your local post office, or the USPS website, can determine if Express delivery on Christmas Day is available–there are large chunks of the country where it isn’t practical, much less cost-effective). Considering how few restaurants, grocery stores and other “service” industries are open on Christmas Day, I don’t see many private letter delivery services operating that day and as for letters being delivered by other sources now, bear in mind that the USPS is very reliable in next-day and second-day delivery of first-class letters while handling millions of first-class letters every single day (UPS will only deliver letters if you’re willing to pay 30 times the cost of a first-class letter, but the only people generally willing to do this are those who need that letter to be in the recipient’s hands ASAP–then again, the Postal Service offers the same kind of service). And as to parcels, which is supposed to be UPS’s primary function? Well, their package rates AND restrictions aren’t all that different from the Postal Service’s (although, at present, I don’t believe that UPS will accept the shipping of live animals like chickens, crickets and bees, which the Postal Service does).
      Sorry if this sounds like an ad for the Post Office, but I happen to work for the Postal Service and I get really tired of people whining about how bad the Postal Service is when almost none of them deal with other shippers on a regular basis.

      • oowawa

        Yep JozefAL, I can understand you sticking up for USPS. I retired from the Postal Service after 25 years. They went to hell the day after I retired.

      • http://noquarter foxyladi14

        we love the post office..thank you for your input.
        merry christmas

      • Strawberrybitch

        Joze, what are you talking about? I love the USPS. It’s snowing like hell right now, has been for days. Schools shut down, roads closed…kids stuck inside, bouncing off the walls and skirting certain death by mere nanometers. UPS and DHL are supposed to be delivering our Christmas presents, not to mention live lobster dinner, but are way behind. This could get ugly come Christmas morning…but the post office was able to deliver a stack of bills today…you guys are great…wait.

      • TeakwoodKite

        I have always thought the Postal Service an honorable profession and one of the last vestiges of a functioning government.

        I mean, if they can’t deliver the mail there won’t be much else the Federal government will be able to do.

  • elliewyatt

    Daley, Rezko, Davis, Blago, Obama…. and now Carrion

    Evelyn Pringle WARNED of this in April:

    Barack Obama – Operation Board Games For Slumlords

    by Evelyn Pringle

    Barack Obama has a long history of working with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and governors of Illinois, including the current Governor Rod Blagojevich, in doling government funding for housing development in Chicago. His history is hardly a model of success, except for the hundred of millions in profits made by the chosen few slumlords.

    …….

    Obama now wants to bring this dog and pony show to Washington…

    ……..

    Its more than obvious that the political mafia of Illinois now has plans to install the new, “White House Office of Urban Policy,” as a means of getting richer by funneling tax dollars through poor people and retirees on a national level via Obama.

    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0804/S00064.htm

    And here it is, NOW:

    Has President-Elect Obama Lost His Mind?

    Change we can believe in?

    That’s a slogan pretty hard for those of us who live in – and love – The Bronx to accept.

    It now appears that President-elect Obama has tapped our clueless borough president, Adolfo Carrion, Jr. for a new position as the chief of a newly created “White House Office on Urban Policy.”

    If Adolfo does for the U.S.A. what he has done for The Bronx, then we are in for a very tough time. The Bronx is at the bottom by just about every indicator. It is the poorest of the 62 counties in a state, and one of the poorest counties in the nation. New Orleans did surpass us in the poverty sweepstakes, with a little help from a hurricane named Katrina. Our woes in The Bronx are entirely man-made.

    The crime rate is back on the upswing, and our schools are afflicted with stratospheric dropout rates and pathetic test scores. The gentrification that is remaking much of the city for the better has, thus far, passed us by.

    To be fair, Adolfo inherited much of this mess. It has been in the making for decades. But when running for election, he advertised himself as an urban planner and policy expert who could turn things around. Instead they have gotten worse under his watch.

    His efforts to fix the Bronx economy have been laughable. Golden opportunities are missed one after another. Some may laugh at Brooklyn’s Marty Markowitz as a buffoon, but few would assert that he is ineffective in what has become the default job of the borough presidents, the booster-in-chief of their borough’s business community.

    We should be doing better. The Bronx is blessed with a key location as the only one of the five boroughs on the U.S. mainland, which should work powerfully to our benefit. But Adolfo has failed time and time again to bring home the bacon for his beleaguered constituents. Evidence is that the borough’s residents are ready and eager to work. Whenever a new business opens, hundreds, even thousands of applicants, typically line up, hoping to be considered.

    A few years ago, a deal between the Swedish furniture retailer IKEA and the City of New Rochelle, just over the Bronx border in Westchester County, fell through. If you covet the New Rochelle location for its proximity to the rest of Westchester and nearby Connecticut, the Bronx seems, at least to me, the next best thing. In fact maybe even better, because of the easy access to Queens, Long Island and New Jersey we enjoy.

    But evidence is that the borough’s leadership failed to make that pitch. Where did the IKEA that Adolfo let slip by wind up? Why in Brooklyn, of course.

    When it was noticed that all of the other boroughs were actively campaigning for new film studios, one of the local Bronx papers asked Adolfo’s press office what the Bronx is doing to enter the fray. “Well, we sponsored a Puerto Rican film festival,” was the reply.

    In a community of a million and a half souls, there is no hotel that you or I would be comfortable having a friend or a relative come to stay in. This despite the presence of some important tourist attractions such as the Bronx Zoo, New York Botanical Gardens, and Yankee Stadium, as well as Fordham University, a major educational institution that draws students from all over the country.

    However, if you are looking for a place for a short stay, a very short stay, perhaps an hour or two, The Bronx welcomes you. This is one segment of the Bronx economy that has thrived, that of our “Hot Sheet Motels.” [Dozens of “hot sheet” motels make their home in The Bronx, and they are well-known havens for prostitution, drug sale and use, and other nefarious activities.]

    Adolfo has had a very special role in promoting this industry.

    As a member of the City Council before becoming Borough President, Adolfo voted against a rezoning plan put forward by Mayor Giuliani that would have banned the construction of more such motels in the Boston Road corridor of the northeast Bronx, an area particularly hard hit. Local civic groups requested the change, and the mayor sought to act in the public interest.

    Turns out that Adolfo’s wife, Linda Baldwin, a land-use attorney who was then part of the law firm of Bronx Democratic power broker Roberto Ramirez, was representing a jerry-rigged “merchants” group opposing the plan. The ersatz group was actually a front for the largest property owners, eager to preserve their ability to use their land as they wished, even for one of these hated hotels. She, with her husband’s help on the Council delegation, was able to thwart the Giuliani plan, and the northeast Bronx remains, to this day victimized by this toxic plague.

    Adolfo, by the way, received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from those same real estate interests who benefited from his and his wife’s betrayal of the community.

    So as Adolfo Carrion pack his bags for D.C., we can tell you that many of us in The Bronx will be glad to see him go. But as Americans we have a unique perspective that the change coming to the nation’s capital might not be the kind anyone should believe in.

    http://adolfocarrion.com/uaczar.html

    Carrion’s “qualifications” for the White House Office on Urban Policy? Collecting campaign contributions from whorehouse owners. Not much else.

    • oowawa

      If anybody believes that someone with a name like “Adolfo Carrion, Jr.” could ever be appointed to any high level position, then I’ve got a presidential candidate named “Barack Hussein Obama” I’d like to sell you.

      Somewhere
      Over the rainbow,
      Way up high . . .

      • elliewyatt

        Hahaha!!! Here’s another comment by a blogger about the appointment…

        How to explain then the staggeringly stupid and vomitous appointment of outgoing Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión to head something called the White House Office of Urban Policy? If anything should hit the Barack Obama cultists in the face like an icewater douche, this is it.

        http://www.whowalkinbrooklyn.com/?p=1041

  • workingclass artist

    http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTMxODc2NzY0OTNhODNhNmUwMjY5MzU2NzliMjA2NDY=&w=MQ==
    Best Rant I’ve read…chuckle…in a while…Good companion to this one…