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JDDavis

JDDavis's Journal
JDDavis's Journal
December 31, 2014

Sarah Palin Named American Achiever of 2014 By Deranged Wingnut Website

You gotta love it when conservatives make such fools of themselves that it’s impossible to tell the difference between satire and reality. An epic and hilarious example of this is the article published by the ultra right-wing blog American Thinker (a name that must have been chosen for its irony).

Sarah Palin

The alleged “Thinkers” have chosen Sarah Palin as their recipient of the 2014 American Achiever honors. Now, you may be wondering what in hell Palin achieved to deserve that recognition. She hasn’t done a single thing since resigning after half a term as governor of Alaska other than her laughable reality programs and some embarrassing segments on Fox News. Well, the Thinkers spell out specifically what she managed to achieve:

“It would be the height of churlishness for even the most inveterate leftist to deny the import of someone who made Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” list, and then the Smithsonian Institution’s “100 Most Significant Americans Of All Time” list. Both affirmations were earned by former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.”

Forgive my churlishness, but this inveterate leftist has no problem denying Palin’s import. Particularly when the examples of her achievements in 2014 include making a Time magazine list that was published four years ago in 2010. Yep, that’s the listing to which the Thinkers linked. And the tribute in Time was written by that bastion of modern political relevance, Ted Nugent.


a little more here: http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=24161

No, it's not in The Onion.
December 28, 2014

Pope Francis offered "affection and prayers" to those affected by the Norman Atlantic ferry fire

Pope Francis offered "affection and prayers" to those affected by the Norman Atlantic ferry fire


1 dead as hundreds await rescue on burning ferry

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/28/world/europe/italy-greece-ferry-fire/


What else has he got?

What? This guy who rules over the minds and hearts of about a billion of the 7 billion people all over the world doesn't have a navy or more than one or two helicopters to help out?

What's he got? "affection and prayers"!

That will do it.

I wonder if this thread will be reported as "disrespectful" to those with "sincerely-held" religious affiliations or beliefs.

We shall see.

But really, what do these religious leaders have to offer humankind when they are literally burning to death on a sinking ferry? "affection and prayers"
December 28, 2014

Intervention: Congressman Alan Grayson and Osceola commissioner step in on gay marriage

UPDATE: THIS AFTERNOON, STATE ATTORNEY JEFF ASHTON RELEASED THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT:

"State Attorney Jeffrey L. Ashton informed the Clerks of Courts in Orange and Osceola counties today that his office will not prosecute them for issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples when the ban is lifted on January 6th."

VICTORY!!!!

Maybe it's the holiday crunch and the associated number of days people will be drinking outside of the office – or perhaps because it's a huge and necessary battle about why equality matters in this state and nationwide – but the developments in Florida's gay marriage conundrum are happening almost every hour on the hour. Yesterday, we reported that Miami-Dade Clerk of Courts Harvey Ruvin was seeking some clarity from the courts on whether he was actually going to be able to issue marriage licenses on Jan. 6, seeing as, well, the marriage ban is unconstitutional in every way possible, and the U.S. Supreme Court has denied U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi a stay on the issuance of licenses next month. Many of the state's 67 county clerks, though, fear legal retribution, thanks to a discredited report from advisers to the state clerks association.


more here:

http://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2014/12/23/intervention-congressman-alan-grayson-and-osceola-commissioner-step-in-on-gay-marriage
December 24, 2014

God's TOP 10 Biggest Screw-Ups

December 19, 2014

How A Commercial Airplane Is Made


Published on Dec 19, 2014
Behind-the-Scenes of an Airbus A350 being built!

Thanks to the folks at Airbus for bringing me to France, Germany, & the UK to visit their headquarters and facilities and see so much incredible engineering. As you can probably tell from this video, I was super excited to learn how airplanes are made and I hope you've enjoyed learning a little bit, too!




December 15, 2014

Senate Confirms Gun Control Advocate as Surgeon General

Source: National Journal

December 15, 2014

The Senate narrowly confirmed a new surgeon general whose nomination was delayed for months in a fight over his comments alleging that guns are public health issue. The confirmation represents a victory for gun control advocates, even as recent polling has shown Americans moving in the other direction toward gun-rights protections.

The Senate's 51-43 vote confirming Massachusetts Doctor Vivek Murthy as the next surgeon general marks the end of a protracted fight over gun control and Murthy's views on it. Murthy, who will be the first Indian-American Surgeon General to serve in the U.S., waited more than a year for Senate confirmation after the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups threatened to throw their resources against members supporting his nomination. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid determined earlier this year that he couldn't put his red-state members in that position before the 2014 midterm elections and shuffled Murthy to the back of the nominations pile.

Read more: http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/senate-confirms-gun-control-advocate-as-surgeon-general-20141215



It's a done deal, thanks to Ted Cruz for keeping the Senate in session over the weekend.
December 15, 2014

David Corn: "Cheney on Torture: Lying or Ignorant?"

This was a confusing, non-logical talking point that Cheney gripped tightly. Yet on the specific matter of waterboarding—which he defended—Cheney simply resorted to false statements. He insisted that waterboarding "was not torture." Todd asked him, "When you say waterboarding is not torture, then why did we prosecute Japanese soldiers in World War II for waterboarding?"

Cheney replied:

For a lot of stuff. Not for waterboarding. They did an awful lot of other stuff....To draw some kind of moral equivalent between waterboarding judged by our Justice Department not to be torture and what the Japanese did with the Bataan Death March and the slaughter of thousands of Americans, with the rape of Nanking and all of the other crimes they committed, that's an outrage. It's a really cheap shot, Chuck, to even try to draw a parallel between the Japanese who were prosecuted for war crimes after World War II and what we did with waterboarding three individuals—

See what he did there? He denied the basis of Todd's question and then tried to make it seem silly: You can't equate what our guys did to the worst mass war crimes of World War II!

But Cheney was wrong. In 1947, the United States did charge a Japanese interrogator named Yukio Asano with war crimes, including waterboarding. In fact, waterboarding was one of the key crimes of which he was accused. Here's a portion of the indictment:


http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/12/cheney-torture-report-lying

Edited because I misspelled David's last name, sorry David, now fixed.
December 12, 2014

WARNING: New Phishing scheme regarding Facebook

G-mail alerted me to this email sent to me, and categorized as SPAM, due to the past history of mass mailings to Gmail account addresses and because of nature of the message.


Hi,

Your Facebook password was been reset on Friday, December 12, 2014 at 02:39AM (UTC) due to suspicious activity of your account.

Operating system: Windows
Browser: Opera
IP address: 91.118.20.139
Estimated location: South Bend, IN, US

To restore the password complete this form, please, your request will be considered within 24 hours.

Thanks,
The Facebook Security Team


Notice that my name was NOT used in the greeting.
Notice that the time and place, (2:39 AM in South Bend, IN, a place I have never been)

If you get a message like this, asking you to reset your password, or give personal identifying information, DO NOT REPLY.

Instead, go to Facebook and see if you can log in, you probably can, your Facebook account was NOT accessed at all, you were just sent a Phishing scheme email in an attempt to gain access to your Facebook.

Any questions, please post here or send me a personal message if you wish.

December 11, 2014

This is NOT from The Onion; she actually said this:



To summarize Michele Bachmann's speech on the floor of the House: God gave Moses the Ten Commandments so America would be rich

In her farewell speech on the House floor, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said that the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is “under the authority” of the ancient biblical figure Moses.


... More word salad, anyone?

“Because you see, Mr. Speaker, Moses is given for the full honor of the greatest lawgiver in this chamber, because he was chosen by the God that we trust to be entrusted with the basis of all law. The ‘basis of all law’ as was written by Blackstone, the famous English jurist, was the Ten Commandments, that were given by none other than the God we trust on Mount Sinai,” the congresswoman said.

“We know those laws, those laws are the fundamental laws of mankind, and here in the United States, the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses is the very foundation of the law that has given happiness and the rise of the greatest prosperity that any nation has known before.”

“Mr. Speaker, it could be no coincidence that this nation, knowing and enjoying the heights of such great happiness and such great prosperity, that it could be built upon that foundation of the Ten Commandments and of the law given by the God in whom we trust.”


Watch full word salad video below:

or don't bother




Remember: religious people have very little real influence upon our wonderful democracy, so I have seen written many other times somewhere else on DU.
December 6, 2014

How would you make MSNBC a really powerful channel like Fox is?

I'm all about getting rid of the prison stuff, that's a given.

How about 30 minutes of the last five days of best interviews from Rachel, Chris Hayes, Lawrence, heck even interviews with the blond wife of some arrogant something or other?

Yes, get rid of Andrea, get rid of people that bow to Joe morning Joke.....get rid of morning joke.

Three hours in the morning, between 6 and 9 am, spend then reviewing all networks, how they covered the previous day.

In short, make MSNBC a news channel about how news is reported on all other channels...

Then let Rachel run the news focus for MSNBC, for the next 24 hours. Rachel should have the 6 to 9 am, Joe should be in prison, the rest will fall into line with those two things being a real time cable network.


Bottom line: get rid of Joe, put Joe in prison for what he has said on the air, and for his background and intern he killed, put Rachel in charge. recipe for success for years to come.

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Member since: Thu Sep 4, 2014, 12:45 PM
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