Maybe not by design, President Obama has at least one segment of the country thriving…

Fear of regulation drives gun, ammo shortage

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Concern that the Obama administration could impose a new ban on some semiautomatic weapons is driving worried gun owners to stockpile ammunition and cartridge reloading components at such a rate that manufacturers can’t meet demand.

Attorney General Eric Holder last month suggested that President Obama’s administration favors reinstituting a U.S. ban on the sale of assault weapons. President Bill Clinton first signed such a ban into law in 1994, generally blocking some military-style guns with magazines that hold many cartridges. President George W. Bush had allowed the ban to expire.

“We have heard from all across the country that there is a tremendous shortage of ammunition,” said Lawrence Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “We’ve heard this from the manufacturers, that their customers are calling them trying to get supplies for inventory, and that the manufacturers are going full-bore, pardon the pun.”

Admit it, you’ve found yourself at times wanting to do this too!

Man fires at McDonald’s window over breakfast menu

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Police said a customer fired one or two shots into a Salt Lake City McDonald’s after the driver of the car he was in was told the restaurant was not serving lunch yet. Police said the female driver of a white Dodge Intrepid pulled up to the drive-thru and ordered from the lunch menu early Sunday but was told only breakfast was available.

Police said two men then got out of the car and one pulled a sawed-off shotgun from the trunk, shooting into the drive-thru window once or twice, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Monday. No one was injured.

Peter Hoekstra is trying to pin the current economic mess on Democrats. The reality, and I’d like to think that Michigan residents know this too, is that voting in a republican is a promise of further economic blunder.

Hoekstra hopes that his democratic challenger runs on Gov. Granholm’s record. Problem is, Granholm isn’t at fault for Michigan’s economic woes. Our economic woes are country-wide, and are the product of eight-years-plus of republican ideology and control.

One thing is for certain, Mr. Hoekstra won’t be running on the Bush administration’s record. That’s something his challenger needs to drive home at every opportunity.

Hoekstra says he’s running for governor

(CNN) – Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra is launching a bid for governor, the Republican congressman announced Monday morning on a local radio show.

Hoekstra, 55, is seeking to succeed current Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat who is barred from running again because of term limits. [...]

“I hope that John Cherry and the Democrats run on Jennifer Granholm’s record,” Hoekstra said. “The slogan’s very simple on the other side: if nothing changes, nothing changes.”

Early polling shows Hoekstra towards the top of the Republican field. L. Brooks Patterson, a local county executive, is on top with 22 percent, and Hoekstra comes in second with 15 percent, according to a recent Inside Michigan Politics poll.

I’m probably jumping the gun here but does this sound eerily familiar? Surely President Obama isn’t planning on giving unions the old heave-ho, is he? After all, he has backpedaled on his election promise of repealing DADT.

Obama, bust unions? Nah, surely not! No hidden right-wing tendencies there. But if he starts lying through his teeth, toe-tapping in public bathrooms, wearing diapers during sex, saluting the Ten Commandments, losing billions of dollars in an illegal and unnecessary war he started for no damn good reason, and/or wiping his butt with the Constitution… then we’ll know for sure he’s become a full-fledged republican!

White House questions viability of GM, Chrysler

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is sending a blunt message to Detroit automakers: To survive – and win more government help – they must remake themselves top to bottom. Driving home the point, the White House ousted the General Motors chairman as it rejected GM and Chrysler’s restructuring plans.

Obama is set to elaborate on that message Monday when he announces what his White House told reporters over the weekend: Neither GM nor Chrysler submitted acceptable plans to receive additional federal bailout money.

GM chairman Rick Wagoner became the most conspicuous casualty of that decision, forced out Sunday as the White House indicated Detroit must make management and other changes if it hopes to survive – and that the Obama administration will have a hands-on role in those changes. [...]

Obama said the companies must do more to receive additional financial aid from the government.

The Alaskan blog Mudflats played an invaluable role during the presidential election, especially for non-Alaskans trying to get a better perspective on the state and its governor, Sarah Palin. Now, Alaska state representative Mike Doogan has revealed the identity of Mudflats blogger AKMuckraker out of what seems to be little more than a personal vendetta. You can read AKMuckraker’s account here.

Doogan is a democrat, and it’s particularly troubling that he seems to have done this because AKMuckraker criticized his dismissive, mass e-mail response to citizens expressing concerns. The outing reeks of an intimidation move, and it’s more disturbing given Doogan’s position and the apparent chain of events – citizens express concern, Doogan is rude to them, he is criticized for this, he is rude yet again, AKMuckraker criticizes him for this, Doogan becomes “rabid” about discovering who AKMuckraker is, e-mails her to tell her he knows her identity, and then puts this information in his e-mail newsletter.

I first read about this at Balloon Juice, and commentator Library Grape provided a helpful list of people to write besides Doogan – Alaska’s Minority Leader and Whip, and the four members of the Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics. That’s the main point of this post.
(more…)

Kelly Clarkson
“The Trouble With Love Is”

Catchy little tune from Jonathan Mann

Obama’s Nobel Headache

And homophobes everywhere heave a collective sigh of relief…

It’s a good thing that the gay community didn’t put voting on hold back last November!

Gates: No change soon on `don’t ask, don’t tell’

WASHINGTON (AP) — Don’t expect any change soon to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about gays in the military.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says both he and President Barack Obama have “a lot on our plates right now.” As Gates puts it, “let’s push that one down the road a little bit.”

The White House has said Obama has begun consulting with Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on how to lift the ban. Gates says that dialogue has not really progressed very far at this point in the administration.

Thierry Lang
“It Never Entered My Mind”

If you could harness the energy of all that stupidity, you could power a city the size of Boulder, CO for months on end!

“There ought to be limits to freedom.” -George Bush, 1999

The people most upset by the change in name of The Freedom Tower to One World Trade Center are the very same people who stood with Bush in his quest to shed this great country of many of it’s freedoms. Remember the Patriot Act? We can no longer assume privacy in our phone calls to friends or family. We can no longer assume we’re not secretly being watched. We can no longer assume air travel.

Was losing many of our freedoms worth the price? Bush-ites will point to the fact that we haven’t been hit with an act of terrorism since 9/11. But why is that? Have things changed that much at our airports, shipping ports or at our border crossings?

It just seems silly that so many will fight over a word in which it’s very definition eludes them.

Critics call WTC tower name change unpatriotic

NEW YORK (AP) — Even without the name, the symbolism of the Freedom Tower as an American response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks was hard to miss. [...]

The tower – still under construction with a projected completion date of 2013 – no longer has the same architect, design or footprint on the 16-acre site. And this week, the owners of ground zero publicly parted ways with the Freedom Tower name, saying it would be more practical to market the tallest building in New York as the former north tower’s name, One World Trade Center.

Critics called the name drop an unpatriotic shedding of symbolism by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Some newspaper editorials blasted the agency for years of missed deadlines and changing plans for the site.

Look how far we’ve dropped…

Court says US asked detainee to drop torture claim

LONDON — U.S. authorities asked a Guantanamo Bay detainee to drop allegations of torture and agree not to speak publicly about his ordeal in exchange for his freedom, according to British court documents.

A ruling by two British High Court judges, issued in October but released only on Monday, said the U.S. offered former detainee Binyam Mohamed a plea bargain last year – six years after he was first detained as an enemy combatant.

It was the first time details of the plea bargain offer were made public. The ruling said U.S. military prosecutors also asked that Mohamed plead guilty to two charges, accept a three-year sentence and agree to testify against other suspected terrorists.

Mohamed, an Ethiopian who moved to Britain as a teenager, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. He claims he was tortured both there and in Morocco, before he was transferred to Guantanamo in 2004.

He was freed in February after months of negotiation between the U.S. and Britain. All charges against him were dropped last year.

Mohamed refused to agree to any deal that prevented him from discussing his treatment, Lord Justice John Thomas and Mr. Justice David Lloyd Jones said in the ruling.

“He wanted it to be made clear to the world what had happened and how he has been treated by the United States government since April 2002,” Thomas said in the ruling.

Bitch, bitch, bitch…

The party of “fiscal responsibility” did so by giving the rich tax breaks while denying children health care. The party of “true American patriots” are pretty damned quick to shred the Constitution when it serves their needs. The party of “small government” presided over the largest increase in government in our history. The party of “high morals and ethics” had sex with other men in public bathrooms (when they weren’t wearing diapers and being spanked by hookers). The party of “Godly righteousness” starts wars that kill untold thousands of God’s children. The party of “pro life” are all for the death penalty, the bombing of abortion clinics, the dragging of uppity blacks along graveled roads and the beating of gay men to their deaths. The party of “no ideas” have nothing better to do than to finger-point and berate others. The party of “piss and moan” have no plans to counter those of President Obama other than to sit around and PISS AND MOAN!

GOP says Obama budget threatens future prosperity

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attacking President Barack Obama’s grand spending plans, a GOP lawmaker who almost joined the Democrat’s Cabinet said Saturday the U.S. must live within its means or risk its tradition of passing a more prosperous country from one generation to the next.

“We believe you create prosperity by having an affordable government that pursues its responsibilities without excessive costs, taxes or debt,” Sen. Judd Gregg said in the Republican radio and Internet address. [...]

“In the next five years, President Obama’s budget will double the national debt. In the next 10 years, it will triple the national debt,” said Gregg, R-N.H.

Note: The only prosperity these fuckers are referring to are their own. Not yours or mine… their own! A quick glimpse at their track record proves that they could care less for you and me.