Tucker Bounds: When Sarah shares the wealth, it's unique, not socialism

(Think Progress)
Today, MSNBC’s David Schuster asked McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds whether Palin’s “share the wealth” plan had socialist undertones. Bounds denied the allegation, claiming Alaska’s sharing of natural resources is “unique” and not at all socialist:

BOUNDS: No, in Alaska its a unique state because all the residents there have a unique share of the natural resources, that the oil companies come in and use, so therefore they share the revenues of the resources. … Its absurd to equate sharing the oil resources that all of these Alaskans have an ownership stake in, and trying to negotiate a deal with the oil companies that use those resources that —


Unique douchebaggery

Gouging? I know nothing about gouging.

Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, reported income Thursday that shattered its own record for the biggest profit from operations by a U.S. corporation, earning $14.83 billion in the third quarter.
(CNBC)

Really? Almost FIFTEEN BILLION in 3 months.

$6.9 million a MINUTE. $116,000 a SECOND.

That's PROFIT. PROFIT!

Phinally

Click for 1280 x 800

Hubristic pride tied to insecurity

A whole LOT of people should attempt to digest this. The problem being that those to whom it would apply just wouldn't understand it in the first place.

Read the whole article at MSNBC
The results showed that groups in which individuals boasted and gloated — a sign of hubristic pride — tended to have low social status or they were vulnerable to threats from other groups. So the worse the person felt about their group's status as well as how badly they thought the public viewed the group, the more likely that member would experience that empty, boastful pride.

In contrast, those groups that expressed pride by humbly focusing on members' efforts and hard work tended to have high social standing in both the public and personal eyes.

Hubristic pride can rear its ugly head in both small groups like sports teams and larger groups like citizens of a country.

"A lot of this has real-world implications," Tracy told LiveScience. "There are some kinds of collective pride where people get really angry and hostile and feel like 'it's not just that my group is great but my group is better.'"

She added, "You can think of it as the distinction between nationalism and patriotism, with nationalism being the sense of it's not just that I love my country, it's that my country is best."

When group members show signs of hubristic pride, such as making grandiose statements about their country, that could be a sign of underlying insecurity, the researchers said.

Tim McGraw spreads his dad's ashes on World Series mound

Tug McGraw is back with the Phils.

In a ceremony before Game 3, Tim McGraw, son of famed Phillies closer Tug McGraw, who closed out Game 6 of the Phillies lone World Series in win 1980, reached into his pocket and dropped some of his dad's ashes on the mound.

It's a Field of Dreams moment for the singer, who recorded his hit "Live Like You Were Dying" about his dad's fight with brain cancer.

Tug died of of the disease in 2004, but his slogan "Ya Gotta Believe!" has been a rallying cry for Phillies fans for almost 30 years.

And I know one little kid who loved the man.

Oh no..... Scranton on TV again.

John Oliver from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was in Scranton for a Palin rally.

Here we go....

Being a tough journalist doesn't mean being an asshole

Playing on the same level as "the boys" is sometimes difficult for female journalists. I get it. The appearance of gravitas (not the gravitas itself) comes harder for female journalists.

But being a tough journalist doesn't mean being an asshole. There's a line there and it's not small and it's not hard to miss, as Fox's Megyn Kelly shows.

Obama's camp has been pushing back against Fox News and rightly so. No one can say that MSNBC's evening line-up isn't liberal. But the accusation can't be made that they're ginning up the news. Fox took a line about "spreading the wealth" - which describes a tax cut for 95% of America - and turned it into a Marxist-Leninist manifesto designed to scare "Joe the Plumber" and "Mary the Fat, Dumb Housewife".

Obama spokesman Bill Burton went on Fox to defend a statement he put out calling the questions over Obama's "socialist tendencies" a fake news item pushed by Fox. And what he got was a face full of fired-up asshole.

Biden tells 5th grader what VP actually does; 5th grader turns out to be most probing reporter on campaign

(HuffPost)
When Joe Biden campaigned in Palm Beach County, Florida in September he was interviewed by one Damon Weaver, a remarkably poised and charming 5th grader. Weaver's news segment on Biden's visit is highly entertaining and worth checking out, And make sure to watch to the end, when Weaver pronounces Biden his "homeboy."

The coming Republican Civil War

Sunday Telegraph
(former Bush speechwriter David) Frum argues that just as America is changing, so the Republican Party must adapt its economic message and find more to say about healthcare and the environment if it is to survive.

He said: "I don't know that there's a lot of realism in the Republican Party. We have an economic message that is largely irrelevant to most people.

"Cutting personal tax rates is not the answer to everything. The Bush years were largely prosperous but while national income was up the numbers for most individuals were not. Republicans find that a hard fact to process."

Other Republicans have jumped ship completely. Ken Adelman, a Pentagon adviser on the Iraq war, Matthew Dowd, who was Mr Bush's chief re-election strategist, and Scott McClellan, Mr Bush's former press secretary, have all endorsed Mr Obama.

But the real bile has been saved for those conservatives who have balked at the selection of Sarah Palin.

In addition to Mr Frum, who thinks her not ready to be president, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's greatest speechwriter and a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, condemned Mr McCain's running mate as a "symptom and expression of a new vulgarisation of American politics." Conservative columnist David Brooks called her a "fatal cancer to the Republican Party".

The backlash that ensued last week revealed the fault lines of the coming civil war.

Rush Limbaugh, the doyen of right wing talk radio hosts, denounced Noonan, Brooks and Frum. Neconservative writer Charles Krauthammer condemned "the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama", while fellow columnist Tony Blankley said that instead of collaborating in heralding Mr Obama's arrival they should be fighting "in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country".

During the primaries the Democratic Party was bitterly divided between Barack Obama's "latte liberals" and Hillary Clinton's heartland supporters, but now the same cultural division threatens to tear the Republican Party apart.

Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin's critics as "cocktail party conservatives" who "give aid and comfort to the enemy".

He told The Sunday Telegraph: "There's going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?"

Read the whole Sunday Telegraph article

More here at Newsweek

I wish I thought of this....

Caribou Barbie