Friday open thread
I find I always have to write something on a steamed mirror.
What’s tempting you today?
March 1, 2013 - 6:12 AM
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March 1, 2013 - 6:12 AM
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Tuesday, June 18, 2013
THE ROANOKE TIMES
Small bit of news trivia I learned today.
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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/03/scooter-libbys-triumphant-return-to-politics.html
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Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in 2007 when he identified Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, had his two-and-a-half-year prison sentence commuted by George W. Bush. But he was still a felon and still unable to vote. That quietly changed last year, as Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell restored his voting rights as well. So now he can participate in politics just like the rest of us.
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What I don’t get is why does Libby, who released national secrets gets 2.5 years while Bradley Manning is still in prison. Is it because one is in the military and the other wasn’t or is it something else??
I agree with you, Scott. It is an injustice.
Those double-stuffed Oreos on the conference room table. Nom nom nom.
Here’s an item of interest that may be most interesting to Christina Nuckols because she contributed to a story about his some years ago.
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It seems NPR is going to do a follow up story on Starchild Abraham (“Wolf”) Cherrix next Friday on WVTF at 8:00am (?).
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If you’re unfamiliar with Wolf, when he was 16 yrs. old, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, a type of cancer that’s pretty curable, IF you do what the doctors say.
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Wolf didn’t like the treatments and that’s understandable. It can involve chemotherapy (a type of poison) and therapeutic amounts of radiation. Consequently, he refused treatments and was supported in this by his parents. His parent’s were convicted of child endangerment for not making him continue but this was overturned. This legal battle resulted in a new law that allows parents with mature children to refuse these types of treatments.
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Instead of conventional treatments, Wolf continued with unconventional “treatments”. Well, those “treatments” have failed and now he’s in Stage IV which is the worst and he’s living in lousy conditions, has no money, etc.
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One could argue the merits of this particular example of how to live or not live your life but I want to focus on the alternative “medicine” aspects of things.
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This poor boy is a shining example of the harm caused by irrational beliefs. He’s hoping to get treated with Heated Needle Therapy and Hemp Oil for example.
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To my mind, this proves a couple of things.
1) Sometimes the Nanny State really does know best.
2) Del. John Welch III, R-Virginia Beach, and Sen. Nick Rerras, R-Norfolk, who sponsored the legislation and Tim Kaine, D-Governor who signed the law are at least partly responsible for this boy’s circumstances.
3) A materialistic world view with an understanding of science and healthy skepticism about crazy claims (including religious claims) is the best way to improve the human conditions. You ignore these things at your peril.
4) People who align themselves with the anti-science crowd are dangerous and you can find them on the political right and political left.
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http://www.gofundme.com/1t5fdk?utm_campaign=Emails&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._Cherrix
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http://hamptonroads.com/node/240161
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http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?071+ful+CHAP0597
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The link to the story at NPR should appear here sometime next Friday.
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http://virginiapublicradio.org/
Libby did not release Plame’s ID. I believe that was Armitage who revealed what many people traveling in DC circles already knew, that Valarie was in the CIA.
Follow up to my #4 posting. I made a mistake in assuming the Heated Needle Therapy Wolf cites as an example of alternative “medicine”. It’s not. It’s a means of heating wires placed in a tumor through radio frequency waves.
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I mistakenly assumed it was something akin to Acupuncture with needles that have been sterilized in a “sacred” flame or something equally nonsensical.
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It should make at least one read happy to know I can admit I was wrong.
Interesting article over on CNN’s Money website today: “America has an engergy boom. Now what?”
It’s noteworthy in the article that by 2020, the United States is on track to surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil producer with production being up by some 33%.
I vaguely remember the “drill baby drill” crowd saying that getting all this domestic oil out of the ground would help drive energy prices down. The last time I filled up my car, a gallon of regular gas was $3.59/gal.
Wonder why the price at the pump isn’t reflected by the production the United States seems to be enjoying? (by the way, that’s a rhetorical question to the “drill baby drill” crowd)
#7 I don’t know much about this, but maybe Saudi Arabia is just running out? I don’t know why we shouldn’t use up all their oil before drilling out our own. Also sometimes these articles conflate oil and gas. Natural gas production is up considerably in the US because of fracking.
At midnight tonight the dreaded sequester kicks in!
I’ll wager the sun will rise tomorrow and the world as we know it will not end in spite of what Obama and his Cabinet officers have been warning for the past two weeks.
Traffic lights will continue to work, police will be on duty as usual, school will open Monday, airport passengers will come and go as usual, social security checks will go out on schedule, and Obama will go on TV again spouting the coming of doom and gloom.
Obama’s biggest fear is that the public may come to realize that the government can spend 2.3% less without catastrophe.
So even though Obama has the power to make reductions that do even less harm, he will not. He will use his power to maximize the damage to the public and blame the Republicans.
Obama’s solution is more taxes and hollow “cuts” that will occur years in the future. Obama has promised to veto any bill that cancels the sequester or lets him do less harm. He wants the public to suffer!
Obama is no leader!
You may continue to posit that “Obama is no leader!”, but the reality of the situation (not the one right wing media is discussing BTW) is that Obama is quite handily leading the GOTP to a “Waterloo” they did not see coming.
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Go Obama Go!
#7 Pretty easy Will…..it’s still in the ground & it’s not 2020.
By the way….there will be a lag time after that…..counting.
That is not a rhetorical answer.
#10 Rah…rah.
So you prefer the sequester to have the maximum impact as possible on the public?
Leadership would be a president coming forward with a proposal for a reduction in the budget that both sides could embrace. It would encompass tax reform, entitlements, and real spending cuts.
Obama wants tax increases and no spending cuts. True spending cuts would only impede his agenda to make Americans solely dependent on the government for their well being from cradle to grave.
Liberals believe deficit spending, borrowing from the Chicoms, and printing money doesn’t matter! To quote Obama “…we don’t have a spending problem…”.
The sequester will cause hardship, but most Americans wont care because they wont feel it right away. Virginia will be hard hit. We have a bigger percentage of our citizens working in the military, including civilians, than nearly every other state. Revenue will go down, and the state legislature will take it out on our schools. That is my prediction unless something big changes.
“Libby did not release Plame’s ID. I believe that was Armitage who revealed…”
Sure Armitage did it, because Libby gave him the info. Funny how you rightists tend to ignore that.
“…what many people traveling in DC circles already knew…”
Doesn’t matter what those “many people” knew. It was still illegal, so Libby broke the law, and your pal Dubya gave him a free pass on it.
Oops: My above post is a response to #6. Sorry about that.
John R, you have some gall asking me if I would “prefer the sequester to have the maximum impact as possible on the public”. I am not the blogger who said “the only way to force Obama to a reduction in the rate of growth of government is to let sequestration occur“.
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Unlike some people, I never wish harm or pain onto others in the boat with me. And I have enough sense to know our economy is too fragile for these cuts and these GOTP games to be beneficial in any way for any one.
“Liberals believe deficit spending, borrowing from the Chicoms, and printing money “
I thought liberals were tax and spend, you need to make up your mind. And Valerie Plame was outed by one Richard Bruce Cheney.
@11 Jim
The increase in production is NOW…not 2020.
Nice dodge, but you just got goober smacked.
The “drill baby drill” crowd never understood the fact that the oil produced on American soil would become a part of the global economy and therefore do NOTHING to bring down the price of gas at the pump for the average consumer.
Poor short short sighted folks.
In a $4 trillion annual budget with a $1 trillion annual deficit, do you really believe that $85 billion can’t be cut? That’s less than 3%! Even with the sequester, the government continues to grow. This is no “cut”, just a very slight reduction in growth, less than 2 cents out of every federal dollar. Give me a brake!
Steven K…wrong as usual. Special Prosecutor had every opportunity over a 2 year period to indict someone “outing “Plame. He couldn’t do that as someone would have had to have known that Plame was covert to have broken the law in the first place.
Dubya gave him a free pass..again not true. Bush only commuted Libby’s sentence which ticked off Cheney. Bush did not PARDON Libby which would have wiped his record clean. Libby is/was still a felon due to his obstruction and perjury in the Fitzgerald investigation.
#19 “It’s noteworthy in the article that by 2020, the United States is on track to surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil producer with production being up by some 33%.”
Your words (reference) Will….not mine.
Increase in supply does not affect price? Right, and the sun orbits the (flat) earth.
#21 No bud, YOU are “wrong as usual”. If Plame wasn’t covert, then why did Libby get convicted in the first place for revealing her name? Answer me that.
Steven K…no one was convicted for revealing Plame…
Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction charges.
Consider yourself answered.
Finally! “no one was convicted for revealing Plame” PRECISELY!! Like they got Capone on tax evasion… the whole story has never and doubtless will never be adjudicated, but we all know that it happened and it happened in retaliation for what the Bush Administration did not like being said. Oddly people who see Woodward was “threatened” last week, still cannot see that Plame was outed in absolute retaliation.
“In July 2003, Armitage told columnist Robert Novak that Ambassador Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, and Novak mentioned it in a column. It’s a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA officer.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-1981433.html
In the words of our former Sec of State “What does it matter now?”
However, Bengazhi does matter…people died…still no answers from the administration.