Pundit-of-the-Month (January) Contest

Name the next person sworn in as Senator from Illinois!Same rules as before!

Pundit-of-the-Month (December) Contest

Who will replace HRC as NY Senator?

One winner only: First one who names the winning candidate, wins the prize!
Addition (5-Dec-08):

That would be perfect!

Forecasting No. 44's Cabinet

Predict Members of the Cabinet nominated by the 44th President of the United States.

It's time for another pundit-of-the-month contest.

Here are the rules.

Change You Can Believe In

Applause

An award, Speedbumps.

Change We Must

When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
~~Jonathan Swift

Powell Endorses Obama

"I think he is a transformational figure coming into the world stage and for that reason I'll be voting for Barack Obama"

Who's Your Running Mate?

Click to enlarge!

News Flash!

Barrack Obama
Admits He’s Pals With
William Ayers,
Vows to Have Ex-Terrorist
Serve America by Bombing
Wall Street!

John McCain Brings Us Good News & Bad News

Pundit of the Month # 2

The Rules:

Nominate/predict/guesstimate up to 19 Members of POTUS #44's Cabinet. Just name the names. You do not have to identify which Department each will head. If your selections are nominated by POTUS #44 to fill some of the following positions, you will score the designated number of points. The Departments are listed in order of the number points to be awards:

5-State = Clinton
5-Defense = Gates
5-Attorney General = Holder
5-Treasury = Geithner
4-Director of National Security = Jones
4-President's Chief-of-Staff = Emanuel
3-Ambassador to the United Nations = Rice
3-Homeland Security = Napolitano
3-Environmental Protection Agency
3-Energy
2-Veterans Affairs
2-Labor
2-Interior
2-Commerce = Richardson
1-Transportation
1-Housing and Urban Development,
1-Health and Human Services = Daschle
1-Education
1-Agriculture

Therefore if you happen to name the all people selected for these 19 positions (in whatever combination) you would score 53 points.

Here are some additional technical rules:

1. This is open to all who have a registered blogging name. OpenID's are permitted; anonymous nominations are not.
2. Nominating ballots can be either public or secret: they can be publicly submitted in comments below, or secretly submitted to me by email. (The subject line should be Cabinet Nominations'.)
3. Nominating ballots can be amended, but they have to be re-submitted in full. The last one submitted will be your official entry.
4. In the event of a tie, the entry with the earlier date, wins.
   
5. The deadline will be midnight, November 5th, 2008.
6. Contest will be scored as soon as POTUS #44 has nominated someone to each of the 16 posts or 30 November, whichever comes first.
7. Winner's name will be posted on this blog in perpetuity for Forever Bragging Rights. His blog will also be linked. (Note: The first Blogger-of-the-Month is posted in the upper right-hand corner.)
8. Blog Administrator will be the final arbiter, judge, and appellate judge over this contest.

Return to Contest Page

What Obama Was Talking about Last Night

The End of Free-Market Fundamentalism

American News Project:

• But is it really?
• And where is American capitalism headed?

cui bono?

Want Some Bad News?

Dave Letterman, King-Maker

Letterman-McCain feud enters second hilarious day

Let's see how far Dave is willing to take this. Judging from his remarks last night, this could go on for a while. Letterman, last night:

Here's how it works. You don't come to see me? You don't come to see me? Well, we might not see you on Inauguration Day.

Allison Ford, New York Pop Culture Examiner

Suspend the Elections

Memo from McCain to Obama:

A McCain campaign spokesperson had the following statement on wanting to suspend the elections:

We are formally asking the Obama campaign if it is OK to get Bush to temporarily suspend the elections.

It will just be until John McCain is ready to start a running a real campaign.

Interpretation:

• At first we thought rigor mortis was setting in.
  
• His doe has been caught in the headlights from the recent economic news.
  
• Palin nearly shot him.
• Did we mention McCain was a POW?
• This is a time for Democrats and Republicans to come together and put the country first!
• What else?

Drinking Liberal in New Milford

No comment necessary

PLEASE. MAKE. HER. GO. AWAY...

Speaking in Tongues

Bipartisan Memo

Subject: Upcoming Election

There are fewer than two months until the election, an election that will decide the next President of the United States. The person elected will be the president of all Americans, not just the Democrats or the Republicans.

To show our solidarity as Americans, let's all get together and show our support for the candidate of our choice. It's time that we all came together, Democrats and Republicans alike.

If you plan to vote for Barack Obama, please drive with your headlights on during the day.

If you plan to vote for John McCain, please drive with your headlights off at night!!!!!!!

Even John McCain Can't Say What Sarah Palin Brings to the Table

In the area of national security:
In an interview done by a local reporter in Maine on free TV, John McCain couldn't even give one example of Sara Palin's experience on foreign affairs, and looks foolish as a result.

How does one qualify the unqualified?

Deja Vue-Bush III-All Over Again:

Direct from the New York Times:

It's Game Time, Obama!

It's time to get down, get dirty, and roll in the mud. Presidential politics is not bean bags, it's a blood sport. Any thing goes. It's not a question of the size of the bitch, but the size of the fight in the bitch. Who wants this more? Barack or the Babe? Get mean and nasty, Barack.

Just in case anyone doesn't get my point, I voted yes in this poll!

Flip... Flop... Lies... Greed...

McCain and Palin's Top 20
Lies, Myths and Flip-Flops

An on-target Alternet article so you have some talking points for the Rabid Right. For example:

Agents of change? Symbols of feminism? A roundup of these and other ridiculous tall tales coming from McCain's increasingly desperate campaign.

• According to a study cited by the Huffington Post, John McCain voted in keeping with the president's positions 100 percent of the time in 2008 and 95 percent in 2007.
  
• As Politico points out, Palin did put the Alaska-owned plane on eBay. But she failed to sell it. Instead, the state had to go through a private broker to unload the jet and ended up losing money in the transaction.
  
• In 1999, McCain made conservatives very unhappy by supporting a moratorium on offshore drilling... McCain can't afford to make conservatives unhappy anymore; his campaign now depends on the rapturous love of a conservative base that is still suspicious of him from when he used to take intelligent positions. So he switched his position on offshore drilling.

Can we afford to lose Biden as VP

According to Project Vote Smart... his record speaks for itself. Any comments from my bumpy colleagues?

Note: The VP debate will occur on 10/02/08. I wonder if our "October Surprise" will be McCon dumping Palin. One can hope.

With Apologies to South Park

Well, McCon's nominee's a bitch, she's a big nasty bitch,
she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world,
she's a stupid bitch if there ever was a bitch,
she's a bitch to all the boys and girls.

Monday she's a bitch, on Tuesday she's a bitch,
and Wednesday to Saturday she's a bitch,
then on Sunday just to be different she's a
super right-wing fundamentalist be-atch.

Have you ever seen that Palin bitch?
she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world,
she's a mean old bitch and she has stupid hair,
she's a bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch,

bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch cause-a
she's a stupid bitch,
Palin's a bitch and just a dirty bitch,
Palin is a stinky bitch-ah.

Putrid Palin

Oh Boy! Let's Invade Russia. She doesn't want a cold war, she wants to "bomb, bomb, bomb" the Russians.

Speedbumps Friends...

You've been tagged if Messenger agrees.

Predict The Next Addition to the Republican Presidential Ticket!

The Contest for Pundit of the Month is now open!

The Republican ticket is shaky - at both Presidential and Vice-Presidential ends - leaking at both orifices, you could say!


Pick the next change to this ticket and you win our Pundit-of-the-Month Award!

First come, first serve! One to a customer. Not twosies or threesies! As soon as you place your bet, no one else can take it from you, unless you change your bet of course.

Contest closes when I say it closes!

Oh - There's Something About Those Old-Time Republican "Family" Values

Not to mention that unique GOP sense of humor!

This was Chelsea Clinton in 1998:

This is what John McCain said about a teen-aged girl in 1998:

Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.

That was only ten years ago. When is this old man going to grow up?

McCain's Vice-Presidential Selection Was Predicted!

by our own GetaLife-ReadUrNews!

GAL-RUN selected Sarah Palin from Alaska and thus becomes the winner of Speed Bump's first Pundit-of-the-Month Award to be posted on our side bar until another is selected! Congratulations, Pundit-Extraordinaire!

Suggestions for the next Pundit contest will be welcome in comment section below:

It Woulda Coulda Shoulda Been

Clinton!

Best. Speech. Ever!

It's

Biden

On Biden's name, you can link to his voting record

Will the real terrorists stop?

Interior Ministry: US Airstrikes Kill 76 Afghan Civilians

Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry released a statement regarding the incident. In it they announced that 76 people, all civilians, had actually been killed in the strike. Among those killed were seven men, 19 women, and 50 children under the age of 15. The Independent quotes council member Saeed Sharif as saying the victims “were attending a holy Koran recitation” when the bombing began.

At what cost...?

IAVA's homepage casualty count

Listed by:

• Month
  
• Before April 30, 2003
  
• May 1st, 2003 and After
  
• By Type of Injury
  
• By State

From Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

In a departure from tradition, the Bush Administration has banned photographs of the flag-draped coffins of fallen troops returning from Iraq, citing concerns about the families' privacy. This controversial decision came under scrutiny when photos taken by a cargo worker in Kuwait were published in the Seattle Times.

You can see the photos at Honor the Fallen main page and the gallery.

A Hand to Iraq from Iran

BAQUBA, Aug 7 (IPS) The crisis over electricity failure grows as summer temperatures climb and a drought plagues Iraq. It is a crisis Iran is using to help Iraqis where the U.S. has failed.

But bad as it is, the situation has been improving over the past four months – with Iran's assistance. The Bush administration and western companies like Bechtel have failed to deliver on promises to improve infrastructure.

Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches

Uh...?

McCain forced to admit he was never tortured

Another Cost of Bush's Iraq War

I was thinking more along these lines...

...inspired by bff...

Joe Lieberman a Real Prick

The AP tells the truth - for once!

His top contenders are said to include Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Less traditional choices mentioned include former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, an abortion-rights supporter, and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential prick in 2000 who now is an independent.

Get to know a Sociopath!

Here

MSM Busted!

Stolen from Persistent Vegetative State!

What was your answer to that question, Condoleezza (expert in Russia)?

Rethuglican Stew! Guaranteed Emetic!

Weekend Homework Reading Assignment

Study up!

There'll be a quiz on Monday!

In the 21st Century, Nations Do Not Invade Other Nations and Commit Aggression

News for the Iraqis!

Alcohol?

How'd I git heer?

Russia's Putin vs. Georgia's Saakashvili

Which one's got the corner on political realism and responsible leadership?








I haven't figured it out yet, but I'm working on it.

I can dream, can't I?

Yes, I can! And I just have to share it!

But Messenger says I can't crosspost, so please follow
my link to Swiftspeech!

Dana Milbank Gets Purged!

Dana Milbank has been canned from Keith Olbermann's Kountdown program on MSNBC. Milbank's offense has to write that,

Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee.
..... Some say the supremely confident Obama -- nearly 100 days from the election ..... has become a president-in-waiting. But in truth, he doesn't need to wait: He has already amassed the trappings of the office, without those pesky decisions.

A mere suggestion that Obama's world victory tour is a little premature and possibly might feed into the Republican mantra that Barack might be a meglomaniac gets someone 86-ed from a liberal news program. No wonder Milbanks referred to Olbermann as a "whiner"! He obviously found Kountdown more confining than CNN!

Bimbo-Gate

Rating the World's Most Evil

You can find the instructions to this scientific survey on SwiftSpeech!

R.I.P. Bruce E. ! You, too, John McCain!

Remember the Anthrax attacks?

One month after 911, John McCain told David Letterman (18-October) that the Iraqis dunnit.

It went down like this:

LETTERMAN:

How are things going in Afghanistan now?

MCCAIN:

I think we’re doing fine …. I think we’ll do fine. The second phase — if I could just make one, very quickly — the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don’t have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.

LETTERMAN:

Oh, is that right?

MCCAIN:

If that should be the case, that’s when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.

But we know now that Bruce E. Ivins, a lead scientist in the investigation of the anthrax attacks, done the deed himself. Ivins, it turns out, was mad as a mad hatter.

But in Bush's government, that did not prevent him from winning an 'attaboy' reward for his 'research'..

Celluloid Memories of Eight Wonderful Years

Well, it could have been the best of times...

Kindred Spirits

From Obama '08

"There is Nothing Off the Table" (John McCain)

We don't have to do a thing.
McCain is doing everything for us!
He will flip-flop his party until there's no more breath left to sustain it.

Anti-Choice is Murder

I added a long post to Swiftspeech based on Bushit' recent rant to outlaw not only abortion, but contraceptives. (Strangely, he made no mention of vasectomies. Never was good at speaking in public.) I particularly resonate with Ayn Rand's quote. Bushit's policies are akin to putting reproductive rights for both men and women back 100 years.

What's next? Will women lose their hard-earned right to vote? I wish I were being facetious, but given the vicious conservativism that characterizes our current political, sociological, and diplomatic blunders, I find myself unsure.

I cannot project the degree of hatred required to make those women run around in crusades against abortion. Hatred is what they certainly project, not love for the embryos, which is a piece of nonsense no one could experience, but hatred, a virulent hatred for an unnamed object...Their hatred is directed against human beings as such, against the mind, against reason, against ambition, against success, against love, against any value that brings happiness to human life. In compliance with the dishonesty that dominates today's intellectual field, they call themselves 'pro-life.'

— Ayn Rand

Capitalists—Abortion Profile

The capitalist view encompasses positions with which I vehemently disagree, but also provide choice reading on point at this site that answers the: Question: What is the essential political issue concerning abortion?

Dated, but on point...

McDumb As Bush

Apt Truthiness...

From Bad President, the calendar...

God Wants Me To Be Vice President

Predict John McCain’s Veep Selection!

Test your claims to punditry. Predict who the McCainster is going to choose to possibly save his GOP bacon!

One prediction to a customer. Winner’s or winners’ name or names will be posted (Linked to your site!) in the right margin for one month.

{your name here}

Pundit of the Month

Contest runs until 31^st July or McCain’s announcement, which ever comes first! So don’t procrastinate!!

Prime candidates are listed below in 1^st comment, but there’s nothing to stop you from writing in a candidate.

Go for it! You have nothing to lose but your pundit rating!

McCain is not Bush III!

Bush was McCain I & II!

From The Economist of March 2002, the real truth is revealed:

Back then, the two men appeared to have nothing in common... in 2000 ... the biggest differences between Bush and McCain were in foreign policy. The Arizona senator campaigned for a policy of “rogue-state rollback”— by which he meant preventing disruptive small-country dictators getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction, if necessary by arming the local opposition. Mr McCain was the only candidate on either side to promote this theme, and hardly anyone took him seriously. Mr Bush, in contrast, talked about managing great-power relationships and repairing the damage done to America's ties with China, Russia and Europe after, as he saw it, eight years of Clintonian inconsistency. Mr McCain spoke stirringly or scarily, according to how you see these things, about “national greatness”. Mr Bush called soothingly for greater humility in projecting American power abroad...

Yet, if you look at the ideas that currently animate Mr Bush's presidency, they are about as McCainiac as you can get without having spent five years as a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war... In his state-of-the-union speech in January, Mr Bush... delivered his famous warning on the “axis of evil”, rhetorically reformulating Mr McCain's “rogue-state rollback”.

Suddenly, “national greatness conservatism”—Mr McCain's amour fou—has become the passion of the White House too ..... Despite his [2000] defeat, he laid much of the groundwork for Mr Bush's post-September presidency ..... This transformation contains an irony and a question. The irony is that, because the president dominates his party in a way the maverick Mr McCain could never have done, Mr Bush has proved a better spokesman for McCainiac ideas than Mr McCain could ever have been...

Drown in Hell: Bush Rescinds Father's Offshore Oil Ban

President Bush yesterday lifted a presidential ban on offshore oil drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf that was implemented by his father, escalating a confrontation with Democrats in Congress over how to cope with soaring gas prices.
...
Business groups widely hailed Bush for lifting the presidential ban and pointed to estimates by federal geologists that there may be as much as 17.8 billion barrels of oil in areas currently off limits. But some oil companies have conceded that limits on skilled manpower and drilling equipment would make it difficult to increase offshore drilling in the near future. Oil company executives have said they would most likely focus on the eastern Gulf of Mexico if the moratorium is lifted.

The move by Bush addresses an issue already being disputed in the presidential campaign. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive GOP nominee, has endorsed opening more of the Outer Continental Shelf for exploration. The expected Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), opposes lifting the moratorium.

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said yesterday that Bush's proposal "would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years."

But McCain argued, "If we can show that we have significant oil reserves off our coasts, that will clearly affect the futures market and affect the price of oil."

The presidential ban has been in effect since June 1990, when President George H.W. Bush issued a directive to the Interior Department limiting offshore drilling to areas off the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and limited parts of Alaska. In 1998, President Clinton extended the order through 2012.

Bush says offshore drilling could yield up to 18 billion barrels of oil over time, although it would take years for production to start. Bush also says offshore drilling would take pressure off prices over time. In addition, the president has proposed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, lifting restrictions on oil shale leasing in the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and easing the regulatory process to expand oil refining capacity.

Senator Boxer retorts: "Today, President Bush is giving another gift to the oil companies that will do not one thing to lower gas prices for the American people. This proposal is something you'd expect from an oil company CEO, not the President of the United States."

---

Pappa Bush needs to take that wayward son over his knee and slap some sense into him, if that's at all possible. This blundering idiot won't even listen to his father who, by the way, insisted that General Schwarzkopf not invade Bagdahd. I consider this a disgrace on par with invading Iraq. He is committing environmental genocide and doesn't know or care. What kind of America is this when Bush, Sr. is starting to look "not so bad" by comparison to his mentally challenged offspring?

While We Surge in Iraq, Afghanistan Is Going down the Toilet

A Massive Prison Escape in Kandahar for Taliban Fighters

1,000 fugitives, including around 400 Taliban militants, were freed from captivity. In the Taliban's most sophisticated operation yet, two months in the planning rockets, truck bombs and suicide bombs were used in a 30 minute battle. in the same 24-hour period, four US soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in western Afghanistan.

"Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country"

I stole this post from my co-blogger Wednesday, and here we are fighting the same fight from the 1950s. Face it, folks, when it comes to women's rights, we live in a regressive society.

Just in case McCain doesn't pan out...

"The Bush administration is developing a regulation that would define abortion as "any of the various procedures -- including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action -- that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation," the New York Times reports. The draft proposal leaked to the Times also would require all recipients of aid from HHS to certify they will not refuse to hire health care workers who object to abortion and certain types of birth control.

According to the Times, to receive funding under any program administered by HHS, researchers, clinics, medical schools and hospitals would have to sign "written certifications" that they will not discriminate against people who object to abortion or certain contraception..."

[Continues]

Yes, and then there's that pesky Equal Rights Amendment...

Bush's Missile Shield Is Not Needed in Europe

Iran this week test-fired missiles which it said were capable of reaching Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East. Washington says the shield in Europe is needed to defend against any missile attacks from countries such as Iran.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sees it differently:

The tests in Iran have only confirmed that Iran at the moment has rockets with a range of up to 2,000 km (1,243 miles). That confirms what we have said before ... That is that the current idea of deploying a U.S. ... missile shield in Europe, with its parameters, is not needed to monitor and react to these particular rockets with this range ... We continue to be convinced of the invented nature of discussions about the Iranian rocket threat as a motive for the deployment of the missile shield in Europe ... Overall we are in favour of any problems which are linked to Iran being resolved through negotiations, political and diplomatic methods, by bringing Iran into a mutually respectful and concrete dialogue ... Not through threats that are voiced periodically .....

World leadership has devolved from Washington.

What's the Plan?

T. Bone Pickens says:

The Swiftspeech Award

This bumbling bloganthology, whose name capriciously changes, has received some highfalutin award from Swiftspeech. The award is called the Arte de Pico. It looks silly to me. In itself, it matters nothing. I have never heard of it. What carries weight, which will weigh a ton, is that Swiftspeech has even acknowledged The Message.

Swiftspeech is on the other side of the spectrum: creatively, artistically, aggressively, courageously, pounding out the gawdless liberal truth on multiple fronts each day. To truly merit this prestigious Swiftspeech Award in the future should truly challenge all of our collective talents and energies. I proudly accept the Arte de Swiftspeech award on behalf of my fellow mediocre bloggers on staff.

Stella, from Swiftspeech, is welcome to a page on this site (not that she needs it!) anytime she emails me. I cannot find her email or I would send her a Blogger Invitation today.

Independance Day Greetings From....

Baghdad!
Large crowds of Shiites on Today denounced the security pact Baghdad is negotiating with Washington for a long-term US military presence in violence-wracked Iraq.

In Baghdad's Sadr City, the bastion of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Shiite men, women and children shouted anti-American slogans as they demonstrated against the security deal after the weekly Friday prayers.

Protests against the security agreement reverberated across all Shiite regions of Iraq. In the central town of Kufa, protesters chanted anti-US and anti-Israel slogans. Devotees shouted,

No to America! No to Israel! We reject signing the agreement with the occupation.

Bush Had to Invade Iraq...

Richard Engels, My Five Years in Iraq