NewHampster's blog

CBS News

O'Donnell and her opponent Chris Coons were debating the teaching of creationism in schools when O'Donnell, who calls herself a strict constitutionalist, appeared unaware of one of the constitution's most basic tenets.

"You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the first amendment?" she asked.

"'Government shall make no establishment of religion,'" Coons quoted.

O'Donnell's reply: "That's in the first amendment?"

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i am beginning to realize that supporting candidates only because they are women, is not always a good idea.  Sometimes even the best intended people can be an embarrassment to themselves, their party and their sex.

I can support right wing women who have earned my respect, even if I 100% disagree with their beliefs..

Christine O'Donnell is truly an ignorant ass who should never be allowed to influence the course of our history.

http://www.politico.com/wuerker/archive/20101007-wheres-the-change.html

The bot is out of town so I'm going to "try" an upgrade and repairs to get this place working correctly again.

It will take me awhile to build the replacement then when it's time to move, this site will go into maintenance for a bit.  It will go in and out of maintenance more than once. Don't know exactly when all this will happen because it's also...

It's a good day to go hiking, rake leaves and pick apples.

Update: I'm going to hold off on the upgrade.  The new site is working but neither is showing avatars or uploaded images anymore, at least for me.  I want to solve that first.

 www.mediaite.com/online/krystal-ball-responds-to-photos-dont-let-them-shame-women-candidates/

"Krystal Ball, the 28-year-old Democratic candidate for Congress in the first district of Virginia, has recently been faced with a leak of several Facebook photos of her from a Christmas party six years ago. The photos have frequently been called racy and the credibility of her campaign has been questioned as a result."

Nisha Chittal really does tear this incident apart for what it is.  Plain old double standard sexism.  A friggin 22 yr. old woman having fun at a party is totally ridiculed by the right, the same ones who gave Scott Brown's 22 yr. old nude spread in Cosmo a pass.

From: USA Today

A Wired exclusive

Unbelievable if I didn't believe it.  The scum murderers and crooks are back in the big fed contract for guards in Iraq.

Never mind the dead civilians. Forget about the stolen guns. Get over the murder arrests, the fraud allegations, and the accusations of guards pumping themselves up with steroids and cocaine. Through a “joint venture,” the notorious private-security firm Blackwater has won a piece of a five-year State Department contract worth up to $10 billion, Danger Room has learned.

Apparently, there is no misdeed so big that it can keep guns-for-hire from working for the government. And this is despite a 2008 campaign pledge from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to ban the company from federal contracts.

Eight private security firms have won State’s giant Worldwide Protective Services contract, the big Foggy Bottom partnership to keep embassies and their inhabitants safe. Two of those firms are longtime State contract holders DynCorp and Triple Canopy. The others are newcomers to the big security contract: EOD Technology, SOC, Aegis Defense Services, Global Strategies Group, Torres International Services and International Development Solutions LLC.

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A 'Promise' spurred Susan G. Komen, breast cancer fight http://usat.me/40373660 I always wondered who she was.

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Once again the Grumpy Old Peckers(GOP) have taken out a contract on America. Contract to be paid for with more gross profits, yachts, island homes and private jets.

All we victims need do is put our hands over our eyes, plug our ears and forget all that history stuff. And oh yeah. Spread 'em folks because this remake of shaft will be painful.

We Americans really are dumb sometimes.

 That is official.  http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/20/news/economy/recession_over/index.htm

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Great Recession ended in June 2009, according to the body charged with dating when economic downturns begin and end. But the news comes amid rising fears of a double-dip recession.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, an independent group of economists, released a statement Monday saying economic data now clearly points to the economy turning higher last summer.

That makes the 18-month recession that started in December 2007 the longest and deepest downturn for the U.S. economy since the Great Depression.

And I agree with them.

Yes there are still millions unemployed and underemployed.  I believe that the current employment crisis is due more to a radical change in our economy than to the recession itself.  The long expected "Information Economy" has begun in earnest and the pain caused by the switch is what we are seeing.  Normally jobs lost in recession are recaptured a year and a quarter later.  This time, many of those jobs are gone forever.

This is not Bush's fault or Obama's fault.  This is bigger than either of them.

This site was started in support of a woman.  A woman fighting to convince America that work ethic, knowledge of issues and an open mind were all critically more important than oratory might. 

Well, we can't win them all but we will never give up the core belief of Partizane, that any woman, even a so-called whacko from Delaware, that any woman is more qualifed to debate and solve the issues facing this country than are the men playing little boy's games with our future.

I admit it.  I am 100% gender biased and devote my limited politcal time to the support of women candidates.  Some would say that is just as bad as supporting Obama because he is black.  I say it is just as bad as supporting Dems because they are blue and Repubs because they are red.  Ideology no longer really matters, does it?  All those Obama supporters thought they had a leftie but they got a DINO (Democrat in Name Only).

What does matter is to support those we trust to work towards the best solutions to the problems facing our great country.  For me, that trust falls to women.  I don't always understand the female psyche but I know that my Mother and my spousal bot get things done.  Getting things done is sorely lacking in DC.  Let's work to change that.

Registered "Undeclared" can vote in either primary. I asked for the pink ballot and told the nice woman this was a first. I voted for one Republican, Kelly Ayotte, and left the rest of my ballot blank.

Kelly will most likely lose after leading from the get go. She was a Palin choice and the party choice but the whackos are coming out strong for one the man. A perennial candidate who's answer to every question is "cut taxes". And he happens to be a well dressed man in a suit.

Fingers crossed for Ayotte because I will not vote for the other asshat in the general. I should have known that my support of Ayotte was a bad thing. I always choose wrong. Right but wrong. Updates as the night goes on.

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Kelly Ayotte is a sensible, middle of the road, hard working woman.  Therefore she really had no chance.  She was appointed by a GOP governor as the states first female Attorney General.  Our 3 term Democratic Governor, John Lynch, kept her on because she is damned good at what she does.  She's also honest and had to make some tough calls as AG.  Those calls are where she was attacked by the men with millions of their own.

The baseball season is winding down and it's time to once again listen to that great poem.  Obama at the bat.

On the eve of former president Bill Clinton’s 64th birthday, Bill and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton rocked-it-baby-all-night long under the tent at the annual “Summer” party hosted by Brooke and Dan Neidich at their estate in East Hampton’s private Georgica Association. The community was once the summer retreat of New England ministers, academics, and their families — and is still the last, best (albeit unaffordable) relic of the small township that once was East Hampton.

Before dancing with his wife, the former president, still as passionate about saving the world as a Yale undergrad, engaged in a spirited conversation about the need for focus on “micro-economics — not macro economics. Rahm is great on micro,” he said, referring to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, “But he’s tied up on politics.”

“Forgive me for saying so,” one styleite-ish party-goer interjected, “but in spite of your reputation, I notice there are more men waiting to talk to you than women.”

By Robert Kuttner over at Huffington Post

On Friday, the government moved to seize and temporarily shutter one of the truly heroic banking institutions of this dismal era for American finance -- ShoreBank of Chicago. More precisely, ShoreBank of Barack Obama's old neighborhood.

Over the years, since its founding in 1973, ShoreBank had enabled thousands of moderate income residents to become homeowners, and thousands of small businesses to get credit, without ever playing the subprime game or making a single predatory loan. It was a model bank that earned a modest profit by delivering on a social mission.

In the end, ShoreBank succumbed to the aftermath of a financial crisis made on Wall Street. Yet while the Treasury Department found hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue giant Wall Street institutions, it refused to come up with the $75 million for which ShoreBank qualified under the TARP program.

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I was thinking of my mother's 90th birthday today.  She was born the day after.  Two days before, she would not have had the vote.

The 19th Amendment

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

H/T to Sharon ABC News

Employers appear to be laying off workers again as the economic recovery weakens. The number of people applying for unemployment benefits reached the half-million mark last week for the first time since November.

It was the third straight week that first-time jobless claims rose. The upward trend suggests the private sector may report a net loss of jobs in August for the first time this year.

Initial claims rose by 12,000 last week to 500,000, the Labor Department said Thursday.  More..

I'm not sure at all.  I do know I can't log in most of the time and by the lack of activity I have to assume others are having the same issues.  One user also pointed out problems with the comment editor not showing a text area.

So, this all started with an upgrade I applied to Drupal which fixed a backend issue I was having.  So much for upgrades.

Time is short in the hampster cage, due to work and fun obligations, but I will try my dangdest to move the site backwards over the next few days.  If that doesn't work, I just may abandon Drupal and move back to Wordpress.

any Drupal experts out there?

In the meantime;  enjoy summer.

News Corp. gave $1 Million to the Republican Governor's Association.

From Politico

News Corp., which owns Fox News and the New York Post, gave $1 million to Haley Barbour's Republican Governors Association this year, according to the RGA's most recent filing.

The company's media outlets play politics more openly than most, but the huge contribution to a party committee is a new step toward an open identification between Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and the GOP. The company's highest-ranking Democratic executive, Peter Chernin, recently departed.

The $1 million contribution this June 24 was first reported by Bloomberg and appears on the RGA's July 15 filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

The group's other seven-figure donor is the libertarian billionaire David Koch.

UPDATE: News Corp. Spokesman Jack Horner emails, "News Corporation believes in the power of free markets, and the RGA’s pro-business agenda supports our priorities at this most critical time for our economy."

Tthe giant check to the RGA dwarfs low four-figure checks from Fox's PAC to Democrats including Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer.

From Huffington Post

One more glass ceiling appears to have been broken as Long becomes the first woman to lead one of our intelligence agencies.

"Letitia A. Long is being elevated Monday to director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in a ceremony at the agency's half-built, high-tech campus in Springfield, Va.

Women represent 38 percent of total intelligence work force, according to Wendy Morigi, spokeswoman for the Director of National Intelligence. In six most prominent agencies, 27 percent of senior intelligence positions are held by women."

More here From Huffington Post

Just the formality of the swearing in, but she is confirmed.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/08/05/kagan.supreme.court/index.html?hp...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-05/kagan-is-confirmed-by-senate-as...

I'd like to wish the happy couple a long and peaceful love affair.  A love affair that continues into their elder years.

May they experience the love my parents still feel to this day as they kiss goodnight, twice, every night of their lives.  93 and 90 they are yet their love is no less than at 20.

Good luck Chelsea and Marc.

I wonder if the family values of Bill and Hillary Clinton will give pause to the right, to FOX and others. Listening to our local FOX 25 this morning, a fill-in for the off the wall winger VB, surmised that this weekend we witnessed the successful outcome of a kid raised with true family values, rather than talk.

Think about it.

Shy Chelsea moves into the White House when she's 12. She lives through the glare of the cameras, the onslaught of the right wing witch hunt of her mother and the scandal of her dad's affair. Yet, she turns out to be a wonderful woman who marries the guy she met in high school.

So, the commentator on TV wanted to give Bill and Hillary props for their undeniable family values. In comparing Chelsea's parents and Bristol Palin's parents he said something to the effect, that the "party of family values" could learn something from these two who actually practice it.

Bill and Hillary Clinton raised their daughter to be a woman that girls of every party and every religion can admire and emulate.

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

This is first verse of the poem by Leo Marks read at the wedding of Chelsea Clinton, a Methodist, and Marc Mezvinsky as their new lives began with the blessing of clergy from both faiths.

A press release from the family, reported in the New York Times, says Rabbi James Ponet and the Rev. William Shillady co-officiated for the Jewish groom and Methodist bride.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/07/chelsea-rabbi-minister-marc-wedding-clinton/1