Daily Archives: May 18, 2011

May 18, 2011 · 4:41 AM

THE SCHWARZENEGGERS IN HAPPIER DAYS

Photo Credit: Buzz Foto

Maria Schriver looks so vibrant and “healthy” back then.  After 25 years with Ahhhnold, she looks worn and dangerously thin.

Janet Charleton’s Hollywood

The announced separation of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver after 25 years of marriage came as a shock to everyone. They seemed like such an enduring couple. The fact that Maria left their home and moved into a hotel makes it apparent that SHE is the unhappy one desiring separation. Living with Arnold must be a challenge – he is supremely self-confident and can’t understand anyone else who isn’t. But he has plenty of good qualities – a sense of humor, business smarts, and he’s a happy immigrant who loves this country and credits it for his success. Arnold and Maria symbolized the possibility of two political opposites compromising. Yet, we sense the rupture had nothing to do with politics.

(Above, in this thirtysomething year old photo, Arnold appears to be turning on the charm for young Maria.)

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· 4:22 AM

Santorum: McCain Doesn’t Understand Interrogation

I was watching The Rachel Maddow Show and saw her segment on former GOP Senator Rick Santorum’s accusation against John McCain. 

It seems that Rick Santorum believes he knows more about enhanced interrogation than John McCain, a former captive of the North Vietnamese was in fact, subjected to enhanced interrogation.  (You gotta love the absolute ignorance and buffoonery of the current lineup of the current wannabe GOP presidential candidates!)

The fact is, Rick Santorum has always been one dumbass ex-Senator.

UPI.com

GOP U.S. presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said Tuesday John McCain, tortured as a prisoner of war, “doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works.”

During an interview on Hugh Hewitt’s talk show on the Salem Radio Network, Santorum, a former Republican U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, credited so-called enhanced interrogation methods with helping the United States track down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

When Hewitt pointed out that McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in 2008 and a U.S. senator from Arizona who spent years in a North Vietnamese prison camp during the Vietnam War, has said there is no such evidence, Santorum said everything he has read shows the trail to bin Laden began with “information from people who were subject to enhanced interrogation.”

“And so this idea that we didn’t ask that question while Khalid Sheik Mohammed was being waterboarded, he [McCain] doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works,” Santorum said. “I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative. And that’s when we got this information.

“Maybe McCain has better information than I do, but from what I’ve seen, it seems pretty clear that but for these cooperative witnesses who were cooperative as a result of enhanced interrogations, we would not have gotten bin Laden.”

Continue reading here…

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· 2:15 AM

The Newt Gingrich glitter video

The Maddow Blog

By way of Political Carnival, Sam Stein of the Huffington Post and TRMS producer Tina Cone, here’s what looks like video from the Minnesota family values event where a protester dumped glitter on Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. The video is posted on the YouTube account for “Robert Erikson” — likely really Nick Espinosa, who’s built something of a resume punking the right.

He writes:

At a book signing in Minneapolis, recently declared the hippest and gayest city in America, I greeted 2012 GOP presidential contender and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with a shower of rainbow glitter.

“Feel the Rainbow!” I shouted. Gingrich was conducting the book signing as part of The Minnesota Family Council & Institute Annual Dinner 2011 celebration. The MFC has been an instrumental mover of a marriage inequality amendment that would enshrine discrimination in Minnesota’s state constitution.

More about that Minnesota anti-gay amendment here. It’s worth watching this clip all the way through to the moment the elevator doors draw closed.

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· 12:24 AM

House Republicans Face Backlash At Home Over Medicare Vote

What planet are these  “Tea Baggers” from?

Huffington Post

House Republicans returning to their districts on Monday faced harsh criticism for voting to turn Medicare, the federal health care program for retirees, into a voucher system. GOP lawmakers faced this same constituent iremere weeks ago when they first voted to support House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget plan, which would lower tax rates for corporations and the wealthy while replacing Medicare with private-insurance subsidies for those under 55.

Speaking in his home state of Arizona Monday night, freshman Rep. Ben Quayle (R), son of former vice president Dan Quayle, took heat from constituents who demanded to know why he supported turning Medicare over to private insurers.

Quayle isn’t the only lawmaker who, after voting in favor of Ryan’s plan, faced anger at home this week. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) faced a similarly boisterous crowd at her first Vancouver town hall, while Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) weathered disapproving audiences in Worcester County.

A town hall meeting held by freshman Allen West (R-Fla.) on Monday night degenerated into a shouting match, with one person having to be removed from the meeting by police.

A recent speech by Ryan, meanwhile, was met with dozens of protesters marching outside a hotel in downtown Chicago and carrying signs that read: “Hands off my Medicare” and “Paul Ryan plan: Let them eat cat food.”

The most recent round of backlash comes just days after former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican presidential candidate, called the Republican plan to end Medicare too “radical” and “too big a jump” for Americans. He also referred to it as “right-wing social engineering.”

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