Democracy Has Prevailed.

February 21, 2008

Darth Vader Turd Blossom Is Coming to Pitt!

Someone spotted an ad in the Pitt News and passed it along to me:

You can see the online edition here.
An Evening with Karl Rove

March 3
8:30 PM
Assembly Room (WPU)
Price: Free for Pitt Students


Karl Rove, the former Deputy Cheif of Staff and Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush will be on Pitt's Campus on Monday March 3rd at 8:30 pm in the WPU Assembly Room.

"No presidential appointee has ever had such a strong infludence on politics and policy, and none is likely to do so again anytime soon." - Michael Barone, US News & World Reports.

-Tickets are available in the Pitt Program Council Ticket Office WPU with avalid Pitt ID.

-Your ticket and valid Pitt Student ID guarantees admission until 8:15 p.m. Doors will open at 7:45 p.m. No reserving of seats is permitted.

-This event is for Pitt Students only.

Call 648-7900 with any questions. Or email ppc@pitt.edu

I would think that all of Pittsburgh would like to protest welcome Mr. Rove.







UPDATE: Yes, for some reason while I was informed that Rove would be coming to town and found a link to the Pitt event page for Rove coming to town, I still somehow had it in my head that it was Cheney who was coming to town. It must be all that dope that we libruls smoke.
.

24 comments:

Mr. 618 said...

Just out of curiosity, was chief spelled incorrectly in the original ad?

Anonymous said...

Funny, I don't remember this kind of outrage from the left when Mahmoud Ahmadinjad came to the US for a nice visit.

Anonymous said...

Funny, but only aharon sees any outrage.

(Actually, it's not funny the way Wingnuts, especially extreme Wingnuts, are so negative and angry all the time.)

Anonymous said...

"Impeach!" and calling the VP Darth Vader sounds like outrage to me.

Anonymous said...

"Impeach!" and calling the VP Darth Vader sounds like outrage to me.

That's not a bit surprising.

Anonymous said...

How did you switch from an evening with Karl Rove to protest/welcome and impeach Cheney? I think you run out of things to say, so you keep repeating the same liberal crap even if it has no context and makes no sense.

Anonymous said...

so you keep repeating the same...crap even if it has no context and makes no sense.

Funny, I don't remember this kind of outrage when no context and no sense comes from John K and C.H.

I do find it a bit sad that we get only right-wing trolls around here any more. I guess the Wingnuts who actually wanted to argue facts and ideas got embarrassed by constant defeat and went away. Now all we get is the shit throwers. Well, if that's the only weapon you have, I guess you use it.

Maria said...

Yes, for some reason while I was informed that Rove would be coming to town and found a link to the Pitt event page for Rove coming to town, I still somehow had it in my head that it was Cheney who was coming to town. It must be all that dope that we libruls smoke.

Also any typos in the announcement text are Pitt's. I just cut & pasted it.

Anonymous said...

John K. says: Roll out the red carpet. The guy that squashed liberals for 6 years on the federal level and 8 on the state level. Sent Ma Richards back to her nursing home in a drunken stupor. Rove is the man! You left wingers never did defeat him in the arena of ideas. An area where you cannot compete.

Anonymous said...

In the arena of ideas, nearly every thought of the Cheney-Rove-Bush administration has been discredited (consequent to their palpable failures in application).

They hurt their country. They crippled their party. Their reputations are in tatters.

That is why, when Barack Obama visits the Petersen Events Center, there won't be enough space for the people who want to visit that "arena of ideas," while the Pitt Program Council will have a hard time filling the Lawrence lecture hall (maybe 10 percent as many seats) for Rove.

The use of the "drunken" card by a Bush supporter, by the way, demonstrates a stunning lack of self-awareness. Perhaps, had voters devoted more attention to Bush's nearly lifelong failures as a human being, our country wouldn't be in its current ditch.

Anonymous said...

John K. says: Let's blame this on Rove. Not one black person voted for Obama in Harlem. They all voted for Sen. Clinton LOL LOL Its all his fault!

Anonymous said...

"I do find it a bit sad that we get only right-wing trolls around here any more. I guess the Wingnuts who actually wanted to argue facts and ideas got embarrassed by constant defeat and went away."

When something of interest comes up on the posting, I'll respond.

I figured even you guys would get tired of the Rove-Cheney-Bush diatribe.

It's been played. Move on now.

Anonymous said...

I figured even you guys would get tired of the Rove-Cheney-Bush diatribe.

We are waaaaaaaaaay tired of the Rove-Cheney-Bush debacle which has bankrupted our grandchildren as well as the moral and political fundamentals that America used to embody. We won't have the luxury of stopping our "diatribe" (that is, commenting on the mess that Bush leaves that we may never be able to clean up) during my lifetime.

But apparently you folks in the slim rightish minority can't bring yourselves to be interested in the Bush legacy, including

...trillions of dollars of debt that will trouble (at least) the economy for generations;

...a new interpretation of the Constitution that condones torturing innocent people, domestic spying, and the loss of the Great Writ of habeas corpus;

...an inexplicable attitude that America can lead the world in destruction of the planet.

None of this is worth your attention, X? It seems yours is the classic conservative attitude -- "Why should I care about my great grandkids? What did they ever do for me?"

Anonymous said...

My point is, what's done is done. Bush is a severe lame duck. Lambast him all you want. Hell, we even like to summon up the demon Slick Willy on occasion.

I would much rather discuss this absolutely fascinating prez primary race, and what that means to the future. That will affect the grandkids.

Anonymous said...

Bush is a severe lame duck.

If only.

Maybe you've heard of the little party that's still going on in Mesopotamia -- the one where we're spending 60% of all the money your grandson will ever earn? The one that Bush is still blackmailing the spineless Dems to finance?

Then there's the 400 prisoners still held at Guantanamo -- you know, The Worst Of The Worst, the ones who's crimes were so heinous that they can't even be tried? Do you suppose they're encouraged to know that they may actually get a fair hearing...in another year.

Shall I go on? "What's done" is NOT done. "What's done" continues to spread its poison throughout America and around the world. "What's done" needs to be addressed right now. The lies need to be countered right now. The abuses of power need to be pointed out right now.

If all Americans think like you and Bush slides on through, President Hillary just might decide that the Bush/Cheney/Rove paradigm worked pretty well and she should perpetuate -- and maybe expand -- on the power grab. And don't think she wouldn't.

CB Phillips said...

To xranger's point, based on what I've heard from McCain, for example, we can expect this for our future.

- Same old, same old in Iraq.
- Same old, same old here at home on the economy
- Same old, same old at home on health care
- Ditto on education, the environment, restoring the Constitution...

Inspirational, truly. And, the sad thing is, that he can only get the support of so-called conservatives like John K. if he uniformly supports the same Bush administration policies that have created these absolute foreign and domestic policy disasters. It's quite remarkable and completely unfathomable all at the same time.

Anonymous said...

OK:

Everyone knows that we will continue in the same vein in Iraq at least until Jan '09. I have said for a long time now that I favor that. Mainly, since the surge is working and grass-roots gains, along with last week's Iraqi Parliament passing more reforms, could indeed make it possible for the next prez to wind down the level of troops.

The debate over the economy should come out clearly during the national election next fall: tax and spend liberalism, and a probable return to Keynsian policy if the Dems win, versus a supply-sider if McCain wins. I side with supply side economics, so you're right, Fili, no change there.

Regarding Gitmo, I have no idea what to do with those people. If they can be tried and, if found guilty, locked up in SuperMax, fine. If innocent, put em on a boat to somewhere. If not, what the hell do we do with them?

Healthcare: Hillary will try to push 100% involvement, or she'll garnish your wages. Pretty harsh. Will it sell in Topeca? Obama wants to expand it, and have the hated rich pay for it.

Now, I'm all for universal healthcare - who isn't? The bugaboo is always: who will pay for it? The problem is that there aren't enough "rich" to pay for it. Also, I've never seen even ONE government program that is efficient; either in the way it is run or its cost. Government-run healthcare would be the ruination of us all.

Having said all of that, I would like to see the debate engaged.

Anonymous said...

You make some good points, X, and it's good to see that you didn't actually mean what you said about not being interested in the damage Bush is still doing.

However, you also spout a bunch of Conservative (note: capital C -- there's nothing conservative about spquandering trillions we don't have) and/or Neocon hooey.

In the first place, the so-called "surge" is a monumental failure. Mr. Bush's stated purpose for the troop escalation -- which is what it was, but Bush lacked the courage to call it that -- was to give the Iraqis a chance to get their government organized. They have not. Ergo, failure. QED

You could argue that the surge was a security success, but that would ignore the fact that its "success" just happened to coincide with al-Sadr's unilateral ceasefire. Until then, it caused the highest number of American casualties of the entire occupation.

As for "tax and spend liberalism," I realize that you guys prefer "borrow and spend profligately" Conservatism (there's that capital C again) because would rather have your progeny pay for your excesses. Welcome to the world, baby girl. Here's a bill for a gazillion dollars that you can pay over the next 70 years.

Gitmo: Fuck 'em, right? If they didn't want to live in a cage, they shouldn't have let their neighbors sell them to us for bounty. At the very least, let 'em rot in prison for another couple of years. We're not done torturing them yet. And of course, the longer we keep them there, the easier it will be to gather evidence for their trials, right?

Healthcare: Even the most market-oriented hyper-conservatives don't consider the current healthcare system efficient; while Medicare is arguably the most efficient medical program in the world. Government run healthcare doesn't seem to have ruined every single other industrialized country in the world, but our current system has ruined millions of families. So when you say "Who isn't for universal healthcare?" the answer is simply -- "you!"

Anonymous said...

Oh, man, that last one hurt.

I'm not saying Medicare is wrong - but the bill is coming due soon. It is escalating too fast for taxes to keep up. How to fix it? Who knows.

I am conservative, and proud of it. The current crop of so-called conservative dopes in Congress/White House have done nothing but spent like a sailor on Saturday night shore leave. Despicable.

True conservatives favor fiscal discipline - something we haven't seen for about 8 years or so.

Anonymous said...

What does a Ranger know about sailors on shore leave?

But seriously,

True conservatives favor fiscal discipline - something we haven't seen for about 8 years or so.

by these standards, I am a true conservative, and Slick Willie was even more so. But how can we continue to fund Iraq, virtually exempt the top 5 percent of our income earners from significant taxes, bail out the hedge funds and the banks and come anywhere near solvency? In fact, how can we even fund Iraq, which by itself doubles our already-huge deficit every year, and be fiscally responsible? This is not complex math.

Anonymous said...

OK, a soldier on Saturday night :}.

But, you're reading to many liberal tea leaves:

"According to the Office of Tax Analysis, the U.S. individual income tax is "highly progressive," with a small group of higher-income taxpayers paying most of the individual income taxes each year.

# In 2002 the latest year of available data, the top 5 percent of taxpayers paid more than one-half (53.8 percent) of all individual income taxes, but reported roughly one-third (30.6 percent) of income.

# The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 33.7 percent of all individual income taxes in 2002. This group of taxpayers has paid more than 30 percent of individual income taxes since 1995.'

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/incometaxandtheirs/a/whopaysmost.htm

Anonymous said...

Tea leaves are left over from tea. What's left over from right-wing Kool-Aid is bullshit.

A study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget office shows that the people who most benefited from the Bush tax cuts were the top one percent. I have trouble understanding how an intelligent person like you can fall for the arguments you repeat here. Sure, the top 1 percent pay a large share of "individual income taxes," but that's because much of their income is now not taxable as "individual income taxes." You and I pay taxes on what we earn or what we get interest on. But, for example, hedge fund managers -- you know, the ones that taxpayers will soon have to rescue from their bad investment decisions? -- make enormous amounts of money that are not taxed as individual income, but rather as capital gains at less than half the rate that mere mortals pay. There's an informative article about it here, if you're interested.

On top of that, of course, is the cap on FICA taxes, which means that someone who earns $20,000 a year actually pays a MUCH higher rate in total payroll taxes than a guy who makes $20 million.

You and I are getting screwed with our pants on, while the brokers, the CEOs, and Paris Hilton are anal virgins. OK, maybe not Paris.

By the way, notice that I have let you walk on most of the points I raised. That doesn't mean that I didn't notice. But it's an interesting change to deal with someone whose deepest, most sensible argument isn't "Rove is the man! LOL LOL."

Anonymous said...

The NY Times article you referenced, typically skewed to the left, also stated:

"The report shows that a comparatively small number of very wealthy households account for a very big share of total tax payments, and their share increased in the first four years after Mr. Bush’s tax cuts.

The top 1 percent of income earners paid about 36.7 percent of federal income taxes and 25.3 percent of all federal taxes in 2004. The top 20 percent of income earners paid 67.1 percent of all federal taxes, up from 66.1 percent in 2000, according to the budget office.

By contrast, families in the bottom 40 percent of income earners, those with incomes below $36,300, typically paid no federal income tax and received money back from the government. That so-called negative income tax stemmed mainly from the earned-income tax credit, a program that benefits low-income parents who are employed."

Only the Times could state that and still insist the "rich" are not paying up.

When you rail against hedge fund managers, and the lack of taxes they pay, exactly how many people are you talking about? A couple hundred? In a country of 300 million, I cannot lose sight of the bigger picture regarding tax fairness.

Regardless of the tax rates, the extreme wealthy will always be able to shield more of their money, legally, from the tax man.

Finally, an inconvenient truth is that, as tax rates go up, so do the loopholes. That's why you're seeing more tax inflows now than ever before.

Anonymous said...

When you rail against hedge fund managers, and the lack of taxes they pay, exactly how many people are you talking about? A couple hundred?

My point exactly.

The top 1 percent of income earners paid about 36.7 percent of federal income taxes and 25.3 percent of all federal taxes in 2004. The top 20 percent of income earners paid 67.1 percent of all federal taxes, up from 66.1 percent in 2000, according to the budget office.

On the nose again! The top 20% includes a large portion of the middle class. And again, you are talking about Federal income tax and ignoring the fact that the top 5% or so are making more and more income on untaxed or low-taxed income, while median wages fall (adjusted for inflation). Then the Feds reduce services, which amounts to a de facto tax increase for the folks who can least afford it. That probably includes you. I know it includes me.