Heather:

... When you've finally got Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd throwing you under the bus, you've got problems with ever being taken seriously as a future presidential candidate ...

To Gord's post earlier.

Paris in a blizzard.

Yeah, I know ...

EssEffChron

Mother Nature's wrath has forced the U.S. House to scrap its work week.

And the next one:

With Congress on a previously scheduled break next week for the Presidents' Day holiday, lawmakers won't be back in Washington until Feb. 22.

Note to Barry: Can you say 'recess appointments'?

This one's for you, Fixer.

HuffPo

In a move that will further irritate his Democratic critics, Sen. Ben Nelson (D(INO- G)-Neb.) announced on Monday evening that he would not just oppose but also help filibuster President Barack Obama's nominee to a key labor relations agency.

Note to Harry Reid: This guy's nominally a Democrat and you don't have to be afraid of him. Pretend you have some balls and practice making people who threaten to filibuster actually do it. First time you stand on your own two feet like a man is the hardest but it'll get easier. Try it, you might like it. This is your big chance.

Try grabbin' yer crotch and saying "filibuster this, Benny Boy". I say 'benny boy' in the sense of the Filipino crossdressers of Navy song and legend since Nelson is a Repug crossdressing as a Dem. He ain't what he claims to be.

Note to Benny Boy: Get up and read the phone book, asshole. When you have to go to the bathroom, it's over. How long can you go? Depends.

Palin’s ‘Hand Job’ Worst in History

The Rude One via Gordon's post yesterday:

It's a sad fact of America in the 21st-century that shallowness is a quality and depth makes you an out-of-touch elitist.

With getting any kind of major reform through:

...

This bears out the pervasive "conservative" American ethos of "I've got mine, so screw you," so the problem is much bigger than health care reform. The idea that anyone could fall victim to negative circumstance or make a bad decision or just find themselves on the losing side of something is attributed to their own bad character --- or, perversely, to the government which has taken from you, the deserving citizen, and given it to someone else, thus unfairly placing you at a disadvantage. It's old style Calvinism mixed with adolescent Randism and it's a very serious problem for people who believe that social stability and economic justice are important.

Because, after 30 years of "greed is good", it's automatic by now.

And a junior high school kid cheating on an exam. The teabaggers see this.

A good read by Peter Beinart.

President Obama isn't nearly as scared of the terrorists as Bush was — and that’s precisely why al Qaeda is falling apart.

Which brings us to Barack Obama’s “war on terror.” Conservatives keep saying that Obama doesn’t really believe we’re at war; that he sees terrorists as mere criminals, not the epic evil-doers that they really are. But here’s the irony: It’s precisely because he doesn’t see the terrorist threat as quite so epic that al Qaeda is falling apart.

To understand why, it helps to understand that al Qaeda is one of the weakest enemies America has ever faced. In their day, the Nazis and communists each ran a great power. (In the case of the communists, two). What’s more, during the Depression, vast numbers of people across the globe—including some of the most famous intellectuals in the United States and Europe—believed the fascists and communists could build societies that were more prosperous and dynamic than their democratic competitors. Barely anyone has ever believed that about al Qaeda. Not only have the jihadists never controlled a powerful country, but no one really believes that if they did it would be anything other than a basket case. To millions of people, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia once offered compelling visions of modernity; Taliban Afghanistan never did.

The dirty little secret of the “war on terror” is that America is winning. We began winning during George W. Bush’s second term, when al Qaeda’s violence began corroding its support among Muslims, and we’re doing even better under Barack Obama, because the U.S. now presents a less menacing face. The best chance al Qaeda has is another American overreaction of the kind the GOP demands: reckless military attacks by the United States or Israel, mass profiling of Muslims, a return to torture. Perhaps Obama’s Republican critics do take the terrorist threat more seriously than he does. I’d rather take it less seriously, and win.

Another dirty little not-so-secret is that the Repugs are al Qaeda's biggest ally. The Repugs' war is against Obama and by extension, reality, and the worst thing that could possibly happen is for him to wage a successful intelligence and law-enforcement campaign against terrorists under the rule of law.

Some advice for the Prez from Will Durst:

I'm only guessing, but a major problem with being president has to be people around you being more likely to stick their face in a cast iron oscillating fan than tell you the truth. Let's say you slip and fall and rip a hole in your pants down to your ankle while spilling hot coffee on a little blind girl in a wheelchair in front of a nationally televised audience. The worst you could expect to hear from a staffer is "Well, that could have gone better."

First thing. Don't worry so much about the Republicans. They're going to do what they're going to do. You don't even enter into the equation. [...]

It's your so-called friends you need to watch out for. The ones who smile and nod and laugh at your jokes to cover the slip of a shiv between your third and fourth ribs on the left side. Trust me, with friends like these, you don't need Richard Shelby. Unfortunately, most of your buddies are Democrats. Which is a lot like saying most of a general's fighting force is terra cotta. The difference being terra cotta soldiers don't cut and run so fast they leave little puffs of cartoon smoke.

The second thing is, you need to develop an "or else." Work with you, or what? Or Joe Biden sits next to you in the Congressional dining room and cuts your meat every day for a week? Lyndon Johnson plucked at the horsehair holding up the sword of Damocles for his "or else." Walk the line or find yourself whisked back to your home district as a clerk in Park and Rec's lost and found. His idea of compromise was letting you use his pen to sign your vow of allegiance.

Finally, your people have lost all sense of urgency. You got to fire somebody. You know -- ax. Can. Dump. Sack. Pink slip. Terminate with extreme prejudice. Discharge. Unassign. 86. Downsize. Furlough. Ease out. Make redundant. Perform a bum's rush. Give the boot. Hand someone their marching orders. Assist in an accelerated career-development shift. Impose a synergy-related headcount restructuring. Heave a ho.

Go see who he thinks Barry should fire to make a statement. Heh.

EssEffChron

Super Bowl advertisements were a little bit bolder, a lot weirder and definitely featured more pantsless men than previous years. Pantsless men in the workplace. Pantsless men striding purposefully down fields of gold. Pantsless men facing sumo wrestlers.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Or their lack of taste and couth.

You can watch all the ads without having to watch millionaires beat the crap out of each other to gain control of a pig bladder here.

The Rude Pundit on Palin and the appalling fact that anybody takes her seriously. I'm callin' it a 'must read'.

[...] It's a sad fact of America in the 21st-century that shallowness is a quality and depth makes you an out-of-touch elitist.

The Rude Pundit watched Palin's speech Saturday night at the Tea Party Convention at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. He saw all of it, her hair fixed perfectly to look like she had just finished fucking Andrew Breitbart (who introduced her), her practiced folksy nasality that has become a parody of a parody, her ludicrous call to revolution, which apparently means slightly lower taxes on small businesses and war with Iran. Somewhere in heaven, James Madison said, "Tell you what, bitch, you risk getting executed by the British for a cut in the marginal tax rate on your fishing boats and we'll talk."

Her speech was nonsense, a bowl of bullshit and lies that she digested and vomited out into the hungry mouths of the hatchlings in attendance, who gobbled it down like they had never tasted something so sweet. [...]

She's fucking retarded. As in stupid. As in she shouldn't be trusted to hand out carts at a Wal-Mart. That's this elitist's opinion. What backs him up? Two quotes:

Go.

Paul Krugman

We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.

What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.

What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.

A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.

A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.

In the past, holds were used sparingly. That’s because, as a Congressional Research Service report on the practice says, the Senate used to be ruled by “traditions of comity, courtesy, reciprocity, and accommodation.” But that was then. Rules that used to be workable have become crippling now that one of the nation’s major political parties has descended into nihilism, seeing no harm — in fact, political dividends — in making the nation ungovernable.

How bad is it? It’s so bad that I miss Newt Gingrich.

Shudder! That's bad!

And with the national G.O.P. having abdicated any responsibility for making things work, it’s only natural that individual senators should feel free to take the nation hostage until they get their pet projects funded.

After the dissolution of Poland, a Polish officer serving under Napoleon penned a song that eventually — after the country’s post-World War I resurrection — became the country’s national anthem. It begins, “Poland is not yet lost.”

Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.

Please read the rest.

Christians claim hate crimes law an effort to ‘eradicate’ their beliefs

Gee, they say that like it's a bad thing...

Ironic Times

Top Generals: Drop “Don't Ask, Don't Tell”
Replace it with: “You Are! Who Knew?”

Study: Drivers Who Text 6 Times More Likely to Crash
But friends can participate in final thoughts: “OMG, crsh!!!”

We-are-so-screwed dept.:

Poll: Fox Most Trusted Name in News
Glenn Beck most trusted man in America.

Fez:

Avoid the *face-palm* Sarah you'll smear your forehead.

Heh ...

For the Republicans to say that thanks to their (and G.W. Bush's) "policies" toward New Orleans after Katrina, New Orleans won the Super Bowl. Laugh if you want, I wouldn't put it past 'em.

Following up on Fixer's post, there's no longer any doubt about it.

Daddy Frank on Mullen, Gates, and Powell, er, coming out against DADT. Links at site:

A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark.

[...] Recalcitrant Congressional Republicans will have to explain why their perennial knee-jerk deference to “whatever the commanders want” extends to Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal on troop surges but not to Mullen, who outranks them, on civil rights.

The right would much rather the military would wage misbegotten wars abroad and STFU on civil rights and equality.

The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see, the more likely it is that Americans will be moved to grant overdue full citizenship to gay Americans. It won’t happen overnight, any more than full civil rights for African-Americans immediately followed Truman’s desegregation of the armed forces. But there can be no doubt that Mike Mullen’s powerful act of conscience last week, just as we marked the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter sit-in, pushed history forward. The revealing silence that followed from so many of the usual suspects was pretty golden too.

Fuckin' A, Pops! The more 'golden silence' out of the homophobic wingnuts, the better.

Only in Republican World ...

We're losing one of our smartest, most eloquent voices. D-cap packs it in.

I'll stop being condescending to teabaggers, birthers, and wingnuts when they stop being gullible idiots and ripe for the picking by every snake oil salesman and con man who tells them what they want to hear. Fucking ignorant cowardly lemmings, all of 'em. If that makes me an elitist then so be it.

...but it's perfectly OK to go crazy outdoors!

All that's on the news today is the snowstorm back east. With Amtrak and the airports in D.C. shut down, perhaps we'll get a coupla days of good government, i.e. none!

Anyway, some people know how to have fun with winter. More likely they just know how to have fun and screw winter. Check out these Krauts. I suspect the involvement of alcohol...might be a little 'watch this!' thrown in...

Elefantentreffen Arcitc-Nudes (0°C), Mud-Hillclimb & Boxer-Pirouette

Fortsetzung folgt!!!

I can't wait...




In for a pfennig, in for a dollar update:

Here's a vid of this year's Elephant Rally, just put on YouTube today. Call it "post-apocalyptic snow camping" or just plain fun. Hey, these are Fixer's people! Hardy, fun-loving, and more than a little crazy! In the good way.

I understand very little of what these folks are saying, but I understand this - motorcyclists are the same the world over. I'd feel right at home there.



See also Teil 1. Shows folks arriving at the campground, with a musical reference to the Donner Party, I think. Heh. I could watch these all day. Oh, it's snowing again. Probly will...

Danke to amandeis, Germany.

Thanks to Edsell2009.

Thanks to Edsell2009.

For a job in D.C.

I watched this show last night. Terrific. Watch it if you get the chance.

Will Durst

I think Obama's main obstacle in affecting real change is the culture of DC. To them, erosion is a radical concept.

True enough, but his real obstacle is all of the Repugs and some of the Democrats.

Not the exception.

Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.

...

The sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room.

...

We don't elect these fuckers to a social club and it's sad that all but a handful of Dems are there only to play the game. We need more guys like Franken who realize they aren't there to make friends but to get something done.

Somebody is doing something besides patting them on the head. Our next Governor NY's Attorney General crawls up Bank of America's ass:

The New York attorney general yesterday accused Bank of America Corp. and its former chief executive, Kenneth Lewis, of deceiving shareholders and manipulating US officials during the company’s $50 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch.

...

The civil fraud charges against Lewis, Price, and the company itself concern a series of rapidly unfolding events from September 2008, when the financial industry pitched into crisis, to January 2009, when Bank of America ultimately received $20 billion in government money to cover Merrill’s losses. Bank of America had previously received $25 billion from the government.

...

The only bonuses these clowns should have received are the ones from their prison husbands.

The interwebs works again! Couldn't get a page to load last night ... If you sent me an email yesterday, I'll look at it tonight.

LATimes

Giant Humboldt squid taking Southland anglers by storm

Go see the picture! I've had little bitty squids wrap themselves around my hook, but nothing like this!

Anglers from all over Southern California are crowding area landings for a chance to fish for the giant squid, which are reportedly a lot of fun to catch and put up quite a fight when boated, usually dousing those nearby with gallons of cold seawater and/or ink.

Doused with gallons of squid ink? Well, not my idea of the dream day on the water, but to each their own.

"The fishing was squidtastic!" said Michael Gannon, of San Clemente, who was aboard the Clemente out of Dana Wharf on Sunday. "My arms are about to fall off because the squid are so huge and put up such a fight."

Also called jumbo squid, they were once found primarily off South America and have slowly expanded their territory.

Good thing there's no global warming, huh? In a few years this report might come from the Bering Sea.

In the 'comments' to the article, some folks are saying this happens once in a while and is no big deal, others are saying it forebodes Armaggedon. ¿Quien sabe?

Update:

Go see the video at HuffPo. Ya gotta wait for the awful title-of-this-post-related pun at the end! Heh.

TOKYO (The Borowitz Report) – Embattled automaker Toyota today said that despite problems with accelerators and brakes, the cup holders on its most popular car models were "perfectly safe to use."

But Mr. Kyosuke's upbeat comments about Toyota's cup holders were undercut somewhat later in the day by congressional testimony from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

"You should only feel safe to use your cup holder if your Toyota is parked in your driveway," Mr. LaHood said. "At 80 miles per hour, the cup holder becomes a rocket launcher."

Max Blumenthal has an interesting article on that little wingnut prick and future jailhouse shaggin' piece O'Keefe.

His right-wing admirers don't seem to mind that O’Keefe's short but storied career has been defined by a series of political stunts shot through with racial resentment. [...]

According to One People's Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O'Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism. OPP covered the event at the time, sending a freelance photographer to document the gathering. Jenkins told me the table was filled with tracts from the white supremacist right, including two pseudo-academic publications that have called blacks and Latinos genetically inferior to whites: American Renaissance and the Occidental Quarterly. The leading speaker was Jared Taylor, founder of the white nationalist group American Renaissance. "We can say for certain that James O'Keefe was at the 2006 meeting with Jared Taylor. He has absolutely no way of denying that," Jenkins said. [...]

By O’Keefe’s own account, his racial troubles became acute when he entered the multicultural atmosphere of Rutgers University’s dormitory system. In an online diary that has since been scrubbed from the Web (but not before being captured on Daily Kos), he wrote that he was forced to live on an all-black dormitory floor after refusing to live with the gay roommate he was initially assigned. O’Keefe claimed his next roommate was “an Indian midget ... who smelled like shit.” The roommate left, however, and was replaced by “a greek kid.” The new roommate complained to a residential administrator that O’Keefe had called his neighbors “niggers,” prompting the school to expel him from the dorm. [...]

Meanwhile, O’Keefe lost his job at the Leadership Institute in 2008 for a prank call he made to an Ohio-based Planned Parenthood clinic. During the call, O’Keefe offered a donation to the clinic on the condition that it would be earmarked to pay for aborting African-American fetuses. “Because there's definitely way too many black people in Ohio,” O’Keefe remarked to the receptionist. “So, I'm just trying to do my part.”

Let's make the sure that all the brothers and hermanos at whatever hoosegow this little prick ends up in all get a copy of Blumenthal's piece. He might only get 30 days or so, but that oughta be time enough for them to widen his, er, perspective.

Update:

More on this from Max.

If you missed this yesterday evening take 11:10 and watch it.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There certainly seems to be a lot of of people flinging the words 'retard' and 'retarded' at one another and calling for each other to be fired for it.

Political Carnival on the latest case, Perry v Hutchison:

Le mot du jour seems to be making the rounds in the "more politically correct than thou" circles.

Andrew Sullivan on Palin v Rahmbo:

Did she really just call for Rahm Emanuel to be fired because he allegedly used the term "fucking retarded" to refer to fellow Democrats in a private meeting? Last summer? Did she really?

I don't like the term myself. I think it is offensive. I think Rahm Emanuel is offensive. But at least he's real. And he has now apologized. And at least he used the term metaphorically.

On naming her latest baby:

The medical term for Down Syndrome is Trisomy-21 or Trisomy-g. It is often shortened in medical slang to Tri-g.

Now that's retarded.

Since apologies for the use of a very valid and useful word meaning basically 'slow' or 'slow down' but hijacked and co-opted to mean only one thing, sorta like 'gay', seem to be in order, I hereby apologize to the thousands of ignition systems I've set to 'full retard'. I was just trying to get the engines to start easily and idle correctly and in my ignorance had no idea I was insulting them.

As one Political Carnival commenter said,

...this whole pseudo-controversy is retarded.

I would never use the word to refer to people with "moderate cognitive disabilities", but I sure as shit will to describe wingnuts and Repugs in general. Fuckin' retards, the whole backwards lot of 'em. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Yeesh.

Update:

P.M. Carpenter wasn't writing about this subject but he hit its nail right on the head:

Saying the GOP is the party of no is one thing – and technically correct – but more so it’s the party of antediluvian cluelessness

Shorter: Fuckin' retards, the lot of 'em.

Update II:

Think Progress

[...] Claiming Emanuel’s regrettable remarks gave him permission, hate radio talker Rush Limbaugh endorsed the language and said the liberal activists truly are “retards”:

Palin has called into Limbaugh’s show at least twice. Will she now call on him to apologize for his slur?

Hell no. IOKIYAR.

Rules are for the little people:

... And there is only one way to stop it. When the guy at the top takes the fall for it along with those approving the deals, then you would see due diligence. But I am just dreaming again.

Maru:

Fairies are coming for my penis

Because if we don't, we'll start asking difficult questions like "when do Bush and Cheney go on trial for war crimes?"

...

Since the galling announcement a year would be lost withdrawing totally—more or less—according to plan the American corporate propaganda has studiously ignored Iraq, that’s very much part of the denial plan, ignoring Iraq won’t make it go away but at least keeps those awful conversations of imprisoning Bush and Cheney out of the news. Right? Anyway, it’s been relative easy because Iraq has been so blessedly quiet, things have gone fairly well to the glacial withdrawal plan, praise baby Jesus.

...

The Rude Pundit, obviously a regular reader of the Brain, follows up on Fixer's post:

Underneath the glowing sheen of rationality given to the most despicable of beliefs, there is always irrational fear. Implicit in the language of the men who want to leave in place the U.S. military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding gays and lesbians in the military is this fear: "Gay guys might rape my ass." The proper response to that is, "Oh, get over yourself, Mary."

It's as if there's a group of predatory queers out there jonesing for some Marine ass and are willing to sign away a few years of their life to get it. It's as if the notion of openly gay service members (yeah, yeah, ha, ha, "members") will stop all the straight dudes from hanging out nude with other straight dudes, an image that, in any context, is totally gay (as in "homosexual"). Seriously, if you wanna walk around, dangling your junk in front of other guys, there's probably something you need to ask and tell yourself.

Junk-dangling soldiers aside, it's not really as if the straight guys are the models of sexual decorum here. "According to several studies of the US military funded by the Department of Veteran Affairs, 30% of military women are raped while serving, 71% are sexually assaulted, and 90% are sexually harassed," says a BBC report from last year, with an estimate that "some 90% of military sexual assaults are never reported." It's pretty damn likely that the vast majority of those assaults were not committed by lesbians.

Tony Perkins, whose Family Research Council (motto: "Why doesn't Jesus stop us from going bankrupt?") has a petition against the repeal of DADT, says, "Forcing soldiers to cohabit with people who view them as sexual objects would inevitably lead to increased sexual tension, sexual harassment, and even sexual assault." Or, in other words, the straight dudes might be treated like they treat women. Or, in other words, please don't rape our asses, Mr. Gay Guy.

Indeed, by the right's own logic, the military should ban heterosexual men.

Ooh! 300 would be required viewing in basic training! Wouldn't wanta over-oil, after all...

Reminds me of the time I asked the First Shirt for a 96 hour liberty - "Harrumph! I wouldn't give youse a 96 if I wuz fuckin' ya."

The Swamp on comments by Sen. Hatch (R[etard] - Cultah):

All things considered, one senator suggested today, the accused terrorists housed at the military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are better off than they might be at a state prison in Illinois that the Obama administration wants to buy for them.

If the terrorists view Guantanamo as a rallying cry for recruitment of new terrorists, he suggested, wait until they see Thomson.

"It's pretty nice compared to Illinois -- the place in Illinois where they want to put them," Hatch said in the committee hearing. "It'd be nice and cold in the winter time and... all I can say is that I imagine there'll be a hue and a cry that we're not fair by bringing them here."

I think Hatch is confusing a prison cage in Cuba with the warm fair breezes and room service at wherever he and Rushole stay in the Dominican Republic.

Prison's prison. It's about the loss of freedom, not the weather.

The arguments for keeping these prisoners out of the U.S. where they might perhaps come under the protection of the Constitution and thus be less of a recruiting tool for al Qaeda are getting feebler and feebler.

"Pimp my FEMA trailer."

Treehugger

FEMA has put the notorious Katrina Trailers, some 100,000 of them, up for auction; and the bidding has apparently driven down prices for the new models. Hence, lobbyists for the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association have suggested sending empty Katrina trailers to Haiti as a 'humanitarian gesture.' [...]

Everybody seems to be against this other than the trailer industry, which is overloaded with the Katrina trailers, and southern white men, but I think it's a fine idea.

I wouldn't live in any new trailer or RV for all the reasons we all know, or come to think of it, a brand new house that hasn't had the windows open for a coupla years, but surely these particular trailers have outgassed by now. What do you think?

Bob Herbert on NYPD racial profiling which occurs everywhere else as well.

Even the official reasons given by the police for the stops are laughably bogus. People are stopped for allegedly making “furtive movements,” for wearing clothes “commonly used in a crime,” and, of course, for the “suspicious bulge.” My wallet, my notebook and my cellphone would all apply.

Modesty prevents me from commenting further on the 'suspicious bulge' but at least now I know why I get stopped and frisked all the time...

NYTimes on how the Taliban use ancient methods to track U.S. troop movements.

But as the company moved, shepherds whistled in the darkness, passing warning of the Americans’ approach. Dogs barked themselves hoarse. The din rose in every direction, enveloping the column in noise. And then, as the Marines became visible in the bluish twilight, a minivan rumbled out of one compound. Its driver steered ahead of the company, honking the van’s horn, spreading the alarm. Spotters appeared on roofs.

On the morning of the sweep, made by Weapons Company, Third Battalion, First Marines, a large communications antenna that rose from one compound vanished before the Marines could reach it. The man inside insisted that he had seen nothing. And when the Marines moved within the compounds’ walls, people in nearby houses released white pigeons, revealing the Americans’ locations to anyone watching from afar.

The Taliban and their supporters use other signals besides car horns and pigeons, including kites flown near American movements and dense puffs of smoke released from chimneys near where a unit patrols.

One of the noisiest things on the planet is a grunt rifle company on the move, especially at night when sound carries much farther than in the daytime. You can hear them coming almost literally a mile away if there's no ambient noise like in a city.

I think the way to operate against the Taliban is to use Spec Ops people, who can move very quietly at night, to Find them and Fix them in position, and then use regular troops to move in in force and Finish them.

The Taliban signalling techniques are a good thing for us to know for when the right wing militias start to move. Work on sight alignment and trigger squeeze too.

Go read how the Taliban know where to place small IEDs on the vast steppe to have the best effect. I think with the militias, we can just mine their bar stools.

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford.

Behold, our beloved mechanisms of fear and desire, doom and delight! How they dance and sing in ways that make us giggle like obese children at the county fair, like drunken bears let loose at the campground. How they make us so very happy, horny, powerful like gods, and then turn right around and kill us dead. Ain't it a bitch?

Throughout history, the same. Not 48 hours after Alex Bell invented the very first telephone, his mistress rang him up for a fine Victorian booty call at 2 a.m., and his wife answered and she freaked the hell out and killed the cheating bastard in his sleep. True story! You can Google it!

Witness, won't you, the great and bizarre era of the great and bizarre Facebook. It has become terribly real. It has moved from silly novel dorky sorority-girl hookup bubblegum pop, into something darker, harder edged, lethal.

Like the iPod, like basketball shoes, like God, Facebook has changed cultural position, not because 15 million people use it to post bad poetry or talk about their love of "Mad Men" and Lady Gaga, but because Facebook -- and its brethren MySpace and Twitter (and email and SMS and etc) have become one of those mechanisms, a means and mode of true love, deep pain, and yes, very real death.

I use Facebook mostly to make bad jokes to folks who aren't in the room with me, sorta like here. I've been in danger from those all my life. Nothing much has changed except I have a lot more email to deal with.

Too bad we didn't waterboard the nut roaster "Christmas Day Bomber", eh?

I thought only torture, and sacrificing all of our beliefs, got these guys to talk:

... The information Abdulmuttalab is sharing has been described by other officials as fresh and actionable.

...

He's doing a regular Pavarotti for the feds.

Maru:

Porcine scumbag’s flailathon at Miss America pageant Saturday may have been responsible for earthquakes that shook globe this weekend:

...

See, there's always a scientific explanation for the mysteries of nature. Heh ...

Warning: Video of Rush Limbaugh dancing at the link. May cause permanent injury; nausea at the least.

Oliver Willis:

...

For the right, it is no longer 2004 and anyone who doesn’t march in lockstep with U.S. military is no longer a fifth columnist.

Admiral Mullen is now a traitor.

That is all ...

You can afford to pay a little more tax:

...

More importantly than that, the tax increases on the $250,00+ set are marginal tax increases which only apply to...money in excess of $250,000. People making, say, $300,000 aren't going to see their tax bill increase by very much.

I'm tired of all the sniveling from the well-to-do, but what bugs me more is the sniveling from poor folks who think the well-to-do are taxed too much.

Listen to me.

1. The rich don't care about anyone of a lower economic class than they are. That means you.

2. "Trickle-down Economics" doesn't work. The rich don't "spread the wealth", they hold onto it.

3. Somebody's gonna have to pay. Better those who can afford it than those who can't. Protecting the rich from taxes only assures that the rest of us are gonna pick up the bill.

4. If you fall into the demographic of people making less than $250K, you shouldn't be voting for Republicans. They're not even protecting your "moral values", let alone your financial security.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I'm so fucking tired of people complaining about taxes. How the fuck do you expect to run a country? How do you expect to fight these wars that so many seem to love? It's unbelievable to me how brainwashed we are to believe we can have everything we want without having to pay for it.

Shit, if they're in the Air Force, they're fucking anyway:

...

It would seem that O'Hanlon's [of course - F] dreamy "18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden men in the military who are tough guys" are actually very unlikely to hate gays. He's just going to have to figure out how to think about those young warriors in a way which doesn't require them to be straight and homophobic.

...

Excellent article by Glenn Greenwald on Constitutional rights and to whom they apply and who's lying about it. Anybody who cites Yick Wo v. Hopkins is doing their homework! Links at site. First and last ¶:

Over the weekend, Sen. Susan Collins released a five-minute video in which she sounded as though she were possessed by the angriest, most unhinged version of Dick Cheney. Collins recklessly accused the Obama administration of putting us all in serious danger by failing to wage War against the Terrorists. Most of what she said was just standard right-wing boilerplate, but there was one claim in particular that deserves serious attention, as it has become one of the most pervasive myths in our political discourse: namely, that the U.S. Constitution protects only American citizens, and not any dreaded foreigners. Focusing on the DOJ's decision to charge the alleged attempted Christmas Day bomber with crimes, Mirandize him and provide him with counsel, Collins railed: "Once afforded the protection our Constitution guarantees American citizens, this foreign terrorist 'lawyered up' and stopped talking" (h/t). This notion that the protections of the Bill of Rights specifically and the Constitution generally apply only to the Government's treatment of American citizens is blatantly, undeniably false -- for multiple reasons -- yet this myth is growing, as a result of being centrally featured in "War on Terror" propaganda.

But this right-wing demagoguery (coming from both Republicans and some Democrats) has nothing to do with those debates. For one thing, the accused Christmas Day bomber was captured and is being held inside the U.S. (right-wing fear-mongerers have long argued that we should not bring GITMO detainees to the U.S. because, once inside the U.S., they would then enjoy full Constitutional protections). But more important, the standard rhetorical formulation being used -- "extending rights to foreign Terrorists which the Constitution reserves for U.S. citizens" -- suggests that Constitutional rights are for American citizens only. That is blatantly false, and anyone making that claim -- as Susan Collins and so many others have -- is either extremely ignorant or extremely dishonest.

I'm down wit dishonest and worse when it comes to Repug fearmongering and trampling on rights. Go read.

Greg Palast with a bitter rant on our society as seen through Catcher In The Rye.

Then we fell over the cliff.

A bullet through the skull replaced Kennedy with Nixon. We shall overcome was replaced with the vicious "Southern Strategy;" the Cold War exploded in hot jungles; then came the idiot wasteland of the regimes of Ford and Carter and Reagan and Clinton and Bushes, a degenerative march as the machine of America rusted and died.

And here we are today, begging for spare parts from China and my daughter glued to YouTube videos of Lady Ga-Ga's crotch, and my son slicing off a cop's head in Grand Theft Auto and a President, telegenic and painfully hollow, playing the lost and ineffectual shepherd over an electorate divided between the terrified and the greedy. In place of prophets, we are offered a caravan of kvetching clowns piling out of the Volkswagen on MSNBC.

There's no way to wipe the fuck off this smeared planet. I'm supposed to try. I'm an investigative reporter, meaning I have a professional commitment to the childish belief that if I shout loud enough, I can warn people away from the cliff's edge.

You stand on the cliff edge and there's no one left to catch.

Is he right? Sure. Is he wrong? Sure.

Right wing talker says safety recall an Obama 'jihad' against Toyota

...a Groundhog Day-relevant post is apparently obligatory, here's mine. This is for everybody who thinks just because it's February, Winter's almost over. (wink)

Ol' Fez sees the future:

...

So the next President (well, Republican President) who wants to have somebody murdered -- preferably a foreigner -- and gets some Justice Department hack to say he can do it -- by the logic of this precedent, it's just "poor judgment" but nothing too untoward.

It's legal as long as the President says it is. Didn't we settle this 35 years ago?

Everybody has a Groundhog Day-relevant post up, I'll posit that the poor animal* has more weather forecasting sechel** than all the twits who do it for a living on the local news. They should leave the poor varmint alone.

*I tell ya, if somebody jerked me out of a sound sleep and stuck my face in front of TV cameras and lights, people would be making hospital visits.

**Yiddish word for "common sense".

Athenae on the Teabagger convention:

...

Here's a tip: When your party's too crazy for MICHELLE BACHMANN, it's time to take the lampshade off your head.

...

Mit a schmear:

Internal documents and e-mails show that Navy officials unfavorably doctored a psychiatrist’s performance record after he blew the whistle on what he said was dangerously inept management of care for Marines suffering combat stress at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The internal correspondence, obtained by Salon, also includes an order to delete earlier records praising the work of the psychiatrist, Dr. Kernan Manion, who was fired last September after lodging his complaints.

...

It ain't about getting these Marines the best care possible, it's about CYA.

Great thanks to Susie for the link.

The Rude One on last Friday's Presidential dope slap of the Repug reps:

[...] So while the Rude Pundit's weary of trying to figure out what the fuck Obama is up to (getting rid of NASA programs? Really?) he wants to make one observation that may not have been explored in the mass orgasm on the left over Obama handing Republicans their asses and telling them to smell their own farts.

What Obama did was to show the GOP House members a respect that they have failed to show him. He treated them like grown-ups, not the worthless obstructionist bags of shit they are. In essence, he gave them a shot, on their terms, at trying to take him down. And they couldn't do it. In simple terms, he was rubber, and they were glue, motherfuckers.

By the time Obama got to talking about spending on infrastructure and how dozens of the gathered Republicans had "gone to appear at ribbon-cuttings for the same projects that you voted against," it was over. In war terms, all that was left was for Obama to walk among the bodies and see who still was moaning or moving before shooting them between the eyes. He worked with Republicans, again and again, gave them things they wanted, and they still chose to vote against the Recovery Act because it was something Obama wanted.

Really, he could have spent the rest of the time answering every question with, "That would be a valid complaint if you guys weren't such enormous douchebags." And when he started mocking the rhetoric Republicans use against him, John Boehner actually lost color in his face and Eric Cantor had shit himself, as if thinking, "We've made a terrible mistake."

If one could actually read tea leaves with this president, it would seem like he is laying the groundwork for abandoning working with Republicans. There's only so many times a dog can bite your hand before you muzzle that fucker. And what did he get for his trouble? By Sunday, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner had already stated that Obama can shove his bipartisanship up his ass.

Figures. Obama tried to play nice with these fuckers and it didn't - couldn't have - worked. He pretty much told the perpetrators of Project Obama Fail to shove their lack of bipartisanship up theirs. In a very nice way, of course, not thw way I would have said it.

Ironic Times

Oregon: Voters Approve Measure to Tax Rich
Narrowly reject measure to eat them.

Schwarzenegger Discovers Something He Can Export to Mexico
Prison inmates.

Zsa Zsa Gabor's Husband Running for Governor of California
Prince Frederic von Anhalt, who claimed he fathered Anna Nicole Smith's daughter and was once found naked and handcuffed to the steering wheel of a 2006 Rolls Royce, leads in the polls.

??? ~ News Quiz ~ ???

Which of the following questions, mailed by the GOP in an official looking envelope with the warning, “Official Document, Do Not Destroy,” and labeled “2010 Congressional District Census” does not appear in the enclosed document?
A ) Do you think the record trillion dollar federal deficit the Democrats are creating with their out-of-control spending is going to have disastrous consequences for our nation?
B ) Do you worry that the Obama administration is committed to greatly expanding the government's role in your life?
C ) Is there nothing the GOP will not do to mislead voters?
Hint: You have to ask?

Yoo and Bybee are gonna skate:

The Department of Justice has whitewashed a report on war criminals John Yoo and Jay Bybee, downgrading the admonition from "violated professional responsibilities" to "exercised poor judgment." The difference is start, in that the former finding could get them disbarred and that latter is a literal slap on the wrist with a wet noodle.

...

You know, Mr. President, giving other nations a hard time about corruption in government (remember your Africa remarks), when you give our own war criminals a pass, isn't the way to foster credibility in the world.

Yer too batshit crazy for Jesus to qualify to adopt a child in the States, so you have to go to Haiti and steal one?

A Baptist church in Idaho said on Sunday that its members, who were among 10 people detained for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti, were “falsely arrested” and that the church was trying “to clear up the misunderstanding.”

Haitian officials detained the church members out of concern the children might be susceptible to trafficking and said some of the children might have parents. The officials also said the team lacked proper documents to take the children, who range in age from 2 months to 12 years.

...

What were they thinking? Because Haiti is a mess, they don't care about their children? How about adopting some of those American zygotes that you pressure young mothers into bringing to term even if they're unwanted?

Thanks to scmo08, Norway.

This has been me 'n Mrs. G's song for over 35 years. This is the prettiest version I've heard.

Thanks to INeverSmileAtAll.

Mark Morford on what a pathetic WATB we've become as a nation.

These are, from what I can glean, the most important questions of the day, of the month, of modern life itself. Hell, what with the economy and job situation, the housing market and the overall feel and texture of the nation right now, it's no wonder Americans are, by and large, a goddamn miserable bunch. We don't like anything right now. No politician, no decision, no situation, no inhale, no exhale. We are sick to death of all of it, including ourselves.

My God, did you hear that pathetic State of the Union? That guy, that President Obama? Disappointing times a thousand, am I right? What the hell happened to him? Why is he so weak and ineffectual? Why the hell can't he step up and fix the entire planet in under 400 days like he promised he would, in my dreams and fantasies and impossible liberal grass-fed organic tofu greengasms? Doesn't he know I put a goddamn bumper sticker on my Subaru for him? I've never done that for anyone. Bastard.

He's only accomplished what, about 100 of the things I expected him to accomplish by now? Big deal. I have, like, 5,000 more. Health care reform has failed. Guantanamo is still open. Wars are still warring. Jobs are still sucking. Gays are still unhappy because the entire human understanding of love and gender in this nation has not completely transformed within a year. Infuriating!

Shall we recall just how violently disappointed those fundamentalists were when Bush bumbled off the stage, the single greatest disaster as president we will ever know? They were, of course, mostly disappointed Bush wasn't able to do far more repellant damage than he did. They wanted nothing less than full-scale war on Islam, death to all abortion doctors, creationism in schools, homosexuality banned outright, all you scary women to please stop it with your needy n' terrifying vaginas. You know, the usual.

Maybe this, then, is the ultimate upshot of our endless, self-wrought swirl of sour disappointment, of never having our impossible needs fully met, of constantly being thwarted in our desire to have the world revolve around our exact set of specifications and desires.

Much more.

Re 'disappointment', I think it helps to have been in the service as a youngster. Disappointment, synergistically (1 + 1 = 11) coupled with neck-deep chickenshit, is a daily - nay, hourly - occurence and you whine, moan, bitch, snivel, and complain to no effect whatsoever because it makes you feel better and the Bigs don't give a shit what you think and you learn to just play through it.

It also helps to get old. Perhaps 'wisdom' isn't exactly the right word for what should but doesn't always come with age. Maybe 'acceptance' and the took-a-long-time-to-dawn concept that very little is as black and white as we'd like it to be and a lot of people get it wrong. Some is but an awful lot ain't and ya gotta know the difference. Frustration sucks.

As far as "needy n' terrifying vaginas", a lot of us Olde Phartes can recall needing tire chains for traction in those and don't scare easy. Ladies, we're here to help. Heh.

Update:

As serendipity would have it, I was listening to a Jimmy Buffett CD I picked up yesterday (at W**M***, shame on me...) and this song came on right after I hit 'publish yer tripe'. It kinda fits, so I went and found it for you. Enjoy.

Thanks to Parrotisla.

A 'recommended read' in the Guardian UK:

In a development believed to have caused Thursday's international run on duct tape and tinned goods, an opinion poll this week suggested Fox News is the most trusted news operation in America. Dig into the data and it's a little more nuanced and complex than "flood's a comin'", but what it shakes down to is that 49% of Americans trust Fox. The survey of 1,151 registered voters was greeted by much wailing and gnashing of teeth – making it in many ways resemble a broadcast by Fox's most eye-catching lab experiment, Glenn Beck.

If the wailers and gnashers weren't such godless liberals, of course, they'd be thumbing their way to the bit in the Book of Revelation that predicts exactly this occurrence, but instead they have been plunged into shock. Yet is it all that surprising? Whether Rupert Murdoch's news network is to your taste or not, you have to concede that it is an awesomely effective product, and the news-as-telenovela concept has revolutionised the marketplace.

On the plus side, this week also saw Forbes magazine reveal the results of its poll to find America's 10 most trusted celebrities. And the Forbes poll doesn't so much put the Fox stuff into perspective as put the whole idea of trust into perspective.

Put it this way: top of the list was James Earl Jones. Now, you can tell me all you like that when people trust James, they're trusting His Majesty King Jaffe Joffer in Coming to America. You can tell me that they feel comforted by his regal vocal presence in the Lion King. But you know in your heart that subconsciously, what they're trusting is Vader. People trust Darth Vader. And that's because people are stupid, and quite frightened, and it's quite easy to lie to them. Still, as no Fox News ­presenter has ever said while shrugging their shoulders, whaddayougonnadoaboutit?

As with Hollywood, so with this golden age of news-o-tainment. People will trust any old nutjob if they somehow inhabit the role, and then they're hooked. There was a long-running series of US pharmaceutical ads that would feature doctors from daytime soaps, who'd begin with the words "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV …" And viewers would flock to buy the medicine. The guys on Fox News aren't ­newscasters, but they do play them on TV – so we can't be all that surprised when people buy those drugs too.

Why do ya think they call it 'dope'?

Raw Story

Voters in California will likely decide this November whether or not to legalize marijuana, after legalization activists handed in far more than the necessary number of petition signatures to get the measure onto the ballot.

Organizers of the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 filed some 700,000 petition signatures with county clerks around the state. The amount of signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot is about 433,000, reports the San Francisco Chronicle, so the measure is all but certain to be on the ballot in November.

Following up on Fixer's post:

HuffPo, links and videos:

President Obama traveled to a House Republican retreat in Baltimore on Friday and delivered a performance that was at once defiant, substantive and engaging. For roughly an hour and a half, Obama lectured GOP leaders and, in a protracted, nationally-televised question-and-answer session, deflected their policy critiques, corrected their misstatements and scolded them for playing petty politics. (Full video and transcript available HERE.)

White House officials told the Huffington Post they were absolutely ecstatic. MSNBC's Luke Russert, who was on the scene in Baltimore, relayed that a Republican official and other GOP aides had confided to him that allowing the "cameras to roll like that" was a "mistake."

Indeed, sunshine on a turned-over rock is harmful to the vermin.

So effective was the president that Fox News cut away from the broadcast 20 minutes before it ended.

F** turned away because truth occurred and they felt they needed to shelter their audience from it! I think I just came...

Politico

Obama urged Republicans to come to the table and work with him on policy compromises, saying Americans "didn't send us to Washington to fight each other in some political steel-cage match."

Oh yeah? Sez you, Barry! As long as there's meds to counteract the visual of all that flabby old fish-belly white skin in speedos...

Slightly 'R' rated.

Thanks to collinswayne1, Canuckistan.

Thanks to DogSwede1, Sweden.,/h6>

What we refuse to:

International arrest warrants have been requested for George W. Bush, Richard (Dick) Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales at the International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands.

Professor of Law Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champain, United States of America, has issued a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court against the above-mentioned for their practice of “extraordinary rendition” (forced disappearance of persons and subsequent torture) in Iraq and for criminal policy which constitutes Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute which set up the ICC.

...

It would be nice if we took out our own trash.

Thanks to Maru for the link.

Against unarmed opponents. Barry's visit to the Republicans' den was the most leadership he's shown in a year. He owned the room and showed them for what they really are. Good on him!

It had to happen, didn't it? It's a shopping day today, so I'll just leave ya with this video. A tip o' the Brain to Think Progress. There's an article and another video there about this as well.

Thanks to murrayhillcongress.

Since Gord's been taking ... liberties with her lately. Heh ...

Taken aboard Holland America Line's MS Noordam outbound from Manhattan. Click to make big.

I've already ruined Fixer's favorite sight when he comes into New York once. He's gonna get me for this...

Thanks to Slate.

Fiore

EssEffChron

In a 15,000-square-foot warehouse just down the road from the Oakland Airport, an entrepreneur is opening a one-stop shop for medicinal marijuana cultivation that's believed to be the largest in the state.

This is hardly a fringe business. When iGrow opens today, at least three City Council members will attend. So will most of the leaders of the cannabis industry in Oakland, a city long at the vanguard of medicinal marijuana.

Today's opening also comes on a key day for proponents of a statewide ballot measure to allow recreational marijuana. They plan to turn in about twice as many signatures as needed to qualify the measure for the November ballot.

But, he believes, the issue is a moral one.

"It's not fair to medical patients to put them in a gray area where they have to be involved in criminal activity to stay healthy," he said. "That's like not having health insurance."

At a dispensary, a patient might spend $120 a week for a quarter-ounce of marijuana.

However, it might cost $1,000 to set up an eight-plant system, said Zeta Ceti, one of iGrow's "indoor growing technicians." But in the course of a year, they might only use half of their harvest and be able to sell the remaining 3 pounds for $12,000 to a dispensary.

This is getting better and better!

This is just way cool. Article here or here.

 

Landrieu phone plot: Men arrested have links to intelligence community

Oregonians Raise Taxes On Rich, Big Corporations to Fund Critical Services

Oregon's voters did this. Good on ya, Beavers!

Bill Berkowitz on what he feels is a flawed Field poll:

California’s Field Poll finds that three in ten registered voters ‘identified’ with the Tea Party movement and three in ten don’t believe Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen.

According to Field, The poll was “conducted among a statewide sample of 1,232 registered voters in six languages – English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Vietnamese,” and it showed “that about 61% of this state’s voters say they are aware of the movement, and 28% say they identify with it either a lot (12%) or some (16%).”

28% is within the margin of error for the Dead End Quarter.

[...] "The world is run by those who show up,” Nehring said. “Tea party activists show up and that's important."

That's good! If they all show up at once, we can get 'em all with one round!

Charlie Battery, fire mission, over...

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president, Military Religious Freedom Foundation. A 'must read' on the subject:

The Constitution won a battle last week, and Lady Liberty is smiling. But will that duo be able to fully triumph in the war against other threats to U.S. security - the war that's every bit as critically important as the one against Al Qaeda and the Taliban? That "other war," heretofore rarely seen in the mainstream media, is against the unbridled fundamentalist Christianity that has nefariously infected the U.S. armed forces.

Let me make one thing clear: Our problem is not with evangelical Christians whose beliefs say they must witness to as many people as possible but respect the law and the Constitution. Indeed not. Our problem is with what is called "dominionists/fundamentalists," who think they can do whatever they want to, irrespective of time, place and manner, in the name of their personal Christian faith, including heinously violating the First Amendment while serving in uniform. In the eyes of American law, their weaponized gospel of Christianity has absolutely no favored position of special recognition superior to the myriad of the other existing faith groups or even to the many no faith groups. The Constitution grants level playing field status for all to comprehensively celebrate their faith, or no faith, without the fear of "favored status" to only one. Believing otherwise is patently absurd. And as Voltaire said, "He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity."

Our honorable armed forces don't swear an oath to serve the Torah, the Qur'an, the New Testament or any other religious book. They swear to protect and defend the Constitution and the United States of America. Period.

Period.

Ol' Fez:

...

[Supreme Court Justice Samuel] Alito has now spoken more in the House Chamber than Clarence Thomas has in the Supreme Court.

...

There's a reason I call Chris Matthews an idiot. He is an idiot:

...

If only Tweety's brain was post-racial. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that MSNBC is going to do some apologizing tomorrow.

Big dumbass ...

Plain and simple from Athenae:

...

Look, we can argue all day long about the merits of various policies and who should be doing what but can you honestly, honestly tell me the rules aren't different for Democrats?

No shit. Barry's biggest problem has been Republican hypocrisy and obstructionism. I regret the Dems didn't do more of it when the Chimp was in the White House.

El Rude-o

1. Obama walks to the podium with Joe Lieberman's ragged-necked, bloody, disembodied head and announces that the Connecticut Senator has been kicked out of the Democratic caucus. He tosses the head at Mitch McConnell, who weeps as he fucks Lieberman's grotesque, frozen-in-mid-scream mouth. The President says, "The State of the Union is who's next?"

3. He has the Sergeant-at-Arms drag in a chain gang of men in striped prison garb, Joe Arpaio-style. The bedraggled men are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, and more. Obama asks children in the gallery to come down and pelt them with rotten fruit. The President says, "Now this is how you blame the current crisis on the previous administration."

4. Obama assures the nation that health care reform will not only pass, but that he will personally make sure that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are declared insane and a danger to themselves and others and made wards of the state. The President says, "We will start with electroshock therapy. But lobotomies may be needed."

5. He announces that he's sending tea partyers to assist in the rebuilding of Haiti as part of his jobs program. The President says, "It will also be an education program in what it's like to live without government."

Expanding on Fixer's post:

Breitbart admits paying activist who tried to bug Democratic senator

Update:

Salt Lake City GOP Cancels Keynote Speech By Inspirational Speaker ACORN Pimp James O’Keefe

Liquid alert:

The Salt Lake County Republicans scrubbed their website of promotional material about O’Keefe’s speech soon after announcement of his arrest. The website had noted that the Republicans planned to be inspired by O’Keefe’s work exposing “unethical behavior.”

From O'Keefe's twitter account last night:

I am a journalist. The truth shall set me free.

Note to O'Keefe: You're a paid Repug dirty tricks operative and you're deluded if you think that makes you a journalist. Well, maybe you're a ClusterFox News-style journalist, I'll give you that. The truth is going to get your young ass locked up, but look on the bright side: when you get out, you'll have been porked in the heinie enough to be qualified to run for the Senate.

Update II:

Fox News Devastated Over Arrest Of ACORN Pimp

There's a lot of joy in this story!

The question I have is this: How did the FBI know to be there to catch them in the act? Did Senator Landrieu's staffers get suspicious and call them, or had the G-Men been watching these Reperps, or both? I'm sure this will come out. Inquiring minds want to know!

It's Wednesday, and that means Morford.

7) Speaking of needful females, as mentioned in a previous column, after a million years and two million studies and roughly three billion fake orgasms, the female anatomy remains as inscrutable as a gay Republican at an anti-gun rally. Recent example: Try as they might, British scientists simply could not prove the existence of the acclaimed G-spot, that mythological cervical hotbutton in the female anatomy reportedly responsible for laughter in small children, peace in the Middle East, the perfect Manhattan, and -- perhaps quite literally -- the Big Bang.

Of course, being British, they were reportedly employing large hunks of fried cod, heavy dark beer, and an antique brass 1874 ship's compass to try and find the damn thing. Also, they were looking in the ear. So, you know, caveat emptor.

I believe it. I've seen Limey motorcycles...

Don't miss No. 8. What'll they think of next?

Tony Peyser

Vile things once whispered
In corn pone tones
Now are openly announced
Before microphones.

Dr. West is one of my favorite speakers. This time he slows it down so I can catch every word.

Cornel West's note to Obama - January 20, 2010
by Ladypolitik

Despite a crippling recession and tight credit markets, the American wind power industry grew at a blistering pace in 2009, adding 39 percent more capacity. The country is close to the point where 2 percent of its electricity will come from wind turbines.

...

Good news.

...

The American Wind Energy Association, in its annual report to be released on Tuesday, said the amount of capacity added last year, 9,900 megawatts, was the largest on record, and was 18 percent above the capacity added in 2008, also a banner year.

The group said the growth of wind power was helped by the federal stimulus package that passed a year ago, which extended a tax credit and provided other investment incentives for the industry.

...

Give Barry credit where it's due. The stimulus is starting to work but you know the fiscal scolds won't allow another, something the alternative energy folks could use. We'll see what he has to say tonight.

Now, with all the hot air being wasted in Washington, if we put a wind farm on the Potomac ...

Thanks to Chris for the link.

So "Pimp Boy" and some of his butt buddies pulling "a Liddy"? Think the Dems will use it to political advantage? Yeah, me neither.

*Though some of us might say the Republican burglary of the U.S. never ended after Nixon left.

This also shows how Karzai came to power.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

11 Green Berets did all that? I got a idea here: bring all our troops home and send 11 more Green Berets over to Clusterfuckistan and tell 'em to continue the march. Probly wouldn't hurt to give 'em the radio with Strategic Air Command at the other end either.

Bush's minimal success at very low cost and then his decision to put Afghanistan on the back burner in favor of his criminal war in Iraq was like plugging a leaky toilet with cheap silicone seal and walking away - the next thing you know, the house is full of shit and you're up to your neck in it.

If the subject of the religious right's massive infiltration of the military in which I proudly served disturbs you as much as it disturbs me, go read BradBlog, links at site.

One excerpt from an email from a US soldier:

Nothing in my first 2 deployments prepared me for what happened with the Trijicon ACOG gun sights during my 3rd deployment to Afghanistan. I will never forget the day it occurred. It was morning and there was a mandatory formation of several companies. A very senior NCO was yelling at us which is not that unusual. He asked a private what it was that he (the private) was holding in his hand and the private said it was his "weapon" several times to which the senior NCO replied "and what ELSE is it"?

FInally, the senior NCO said that the private's rifle was also something else; that because of the biblical quote on the ACOG gunsight it had been "spiritually transformed into the Fire Arm of Jesus Christ" and that we would be expected to kill every "haji" we could find with it. He said that if we were to run out of ammo, then the rifle would become the "spiritually transformed club of Jesus Christ" and that we should "bust open the head of every haji we find with it.'"He said that Uncle Sam had seen fit not to give us a "pussy 'Jewzzi' (combination of the word 'Jew' and Israeli made weapon 'Uzi') but the "fire arm of Jesus Christ" and made specific mention of the biblical quotes on our gun sights.

There's a "senior NCO" (No Chance on the Outside) that needs to be made a slick-sleeve private and start his military career over. And just for motivation he should stay in the same outfit with the soldiers he tried to intimidate with his phony xtian bullshit.

From a hate email from a 'Task Force Patriot':

I am amazed with the zealotry with which you attack this poor group of old veterans. I am not amazed, though, that you are a jew.

You do not fool me, I've done my research on you and your "organization". You are no better than the ACLU and are just one small part of the effort of those that would destroy this great nation from within.

I will see you in the streets.

I'm a Veteran too, asshole. Name the street. You ain't got the balls to show up.

Mr. President, Here's A Healthcare Bill That Will Do More Than Yours Did, And Can Actually Pass

I'm convinced that Europeans get better TV coverage of us than we do.

Thanks to OuiCestBon, Netherlands.

Rush writes ... for The Onion:

...

Try to look at it from my point of view. I have no reason to live. In my 59 years, I've made millions of dollars, built a veritable media empire, and accomplished virtually everything that a man of my limited imagination and worldview could possibly accomplish. And yet, at this point, in no way could you refer to what I'm doing as "living," exactly. I just sort of exist. I derive no real pleasure from life. Oh, sure, I talk a big game about what a golf nut I am and how much I enjoy the taste of a fine cigar, but it's all horseshit. Complete and utter horseshit.

...

So the President went on ABC with Diane Sawyer saying "I'd rather be a really good one-term President than a mediocre 2-term President."

Lemmie ask ya something, pal. If you were a one-term President, what would follow you? The Dems wouldn't primary you. A 3rd Party candidate couldn't win, but would throw the election to the Republicans.

So, in four years you'll be able to say "It's been fun" and walk off into the sunset while a Republican dismantles all the "really good" stuff you've done? This is, of course, assuming your next 3 years go better than this first one.

You know, I'd like a President who has a vision past the first 4 years; someone with a 'master plan' of where he wants the nation to go over the next 50. I don't want a guy, a year in, to be accepting the fact he might not win a second term. Instead, I'd like him to get on the stick and do what he promised to do; at the very least, give it a wholehearted attempt.