The Odd Couple + a Couple

This is just a passage I like from page four of a Rolling Stone piece by Matt Taibbi, the subhead of which makes me reach for the laughin' bleach:

How the GOP race became a showdown between a walking OCD diagnosis and a flatulent serial adulterer

But I digress...

[...] The grown-ups in the party establishment and their lackeys in the press simply refuse to take Paul seriously, which is part of the reason Paul is so extraordinarily attractive to young people (in both Iowa and New Hampshire, he scored almost half of the under-30 vote).

But the Republican Party is not dominated by 22-year-old college students reading The Fountainhead for the first time and finally understanding what it is they've always hated about their ex-hippie parents. No, the party is dominated by middle-aged white suburbanites who hate Mexico, John King and the Golden Rule and are willing to flock to anyone who'll serve up the Fox News culture war in big portions and without shame or hesitation. Romney might have memorized a few I-hate-Obama sound bites, but voters simply don't believe him. Gingrich alone offers GOP voters the emotional payoff they want out of an election – an impassioned fight against the conspiracy, played out in thrillingly contrary three-hour debates on health care with the liberal Satan. Gingrich lives for confrontation: He was born for this sort of insurgent primary politics.

The only problem is, he's a bloviating, egomaniacal hog clinging to a third marriage who suffers from incurable diarrhea of the mouth and, according to polls, is one of the most intensely disliked politicians in America, making him an utterly absurd choice for the general election. If Gingrich ends up winning the nomination, Obama will essentially be running against the political version of Gilbert Gottfried or raw garlic – strong tastes that some like quite a lot, but many more can't stand to even be near. If that happens, every Democratic flack from Leon Panetta to Obama himself will have to wear restraints to keep from publicly crying out in joy.

I've given up. I'm at the stage where I point and laugh hysterically at wingnut bumperstickers even if the people are right there putting their groceries in the trunk. Lotsa booze these days. Ah, blessed oblivion is better than their presidential field. Or their chances. Heh.

'The Market' Has Chosen the Winner of the Culture Wars

It's all about the bucks as usual. Tina Dupuy.

The argument could be made (mainly by those who want to take us back to a mythical innocent time of the supposedly recent past) that it's advertisers who've corrupted our culture and changed what's socially acceptable through their manipulations. Or, if you have sold your proverbial soul to the gods of unfettered commerce — like the rightwing self-described Culture Warriors, or the (formerly) Moral (former) Majority — advertisements are the market speaking for the greater culture at large. And the greater culture, funny enough, largely disagrees with the rightwing.

You can think of the market as a leading indicator of our social mores and the Republican primary as a lagging one.
...

The GOP-worshipped market has chosen the winner of the culture wars, and it hasn't looked favorably on its most devout.

Of course, the market for Republicans is just like the Bible or the Constitution. They worship it piously as long as they believe it agrees with them.

If their deified market is all-knowing and all-powerful — it clearly favors a progressive social agenda...and not the GOP's.

Go read. The gory details are in between my quotes.

Gay Marriage, Susan Komen Debacle, and Dirty Harry

The Rude Pundit on those topics.

Man, it's just Tuesday, and it's already been a shit week for conservatives:

And our best wishes for many more!

1. Proposition 8, the Mormon-licious California law that banned gay marriage, was declared unconstitutional by a 3-judge panel (or a "justice-a'-trois") from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Right now, that sound you're hearing is several million evangelical heads exploding and the clicks of computer keyboards as assloads of money pour into homophobic candidates and organizations and the dropping of pants, licking of lips, and moans, moans, moans of joy all over California.

2. Karen Handel [...] Seriously, it would have been easier just to say, "Yeah, fine, we did it because we're big damn conservatives and we hate Planned Parenthood because conservatives are fucking crazy now."

3. Speaking of conservatives being fucking crazy, the outrage on the right over the Clint Eastwood-narrated Chrysler ad is beyond bizarre. [...]

At some point, someone needs to say to Republicans that it's okay to have been wrong about the auto bailout. Now let's move on.

But they can't. They just can't. Karl Rove pranced onto Fox "news" to announce his displeasure, saying that the ad was "a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising." The man who helped demonize a legless Vietnam vet said he was "offended."

What this reaction says is something deeper. See, Clint Eastwood, who voted for John McCain and opposed the bank and car bailouts, thinks the whole controversy is bullshit. He rewrote the script, and he's donating his pay to charity. What Rove and the rest of the right's negative reaction really means is that they are divorced from the nation as a whole. In the ad, Eastwood says that, during tough times, "we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one." We acted, in essence, like Americans.

Conservatives are saying that it's offensive to expect them to do so. And if Dirty Harry wants to wallow around with the dirty hippies, then fuck him, too.

Try it, Turdblossom. Make my day...

Headline of the Day

Orly Taitz Orders Prosecution of Everyone Who Disagrees With Her

Funny. This woman is so far past being ready for the rubber room...

How to be outraged in America

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford going off on the reaction of some to MIA flipping the bird at a football game and the backlash over the Komen hard right turn.

What was it this time? Right. Rapper M.I.A.'s 1.5 seconds of a middle finger, raised pseudo-defiantly during Madonna's completely ridiculous, lip-synced Super Bowl halftime show. A middle finger! Heads will roll! Punishment must be doled! Who, pray who, will save the children from this frightening woman's vile extremity, given how everyone knows hysterical middle fingers lead straight to unchecked lesbianism, Obamacare and dancing for seven straight days at Burning Man? What's next, Starbucks teaming up with Satan? Oh wait.
...

One final question, PTC: Did you happen to notice the hordes of giant, sweaty gladiators furiously bashing each others' skulls in for three straight hours and calling it a sport? Did you notice the adorable homoerotics of it all, or perhaps the millions of very drunk fans, or the mountains of garbage food, or the onslaught of $4 million TV ads hawking beer and trucks and sex and beer, all pummeling the hell out of your kids' small, impressionable minds? Do you have any idea what real, healthy outrage even looks like?

Let's call the kind of outrage Komen's decision ignited the healthy kind of outrage, in diametric opposition of PTC's childish pseudo-indignation, an informed and electrifying kind of reaction that had the wonderful consequence of alerting tens of thousands, even millions of people to the fact that not only is one of the nation's leading charities violently lopsided, fundamentally misguided and not so deserving of your dollars, but that Planned Parenthood is, well, just the opposite.

Are you furious, for example, that Microsoft -- and hell, all of Washington State -- now officially endorse gay marriage? Are you outraged that yet another appeals court deemed hateful ol' Prop 8 unconstitutional? Are you an outraged religious group, furious that Obama might make you step into the 20th century? Or are you upset, like the clearly brilliant GOP Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana, that Planned Parenthood is opening an $8 billion "abortionplex" in Kansas, replete with a climbing wall, noiseless incinerator and gift shop? I'm so sorry for you. The crushing roar of imminent doom (and rampant idiocy) must be deafening.

I used to be outraged all the time at the things Repugs did, but it has subsided somewhat to mere spikes of outrage which subside to mostly mild amusement at their ridiculous antics to turn the clock back to a time that never was where life was beautiful all the time and everybody was a rich white Christian. I love the part where they shoot themselves or each other in the feet, which is happening more and more as people catch on (finally!) to their shit..

11 Dimensional Chess ...

Remember the debt ceiling talks, where the Orange Boner had a gun to the head of the US economy? Remember the failed Super Committee and the Draconian cuts to everything they were supposed to prevent? Well the chickens are coming home to roost and the GOP is squirming like they have ass mites:

...

Last year, the GOP held the routine debt ceiling limit increase hostage for $1.2 trillion in cuts. At the time the GOP was attempting to brand itself as the party of fiscal prudence. Much to the annoyance of many on the left, President Obama responded by embracing the cause of deficit reduction.

At the time, Obama's move looked ridiculous as the country is in a recession caused by a lack of demand. The last thing the country needs to worry about right now is the risk of inflation.

...

Now, I ain't gonna buy that Barry had this planned all along. It's better to be lucky than good:

...

This is how the GOP negotiating strategy collapses when they can't hold the country hostage with a gun to its head. The McCain/Kyl proposals all offer something that the President probably doesn't want in return for something he wants to avoid. Heads I win, tails you lose. [em in orig]

...

The GOP is so short sighted that they'll reflexively oppose everything Obama proposes, even when it's everything they want, without thinking out how it's gonna play out in the long term, like how their obstruction would come around to the bite them in the ass.

There went the drone program...

President Barack Obama may have just had his favorite day as leader of the free world. Video.

Congratulates young science geek for single-handedly coming up with Anti-Drone Cannon (ADC) and putting foreign and domestic surveillance at risk.

I mighta made part of that up...

That look on his face is priceless! That's either "Wow!" if everything went well, or "Oops!" if it didn't. "Watch this!" may have been involved.



Mrs. G says the young engineer/gunner looks like a mini Jay Carney. Heh.

Scrap the wingnuts, Clyde...

Shopping day today. I'll leave yas with this, links and video:

Dirty Harry has turned against the GOP.

That’s basically the message in last night’s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, during which guest host Chris Hayes examined the popular Chrysler Super Bowl ad featuring Oscar-winning director Clint Eastwood.

His conclusion: Eastwood’s sideways endorsement of the auto bailouts punches conservatives where it hurts — right in the Reagan.
...

But now that Eastwood is singing a different tune, and praising one of President Barack Obama’s policies on an issue where his likely Republican challenger goes in the exact opposite direction, conservatives have been sent reeling.

Yep, ol' Clint committed an unpardonable sin - he told the truth about something Obama did.

How long ...

Are they gonna keep up the charade?

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground. [my em]

...

Vietnam much?

Two shitbag fucking wars that accomplished nothing but make defense contractors rich and kill a buncha young Americans. We're out of Iraq and now it's time to leave this shithole too. The troops know it, most Americans know it, it's time for our leaders to get with the program and bring our people home.

Great thanks to our pal Montag for the link.

Sailor Beware!

I stole this from deuddersun's FB page and he stole it somewhere else.

I fell outta my chair when I saw this. Given the lengths (and lies) the right-wingers go to in trying (and failing, except with the Dead End Quarter) to demonize us, this made perfect sense.

In actual fact, of course, the lovely, virginal liberal girl would have gotten a dose from the evil Repug squid who forced himself upon her. And so it goes...



Hey sailor - ya wanta get laid, every legal prostitute in Nevada is a registered Repuglicant (with video!). You'll find that out when you ask "How much?". Heh.

Who knew ...

Clint Eastwood was a Commie?

The Great Man’s Wife

Say what you will about MFBTIR but when she sharpens her claws and goes after other women she can't be beat!

IF you want to figure out why Newt Gingrich is still out there grasping for lost power, howling at the moon like King Lear, look to Callista.

While a trophy wife is admired by her man, the admiring eyes of a Transformational Wife are there to propel her man to the next level. And when a woman who wants to be a Transformational Wife merges with a man who calls himself a Transformational Figure, you can expect a narcissistic blastoff.

Thanks for clearing that up. I was thinking it's more of a "blastocystic knockoff".

“Now he is unleashed. The best and worst of him have been fed and watered.”

I don't wanta know how Callista waters Neut...must bleach now...

Quote of the Day

Our pal Comrade Misfit:

Going in with two lawyers can be taken as kind of a tacit admission that Walker knows that he has a large target pinned to his chest.

Let's hope they hit the 10 ring.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Romney Wins Nevada Caucuses
He did well with wealthy whites, Gingrich won a majority of poor illiterate whites, Santorum took the fanatically religious whites and Paul polled best with isolationist survivalist white supremacist whites.

Former Rep. Duke Cunningham Reports He, 80% of Other Inmates Support Newt
Wrapping up convicted felon vote.

Vocabulary Builders

unintended consequence n., unanticipated effect of an action which may result in the opposite of what was originally intended, e.g., the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court had the unintended consequence of giving Newt Gingrich a chance to spoil Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

What?

No "fucky sucky, GI, ten dollah, love you long time"?

...

Featuring a young Asian woman who thanks Stabenow for borrowing so much money from Asia and sending jobs overseas, Hoekstra's ad jams an incredible number of stereotypes into just 30 seconds -- from the bicycle to the rice paddies to the accent.

...

Heh ...

Tom Tomorrow visits the Rightwingoverse:

"Hi, honey ...

I'm going to pick you up at your house, take you to dinner and a movie, go for drinks after, and then, when I'm good and horned up, we're going back to your house and you're going to fulfill whatever sexual desire my twisted little mind can think up, whether you want to or not."

Is that what Ron Paul calls "honest rape"?

Thanks to Scott Lemieux for the link.

For Gordon ...

I had my Eye-Q lowered yesterday too.

All pics stolen off the intarwebs.

Yay Jints!

Rooty Nooty ...

I'm rooting for Noot too:

...

Meanwhile, the other big reason I'm rooting for Newt is colonizing the moon. He's not backing down on that proposal and says it can be done without "massive government spending." I don't care how they pay for it. I want to be a pioneer in the final frontier and live on the moon. I mean who wouldn't want to wake up and see the Earth rise?

Say what you will about the big load of shit, he does have a way with the English language and when is ire is directed against his fellow GOP candidates, it's entertaining as hell. I hope that twit Adelson finances him all the way to the convention.

Thanks to MBRU for the link.

Heh...

In honor of National I.Q. Lowering Day.

Thanks to YubaNet.

The Jukebox in my mind ...

A first! I actually figured how a song got in my head (aside from the subliminal shit Gordon does to me once in a while). So I woke up with this going around in my head:

Loch Lomond - Elephants and Little Girls

And I realized it was from this commercial that's been playing lately:

Heh ...

Thanks to the Americans Against The Tea Party FB page.

'Splains a lot ...

You know, when Ari Flyshit is involved, it's always political and it's always gonna fail:

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush and prominent right-wing pundit, was secretly involved in the Komen Foundation’s strategy regarding Planned Parenthood. Fleischer personally interviewed candidates for the position of “Senior Vice President for Communications and External Relations” at Komen last December. According to a source with first-hand knowledge, Fleischer drilled prospective candidates during their interviews on how they would handle the controversy about Komen’s relationship with Planned Parenthood.

...

Nuff said ...

Thanks to our pal Grandpa Eddie for the link.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Beautiful.

Emmylou Harris, The Pearl, Lexington Opera House 1-29-12

Thanks to kyjukeboxgraduate. Go see Emmylou's dogs.

Eddie Haskell* for President!

Dear Tea Party: Why so mad?

A quick read. Last ¶:

I could go on here; however, I am not sure it would do any good. See I think I finally get it...I now understand your anger. You are not in power. You are not calling the shots, and it pisses you off. Here is the deal. This is the United States of America and while we have our problems we have always persevered—not because we stayed in the past like you seem to want to do. No, we have moved forward by looking towards the future and doing bold things. In your world we would have never settled the west, we would have never gone to the moon. Yet, you say you want your county back...what exactly do you want back? The United States you seem to want only existed in Leave it to Beaver re-runs.

I disagree with the writer about settling the west. After all, that was pure freedom, lawlessness, greed, guns, and genocide, and the teabaggers loves them that shit.

*Eddie Haskell

...has become a cultural reference, recognized as an archetype for insincere sycophants.

Where's Porky?

From disinformation™

Inmate Secretly Adds Pig To State Decal On Vermont Police Cruisers

State officials Thursday pointed to the failure of the quality assurance office within the Vermont Correctional Industries Print Shop in St. Albans to detect a prisoner-artist’s addition made four years ago to the traditional state police logo. A spot on the shoulder of the cow in the state emblem was modified into a pig…

Heh. Reminds me of the time there were several CHP officers eating dinner in a local restaurant that was having a big Jägermeister promo going on in the bar at the same time. All three Chippie cruisers left with a brand new Jägermeister bumpersticker.

Putting a pig inside the official door graphic is subtle fuckin' GENIUS! Took 'em four years to catch on. Kudos to that gent and I hope to God he'd done his time and got out before this got discovered.

Never saw him before. Another draft, please...

Panetta believes Israel may strike Iran this spring

Israel reminds me of the dinky loudmouth, there's one in every motorcycle club it seems, who likes to start fights in bars. Usually he does OK, but he's overconfident in knowing the bigger club members will come to his aid if he doesn't. The other clubbers don't exactly enjoy this but, hey, one on all, all on one. The little jerk abuses that sometimes.

It's very easy to get him over it. Just sit there and drink your beer and enjoy watching him get his ass kicked. Repeat as necessary.

An inexact metaphor that could never happen, I know, but it's the way I feel.

Who lost China Iraq?

Good article in Salon. Shorter: Bush and the neocons for starting that unwinnable, unnecessary imperial clusterfuck of a war crime in the first place.

As for the claims that Iran would benefit from the U.S. withdrawal, the fact of the matter is that Iraq became “exposed” to Iranian influence the moment the Bush administration removed Saddam Hussein. For years Saddam had served as the biggest check on Iranian power in the region. It was the Bush administration, supported by the likes of Krauthammer and Ajami, that created an Iraqi government largely run by Iran’s partners and clients. Paradoxically, removing the U.S. presence from Iraq could actually serve to diminish Iranian influence there, by removing one of the drivers of resentment that Iran has exploited in recent years to its advantage.

Whatever the merits of the conservative attacks on Obama’s pullout, it is worth noting how little traction they have gotten in the media and in the presidential campaign. The anti-pullout talking points have been delivered and repeated with frequency and discipline that conservatives regularly exhibit, but Americans just aren’t interested in hearing it, at least not right now. Polls continue to show about three-quarters of Americans support Obama’s decision to withdraw troops, with around two-thirds believing that the war was not worth the costs and consequences.
...

The continuing violence in Iraq (which is itself driven by enduring political tensions that call into question the “success of the surge” narrative) will be offered as evidence of Obama’s alleged bungling of a war that was won for him. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies (which were very much apparent when President Bush was still in office) will be presented as proof of Obama’s alleged failure to commit the necessary resources to the building of Iraqi democracy.

In reality, these things should be taken as evidence of the limits of U.S. military power to create the outcomes we would like. While Americans currently aren’t buying what the Iraq war’s remaining advocates are selling, it’s important to keep reminding everybody what’s in the snake oil.

Military power is for DEFENSE, not to "create outcomes". We're slowly learning that about like several other now-defunct empires did.

Their fair share ...

Is a lot smaller than mine.

Pic from United NY on the FB.

Keep yer gummint hands ...

Off my Medicare! Seems it works better now. I wonder why that is?

The Obama administration announced Wednesday that the Medicare Advantage program, which allows seniors to receive health coverage through a private insurer, is enjoying lower costs and more customers as a result of the health care reform law.

Medicare Advantage enrollment has risen 10 percent over the last year while average premiums have fallen by 7 percent, said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. She also pointed out that similar improvements were seen the previous year.

The figures bolster President Obama’s defense of his signature achievement, and for Democrats it has the added bonus of refuting earlier Republican warnings that “Obamacare” would gravely undermine the choice provisions in Medicare.

...

Dear Average Conservative Joe,

It's time for you to learn the difference between people telling you what you want to hear and who to blame, and people who are actually looking out for your best interests.

What's $1mil ...

Between friends? Nothing if you're the Frothy Mixture telling a mother she should be glad to pay a million dollars a year for prescription drugs to keep her kid alive.

...

The mother replied that she could not afford her son's medication, Abilify, which can cost as much as $1 million a year without health insurance.

"Look, I want your son and everybody to have the opportunity to stay alive on much-needed drugs," Santorum insisted. "But the bottom line is, we have to give companies the incentive to make those drugs. And if they don't have the incentive to make those drugs, your son won't be alive and lots of other people in this country won't be alive."

"He’s alive today because drug companies provide care," the candidate continued. "And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here. I sympathize with these compassionate cases. … I want your son to stay alive on much-needed drugs. Fact is, we need companies to have incentives to make drugs. If they don’t have incentives, they won’t make those drugs. We either believe in markets or we don’t."

Fucking heartless scumbag. Sometimes I wish there was a Heaven and Hell so these sanctimonious, self-righteous hypocrites would end up where they belong. Look up the definition of 'motherfucker' in the dictionary and you'll find this shitbag's picture.

Shakin' it up in Wells

University of Nevada, Reno Seismological Lab reports 3.5 quake in Wells, Nev.

I think the earth moving in Wells is no big deal. It's the locale of the closest legal brothels to Salt Lake City, a few minutes from the closest casinos.

It's unusual for it to register on the Richter equipment 300 miles away, though. Musta been a busload of chubby Saints,er, unloading at the ol' Hacienda. Or maybe they were doin' a little ranching. More action in the bunkhouse than in the ol' corral, I betcha. Heh.

Just as an aside, the "ranch's" other location in Battle Mountain, formerly known as The Calico Club, is the only Nevada brothel I've ever actually been in. I had to go there years ago to collect a local gal who skipped out on her court date after I loaned her some money for bail and put me on the hook for the bond amount. Nicest people you could imagine. Gave me ice water and souvenirs. Here's an actual bumpersticker. As you can see, it was too long for my scanner.



Just what I'd want on my bumper in the tabernacle parking lot. Heh.

Our Unending Abortion War

RuPun on the Komen hard-right turn.

Even if you are viscerally anti-choice, wanting to defund Planned Parenthood for performing abortions is like wanting to defund the entire military because of waterboarding. And it's ultimately, obviously self-defeating: if your goal is to reduce the number of abortions, then you want Planned Parenthood operational and fully-funded because, see, Planned Parenthood has prevented more abortions than every anti-choice group ever.

But that hasn't stopped the yawping chimps of the right from doing a chest-thump of victory over the Susan G. Komen Foundation cutting off its funding for Planned Parenthood. Komen had seemingly overcome its origins as an organization of wealthy, Republican women and became a force in research, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer, and it had been giving grants on the national level to Planned Parenthood directly for the last five years. By its own June 2011 document, "During the past five years, Komen Affiliate grants to Planned Parenthood have paid for the following: Breast cancer and breast health education for nearly 160,000 women, 139,000 clinical breast exams, 4,866 mammograms, detection of 177 breast cancers."

But because that occurred through an organization that also provides abortion services, it is evil breast cancer detection.

That's what passes for logic on the right. I guess breast cancer is OK for the godless commie women who use Planned Parenthood.

Time to go...

Beeb Asia reports on what we all knew anyway but has actually come to light not that any of the principals wanted it to. Good read.

The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC.

The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people.

A BBC correspondent says the report is painful reading for international forces and the Afghan government.

The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says the report - on the state of the Taliban - fully exposes for the first time the relationship between the ISI and the Taliban.

The report is based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians.
...

"Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad," it said.

It quotes a senior al-Qaeda detainee as saying: "Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can't [expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them watching."

"The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad."

Time to go. Also time to quit sending Pakistan protection money because they've got nukes. We're pretty much funding the Taliban by doing so, have been for years.

I think we need to find their nukes, if we don't already know where they are, and gently drop a nice funeral wreath on them. Just so they know we're watching.

Update:

NYTimes

One former Obama administration official speculated that the American military might have been behind the leak. “The mood in Kabul is that the U.S. military are very critical of Pakistan,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of military rules about discussing classified material. “They think the problem is not the Taliban, but the ISI,” the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Pakistan’s spy agency.
...

But it was the accounts of cooperation between the insurgents and local government officials or security forces that seemed to most upset NATO officials. “Captured photographs of Taliban personnel riding openly in the green Ford Ranger pickup trucks of the Afghan army are commonplace throughout Afghanistan,” the report said, adding that the vehicles were “sold or donated” to the Taliban. Elsewhere it cited a document related to a plot between Afghan intelligence agents and the Taliban to ambush American soldiers.

Gee, I wonder if FoMoCo will work that into ads...oh, they don't have to - we already paid for those pickups.

New slogan ...

For the GOP.

... Your 21st century GOP: "We can botch 'Fuck You!'" ...

What'd I say ...

Yesterday? Are you warmed up enough yet?

The US plans to wind down its war in Afghanistan a year or more earlier than scheduled by ending its combat role in the second half of 2013.

Defence secretary Leon Panetta said no decision has been made on how quickly to draw down American and other Nato forces, but that the shift away from fighting is being brought forward. At the same time, Nato is considering reducing the planned size of the Afghan army because of the cost involved.

...

There ya go.

Quote of the Day

BJ Bjornson:

Probably a little late as his always slim chance for the Republican nomination slips ever further away, but this clip of Gingrich rather perfectly sums up what the religious right means when they talk about “religious freedom”. It isn’t actually freedom of (and from) all religions, its a free pass for their religion and their religion alone. No one else need apply.

...

How you do it ...

Our pal Comrade Misfit explains how to give a big "Fuck You" to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.