Quote of the Day - Zwei
... 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 ...
... 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 ...
Mother Nature's wrath has forced the U.S. House to scrap its work week.
With Congress on a previously scheduled break next week for the Presidents' Day holiday, lawmakers won't be back in Washington until Feb. 22.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
[...] 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:
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.
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.
Christians claim hate crimes law an effort to ‘eradicate’ their beliefs
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!!!”
Poll: Fox Most Trusted Name in News
Glenn Beck most trusted man in America.
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 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.
Elefantentreffen Arcitc-Nudes (0°C), Mud-Hillclimb & Boxer-Pirouette
Fortsetzung folgt!!!
I think Obama's main obstacle in affecting real change is the culture of DC. To them, erosion is a radical concept.
Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Giant Humboldt squid taking Southland anglers by storm
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.
"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.
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."
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.”
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Le mot du jour seems to be making the rounds in the "more politically correct than thou" circles.
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.
The medical term for Down Syndrome is Trisomy-21 or Trisomy-g. It is often shortened in medical slang to Tri-g.
...this whole pseudo-controversy is retarded.
Saying the GOP is the party of no is one thing – and technically correct – but more so it’s the party of antediluvian cluelessness
[...] 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?
... 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.
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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.
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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.
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."

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

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

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."
So effective was the president that Fox News cut away from the broadcast 20 minutes before it ended.
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."
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.
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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.
Oregonians Raise Taxes On Rich, Big Corporations to Fund Critical Services
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%).”
[...] "The world is run by those who show up,” Nehring said. “Tea party activists show up and that's important."
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.
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[Supreme Court Justice Samuel] Alito has now spoken more in the House Chamber than Clarence Thomas has in the Supreme Court.
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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.
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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?
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."
Breitbart admits paying activist who tried to bug Democratic senator
Salt Lake City GOP Cancels Keynote Speech By Inspirational Speaker ACORN Pimp James O’Keefe
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.”
I am a journalist. The truth shall set me free.
Fox News Devastated Over Arrest Of ACORN Pimp
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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