Worldwide Bacon Shortage Reported
Also, glut of unsold lettuce, tomatoes.
Apple CEO Tim Cook Apologizes For New iPhone Mapping AppI hope they make him pay for draining the lake (enough water to cover California a foot deep) and cleaning the new car smell out of the water. Heh.
After driving his Tesla into Lake Tahoe.
SAT Reading Scores Hit 4-Decade LowAfter the grid goes down, texting shorthand will help save on pencil lead.
Frtnly thy cn rd txt.
Obama the cage fighter and Romney the delicate puncher¿Quien sabe? One-two punch or tear his throat out? Depends on who brung what and who gets in the best shot. My money's on the one who looks the best in Speedos.
Asked what her primary worry would be should her husband succeed in defeating President Obama on Nov. 6, Mrs. Romney replied, "You know, I think my biggest concern, obviously, would just be for his mental well-being."
While it's true that your husband, if elected, would be unlikely to suffer the barrage of underhanded slams at his race, or at his place of birth, life will not be a cakewalk for you, because governing this country isn't all about the economy, nor will you two reign as king and queen.Fuckin' A ... men.
It's about 3 AM phone calls, and a Congress that can't seem to get anything done. It's about a Tea Party group funded by billionaires who will constantly put Mitt under pressure to produce his digits for appropriate bill-signings, show up at state dinners, and do little else.
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It's about bankers and a crappy mortgage/housing recovery which your policies won't help at all. Wait till the bankers tell you it's not acceptable to simply let the housing market "bottom out."
Just you wait until your husband tries to reach across the aisle to get something done. He'll find a few Democrats ready to listen, but that's not who he has to worry about. The tea party groups will call for his head on a platter. That means he'll never be able to reach across the aisle without risking insane people in the Senate blocking bills, and if he moves too far right, he'll have those of us on the left pushing back and you know what, Ann? We'll win those battles.
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So honey, if you're worried about his mental health now, just you wait. Better yet, just go ahead and take a seat over there and watch President Obama win the election. I'm certain Michelle Obama has no such concerns for Barack's mental health since he seems to take it all in stride quite well. Maybe it was those kids throwing stones at him in Indonesia, or maybe he's got a heart.
I'll stick with the guy who's proven himself. Don't you worry your pretty little head about Mitt. I'm sure you both will have a lovely retirement together, starting November 7, 2012.
Israel is not Calling the Shots in this US ElectionOl' Bibi tried, but...
Netanyahu blinked.I have no idea what Hillary whispered in his ear but I bet it made everything shrivel up. Heh. Maybe something like, "You wanta start a war with Iran to get Willard elected? Go right the fuck ahead. We'll send FEMA in a year or so to help the Arabs clean up Israel so it's livable". That "clunk" heard 'round the world was Bibi's nutsack hitting his tonsils.
That’s the takeaway from the goofy address (complete with Spy vs. Spy-style cartoon bomb held up to the audience) by the right-wing, Cheltenham, PA-raised, MIT-educated Israeli prime minister to the United Nations General Assembly Thursday.
Prior to that address, Netanyahu had been virtually campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, hinting repeatedly on US television interviews of a pre-election attack by Israel on Iran’s nuclear fuel-making facilities, criticizing incumbent US President Barack Obama, and demanding that Obama and the US draw a “red line” on how far Iran could go in refining nuclear fuel before it would be considered essential for the US to join Israel in destroying Iran’s military infrastructure.
It was the most blatant attempt by a foreign leader to interfere in a US election in memory, but it was a bust.
Analysts are now suggesting that Netanyahu has backed off or been called off, even complimenting President Obama and giving him a valentine -- an endorsement before election day of sorts--saying in his UN address, “I very much appreciate the president’s position, as does everyone in my country.”A valentine, huh? I suppose a blow job was outta the question...
With Obama’s re-election looking increasingly likely, and with even a Democratic recapture of the House of Representatives looking at least possible, there is a chance that AIPAC will finally be defanged. [...] Similarly, if Obama and the Democrats discover that despite refusing to cave in to Israeli demands or AIPAC threats, they can still be elected, while those favored by AIPAC and Israeli leaders like Netanyahu go down to defeat, AIPAC will no longer be able to intimidate US political figures in the future.With friends like AIPAC and the neocons, who needs enemies?
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—With the first Presidential debate just two days away, G.O.P. nominee Mitt Romney has been working intensively on two skills that have eluded him throughout the campaign: talking and thinking.CLEARLY LABELED SATIRE
According to one aide, much of Mr. Romney’s debate preparation has involved rehearsing a slew of prepackaged “zingers,” with mixed results: “We gave him what we thought was a foolproof line about the budget deficit and he somehow turned it into a crack about gay Mexicans.”
Reportedly, Mr. Romney’s practice debates have gone worse than expected, with the former Massachusetts governor getting trounced by a variety of opponents, including the Apple personal assistant Siri.
Scott Brown is sorry Elizabeth Warren forced his staffers to be so racist by being Indian, you guys. For their next trick, they will all make Chinese eyes at Chinese people and then have “Ghetto Night” where they wear do-rags and drink malt liquor.Heh. Yep, that's how dipshits roll.
The hope many Obama supporters felt four years ago was not a phony hope. We didn’t expect miracles, but a long, brutal grind against the forces and interests that brought the U.S. to its 2009 economic and moral nadir. I’ve watched this president face those forces and interests with cunning and pragmatism, but also platinum-strength persistence. Obama never promised a mistake-free presidency, or a left-liberal presidency, or an easy path ahead. He always insisted that he could not do for Americans what Americans needed to do for themselves. In his dark and sober Inaugural Address he warned that “the challenges we face are real, they are serious, and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time.”I have nothing to add.
But in a first term, he ended the Iraq War on schedule, headed off a second Great Depression, presided over much more robust private-sector job growth in his recovery than George W. Bush did in his, saved the American automobile industry, ended torture, and saw his own party embrace full marriage equality and integrate gays into the military. If those liberals who voted for him in 2008 think this is somehow a failure or a betrayal, in the context of the massive crisis he inherited, then they could not have been serious about real change in the first place. But some of us were—and still are. We understood that real change meets real resistance. In fact, you only know it’s real when the resistance is so strong. And the proper response to that resistance is not to fire the president who made this Reagan-like first-term progress in a far worse economic and fiscal climate, but to redouble on the Obama promise, to insist that America’s profound problems can only be addressed by a compromising president making bipartisan deals. And which ticket is likelier to compromise with the other party: Obama–Biden or Romney–Ryan? The question answers itself.
Just as Reagan became an icon only in his second term, Obama needs four more years to entrench and build upon the large, unfinished strides in his first term. That’s why, if you backed Obama in 2008, as a liberal wanting change, as an independent wanting pragmatic solution-seeking, or as a conservative hoping to drag the GOP back from Palin-style insanity, it makes no sense to bail on him now. Because this is when the payoff of the long game really kicks in, when stronger economic growth will put a wind at the president’s back, when a bipartisan deal on debt could lift business confidence and accelerate recovery, when universal health-care reform becomes irreversible and health-care spending is slowed, when the last soldier leaves Afghanistan, when millions of illegal immigrants can come out of the shadows and help build the next economy, and when the spiraling emotions of religious warfare can be calmed, managed, and handled, rather than intensified, polarized, and spread more widely.
This was always Obama’s promise. He has not betrayed it. And we—yes, we—-deserve a chance to fulfill it.
The Republican Party of Florida has cut ties with a company it paid $1.2 million to register voters after the elections supervisor in Palm Beach County asked the state’s attorney’s office to review 106 “questionable” applications.
Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher said she turned the applications over to law enforcement officials because of similar-looking signatures, missing information and wrong addresses on the forms. The questionable applications were part of a batch of 304 voter registration forms turned in by the firm using the Republican Party of Florida’s identification number, according to the Palm Beach Post.
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UC Davis Students Reach $1 Million Settlement with University Over Pepper-Spraying IncidentLet's see - $1mil ÷ 21 students = -clicketyclicketyching - $47,647.61 each.
Vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has apparently “gone rogue” and is now openly mocking his running mate, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) in front of reporters and staff. Ryan has gone so far as to nickname Romney “The Stench,” and top brass at the Romney campaign have taken to referring to Ryan as “Gilligan.”Bwahahahaha! I suggest pouring a #10 can of tomato juice on him, like gettin' skunk off a dog. It won't help but it'll be fun ta watch.
It was former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa Craig Robinson who said to the New York Times on Sunday, “I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him.”
There is an unmitigated gloom that now hangs over not just the Romney campaign, but media coverage of the entire race. You can see that despair in the face of everyone on television, in the words of every writer who still has to act as if this is anything but a waste of time until we learn by how much Barack Obama beats Mitt Romney. And the existential despair here is that they - hell, we - are all damned to keep discussing it because there's still over a month left. [...]Difference being that seals have value.
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On the right, the punditry and reporting ranges from resigned recognition of imminent failure, with a vague hope of stanching the bleed out in congressional races, to desperately hammering away at the same points against Obama because repeating lies has worked so well before. It's pathetic, like watching a wounded seal try to get back to the safety of the shore before the killer whale finishes it off.
On the left, even though champagne corks are shaking in their bottles, that range is from disbelief that it's been this easy to cocky "told-you-so" crowing (guilty as charged). Yeah, there's always that show-off orca that likes to toss around the seal prior to devouring it.
But all of this is a waste of time. The most desperate on the right will pen simple-minded articles, ranting about how Obama is so godforsakenly awful that Romney will win just because. That's bullshit, and their frantic ululations and blood sacrifices to their awful gods - Reagan, Ayn Rand, and others - demonstrate for all to see that they have nothing but dead virgins to show for their mad rituals at the edge of this exploding volcano.Rude's wrong for once. The main thing we have to worry about is that the Repugs will steal the election. They're damn sure trying by every means they can think up and they've been thinking up new ones since Obama beat Grampa Walnuts by more votes than they were able to steal by the old means that "elected" Bush.
Really, at this point, barring the discovery of some piece of video where Barack Obama says that he wants to fuck young white girls in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the only thing the President has to worry about with Romney is a surge in the pity vote.
Have you heard? Have you seen? For lo, the news hath spread far and wide, hath surely confounded many a true believer and scowling priest alike, even as it induced another long and beleaguered sigh from the subjugated female species of the world.
For lo, the fragment doth quote Jesus himself as referring to his “wife,” to Mary Magdalene herself as being one of his disciples, and to “dwelling with” none other than (oh no!) a woman.
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What? Heresy! Blasphemy! Utter desecration to the hoary, patriarchal view of Jesus as being a tortured, celibate loner who would never touch a woman’s naughty bits; to Mary (and subsequently all women throughout history, forever) as being a lowly, repentant whore, and to sexuality and females alike as being lesser and dangerous, fearsome twin forces of chaos and destruction to be avoided at all costs.
As King herself told Smithsonian Magazine (I’m citing the Guardian here), the fragment casts serious doubt on the whole Catholic claim of a celibate priesthood based on Jesus’ celibacy. And that’s just for starters.The Holy Mutha Church has based its POWER over people on fear right from the start, kinda like the Repugs are doing. Neither is going to change until everybody hears God's voice booming from the heavens telling them to knock off the cheap shit and lies in His name. Probably not even then. There's too much money and power in it.
Is that too dramatic? Too difficult to believe? Hardly. It’s exactly those kinds of bleak, soulless teachings the church has leveraged for millennia to maintain control and keep women – and their terrifying, hysterical sexuality – in check. You know, for starters.
What’s more, a normalized, married, more “human” Jesus just isn’t a very good sell to the huddled, fundamentalist masses who’ve been hammered for centuries by the tragic lie that their gods are distant, judgmental megalomaniacs far separate from lowly, sinful humanity, and the best you can ever hope for is to maybe work hard enough, endure sex awkwardly enough, and pay enough money to the church so you don’t go straight to hell....
Put another way: What we don’t know about Jesus’ life, and about Magdalene as she relates to goddess lore and pagan history, what we don’t know of the true (bloody, brutal, heavily political) origins of the Christian faith and how the church founders manipulated and re-wrote everything to suit their needs, still far outweighs what we do.
... More to the point — and this is something that Ann Romney would not say, but I will: Every one of the people who are now so horrified at the campaign Mitt Romney is running spent three decades making the campaign Mitt Romney's running absolutely inevitable.
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I did find one customer who had noticed the calorie labels: Dick Nigon of Sterling, Va. He and his wife, Lea, had stopped by McDonald’s after seeing an exhibit at the Renwick Gallery. Dick had ordered for the couple, noticed the calorie labels and liked them.
“I like that you have the information before you order,” he told me, when I asked about the labels. “It’s better than some kind of government health mandate in Obamacare.”
I told him that the calorie labels were, in fact, a government health mandate in Obamacare.
“Well that changes things a bit,” he responded. “I thought this was more of a voluntary sort of thing. Now I’m not quite sure how I feel about it.”
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More people have won awards playing Alaskastan’s part-time governor and full-time grifter MOOSELINI than Palin has won elections.
House Approves Bill “Allowing” Wealthy to Contribute to Treasury
Or they can just continue contributing to Romney.
Romney at Private Fundraiser: “My Job Not to Worry About” People Who Don't Pay Taxes
“Present company excluded,” he adds.
Scientists Find Way to Erase Bad Memories
They've been hired by Romney campaign.
Chinese Hospitals Debut Automatic Hands-Free “Sperm Extractors” for Sperm DonorsThe "Happy Endingbot"? Geez, them Chinks take the fun outta everything!
One American firm has plans to market them over here as “love machines.”
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In the 60 Minutes piece, interviewer Scott Pelley pointedly asked Romney: "Does the government have a responsibility to provide health care to the $50 million Americans who don't have it today?"
"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance," Romney said. "If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care."
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Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.
Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.
Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in America that’s worth a damn.
Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.
Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends’ houses but never has friends over to yours.
Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won’t hear you say “I get free lunch” when you get to the cashier.
Being poor is living next to the freeway.
Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last.
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In the near future, I think we might be able look back to say that this was the week the Mitt Romney campaign entered its death throes. I suppose some miracle cure is still possible, but given that his vice presidential pick is getting pelted by boos from seniors and he himself was caught on tape calling half the nation shiftless moochers, sending things so off the rails that Mitt now wants to talk about his tax returns, of all things, you know the Romney camp is in quite a panic. That's a hell of a Friday news dump.
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Masturbatory Randian poster boy Paul Ryan gets booed at the AARP:
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Willard's 47 percent remarks weren't an accident, nor were they a pander. This is what they truly believe. Pennsylvania Representative Daryl Metcalfe uses the same analogy about the Voter ID law he sponsored in Pennsylvania that shuts out 750,000 elderly and poor people from getting a proper ID to vote.
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Rush Limbaugh on Thursday lashed out at feminists — who he called “feminazis” — over the news that male genitalia are shrinking.
The conservative radio host pointed to an Italian study which found that the average male penis was 10 percent smaller than 50 years ago. Researchers cited weight gain around the waist, smoking, stress and environmental pollutants as factors.
But Limbaugh wasn’t buying that explanation.
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As part of my job, I talked to a young man today who had recently been fired. He is 26 years old. We sent him to Iraq when he was 19 years old. Yes, "we." You and I. Everyone who lives in the United States of America sent him there. And he got broken. Ruined. He has post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury that you and I are responsible for. He did not incur those injuries defending our freedoms, or securing weapons of mass destruction, or "fighting them there so we won't have to fight them here," or any of the other reasons we were told that we had to send young men and women to Iraq.
No.
We sent him to go get ruined for the biggest bunch of bullshit I've ever seen in my entire life.
And ruined is exactly what he is. He got fired from a job for some chickenshit reason. That was the longest employment he'd had since returning to the States in 2006. He'd worked there 17 months. He can't remember things on a day-to-day basis. He has problems dealing with what most of us would think are simple situations. He gets very nervous when he hears sudden, loud noises. And his wife has to help him with what you and I would think are simple tasks.
We did this to him. We ruined him. We destroyed his life and the lives of those who care for him and deal with his disabilities on a daily basis.
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After the vote, at midday on Wednesday, Patty Murray, chairman of the Senate veterans affairs committee, accused Senate Republicans of "shocking and shameful" obstructive politics.
She said: "At a time when one in four young veterans are unemployed, Republicans should have been able, for just this once, to put aside the politics of obstruction and to help these men and women provide for their families.
"It's unbelievable that even after more than a decade of war many Republicans still will not acknowledge that the treatment of our veterans is a cost of war. Today they voted down a fully paid-for bill that included bipartisan ideas to put veterans in jobs that will allow them to serve their communities. Jobs that would have helped provide veterans with the self-esteem that is so critical to their successful transition home."
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But by the time the FBI’s fake car bomb was parked outside the Cactus Bar & Grill in Chicago on Friday night, only Adel Daoud, 18, was there to push the button on what he thought was a detonator. Only Daoud was under arrest.
So what happened to the second person, an unidentified male who Dauod referred to as his “sahaba,” an Arabic term meaning companion?
Federal court records reveal a leader at a local mosque played a vital role in convincing the second man to abandon his plans for jihad just weeks before the would-be attack.
Undercover FBI agents, meanwhile, continued to lean heavily on Daoud. The agents supplied him with almost everything he needed to plan the attack and told him they were relaying messages from a foreign sheik who wanted to know if he was truly prepared to carry it out.
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It’s not just New Jersey Democrats pouncing on the latest batch of bad financial news for Gov. Chris Christie.
The Democratic Governor’s Association — headed by Christie foil Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley — issued a statement today on Standard & Poor's decision to lower its credit outlook for New Jersey from stable to negative. The negative action by Standard & Poor's follows two critical reports by two other Wall Street ratings firms who said the state’s economic recovery will continue to lag the nation’s. ...
“As you know, we are all gathered here this evening because I have agreed to accept the presidency,” Colbert said. “But unfortunately almost half, two score and seven percent will vote for my opponent, that socialist Hottentot. But what could one do? These people are just greedy parasites, sucking on the withered teat of Lady Liberty. Oh, how their hunger knows no bounds.”
More importantly, winter brings out the timorous clans of global warming deniers, all those scrappy literalists who don’t understand the concept of extreme weather, and instead take the words “global warming” to mean that if the entire country isn’t soon in a permanent state of sweaty, Florida-like misery, then science is bogus, God is awesome and it’s time to buy a new gun before Obama takes away all the bullets.
Are they not cute? They’re just not very bright, are they? It’s OK. They’re voting for Mitt Romney.
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Translation: We may never get to know if America votes Mitt into the dustbin of history because he’s an insufferable empty suit who doesn’t give a damn about anything you care about, or because he believes in that cutesy pseudo-religion with the shiny golden plates, the polygamy and the disturbing arranged marriages to not very bright celebrity starlets. Or am I thinking of someone else?
(4) Right! Tom Cruise. Thanks must be offered to Vanity Fair for further clarifying, once again and without any lingering doubt, just how insane, how creepy is the cult of Scientology, and Tom Cruise, and its tiny ferret of a leader David Miscavige, a strange little guy you never hear about until he’s featured in a cringing article like this, and you shudder a little in gratitude that you will never have to be in the same room as either of them.
You’d think it would be a tenet, one of the requirements for big-league membership: If your god can’t take a joke, if your faith/cult/deity is too weak, too litigious, too violently reactive that you must kill, or sue, or revolt every time someone says something negative or an idiot in another continent criticizes you in any way, it might be time to overhaul the organization. Or your god. Or your bitter and oppressive patriarchy.
(10) Meanwhile! Jesus was married. Like you didn’t already know.
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I don't have consumer debt at the moment. I pay the mortgage on time. I've been married to the same man for twenty-six years. I have no police record. I've never been arrested. I don't litter, I donate to charity, I try to pay my main writer, and I'm nice to elderly people and small children. I pay a higher percentage of my income in taxes than Willard Rmoney does.
But in Willard Rmoney's world, I am a loser, a parasite, a "taker", not a "maker". Why? Because I'm going to vote for Barack Obama in November. It's not that I think he's done a spectacular job. Like many others, including some who write on this very blog, I'm bitterly disappointed by him. But he's about the best we've got, and the thought of a Republican-dominated government with an entitled, condescending jackass like Willard Rmoney is just too appalling and frightening to even contemplate.
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From the Twitter Machine:
Dave Weigel:When you've lost David Brooks, you've lost middle America.
Kurt Andersen:Lots of rightys--@jpodhoretz, @AnnCoulter--have been radio-silent for 24 hours. But read David Brooks' spot-on column.John Harwood: David Brooks on Mitt's 47%-dependent claim: "country-club fantasy; what self satisfied millionaires say to each other"The Maddow Blog:"If he's lost David Brooks...."
Steve Inskeep (NPR)"Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the VA? Is it the student getting a loan?"
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This should squeeze the last drops of intelligence out of the Republican/Teabagger Party.
Oh dear. Poor Mitt is having a very bad day:
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"It remains important for the country that Romney wins in November (unless he chooses to step down and we get the Ryan-Rubio ticket we deserve!)," Kristol wrote on Tuesday. "But that shouldn't blind us to the fact that Romney's comments, like those of Obama four years ago, are arrogant and stupid.
Noting that many of the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income tax are core Republican groups like seniors and active military, Kristol added that "Romney seems to have contempt not just for the Democrats who oppose him, but for tens of millions who intend to vote for him."
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Note to Mitt Romney: Everyone Is Dependent on the Government, You Dumb Fuck:
Good on Mitt Romney for not backing down from the purity of his dickishness.
Holy shit, what's left, huh? What remains to be said about Mitt Romney? In just two weeks, we've learned that he has no clue about how to lead on foreign policy (something that was reconfirmed by another part of the video) and that he simply doesn't give a shit about nearly half the nation. How much more degraded can this most dickish man be, an undoing of amazing proportions simply because no one apparently ever told him that he was just too much of a tool to be president?
One other thing: Leder is also somewhat famous for being another one of those private equity bros who flaunt their wealth. He's not Mormon, so he doesn't have to waste his money on prancing horses or multiple cloned sons. Leder has sex parties in the Hamptons: "[G]uests cavorted nude in a pool and performed sex acts, while scantily clad Russian women danced on platforms. Dancers at the party also twirled flaming torches to booming beats." It's awesome that Romney doesn't care whose jizz-stained hands he shakes, as long as those hands are providing hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign cash. Seriously, at this point, Romney may as well admit that he'd blow an elephant for the entertainment of wealthy donors in order to become president.
AUBURN, Calif. September 17, 2012 - A basejumper has been stuck in a tree approximately 100 feet off the ground under the Foresthill Bridge in Auburn since at least 8:50 pm on Monday evening.
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Rescue personnel has requested a PG&E boom truck to assist in getting the jumper safely to the ground.
Over 15 Cal Fire and Placer County firefighters plus a dozen law enforcement personnel were on scene until 2:05 am when the jumper was finally lowered to the ground in the boom truck's bucket. The jumper was taken to Auburn Faith with minor injuries to his body. No word on the extent of the injuries to his pride or ego.
Placer County Sheriff's deputies will likely be waiting for the yet unnamed "stunt artist" when he will be discharged later today. The bill for the nighttime rescue promises to be a hefty one.
Landing in a tree first, then in jail?
Jumping is illegal and the jumper can likely look forward to at least a misdemeanor violation of State Parks code.
Watching and reading reactions to the Romney recording released today by David Corn over at Mother Jones has been entertaining.
Part of the reason so many Americans don’t pay federal income taxes is that Republicans have passed a series of very large tax cuts that wiped out the income-tax liability for many Americans. That’s why, when you look at graphs of the percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, you see huge jumps after Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax reform and George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. So whenever you hear that half of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, remember: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush helped build that.
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So notice what happened here: Republicans have become outraged over the predictable effect of tax cuts they passed and are using that outrage as the justification for an agenda that further cuts taxes on the rich and pays for it by cutting social services for the non-rich.
That’s why Romney’s theory here is more than merely impolitic. It’s actually core to his economic agenda.
Former Pres. Jimmy Carter Congratulates Grandson on Unearthing Romney Video
Tough to summarize this one. Just go read the entire thing. But here's a little from conservative opinion leader David Brooks in the NYT on Mitt Romney's extraordinary gaffe tonight in the secret video just released.
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The cartels of Juarez, Mexico, are at war with a group of polygamous Mormons, some of whom are related to Mitt Romney. We went there to document the conflict.
The Mexican drug cartels are at war... with Mormons. Join VICE on Part 1 of our journey filled with guns, drugs, murder, and booze.
Poll: Obama Has Slight Lead Among Likely Voters
Has huge lead among suppressed voters.
Many Ohio Republicans Think Romney Responsible for Killing Bin Laden
At least that's what that nice man on Fox implied.
Halliburton Issues Warning to Public About Misplaced Radioactive Cylinder
If you find it, go to nearest biohazard disposal site, give it to first person you see in HazMat suit.
Pennsylvania Court Decision Upholding Voter ID Law Is Based on 1869 Decision Citing “Rogues,” “Strumpets,” “Wandering Arabs,” “Vicious Vagrants,” and “Pestilent Hordes”
Thank goodness we can prevent them from voting.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been offered an Aboriginal Nations passport in an inner-city Sydney ceremony after he was "abandoned" by Australian authorities.
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The group that organised Saturday's ceremony, the Indigenous Social Justice Association, wants recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty.
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The passport will now be sent to Mr Assange in London.
Santorum: ‘We Will Never Have… Smart People On Our Side’
The Battle of Inchon, code name: Operation Chromite) was an amphibious invasion and battle of the Korean War that resulted in a decisive victory and strategic reversal in favor of the United Nations (UN). The operation involved some 75,000 troops and 261 naval vessels, and led to the recapture of the South Korean capital Seoul two weeks later.[3]
The battle began on September 15, 1950, and ended September 19. Through a surprise amphibious assault far from the Pusan Perimeter that UN and South Korean forces were desperately defending, the largely undefended city of Incheon was secured after being bombed by UN forces. The battle ended a string of victories by the invading North Korean People's Army (NKPA). The subsequent UN recapture of Seoul partially severed NKPA's supply lines in South Korea.
Track 1 from his album "Grievous Angel" (1974; remastered version, 2006). Composed by Thomas Brown and Gram Parsons. Recorded July 1973.
Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, "Return of the Grievous Angel"
A Barack Obama win in November will lead to a meltdown within the Republican Party, said Bryan Fischer, an influential official at the American Family Association. And he isn’t too optimistic about Mitt Romney’s chances.
“If Barack Obama wins this election the Republican Party as we know it is finished, it is dead, it is toast — you can stick a fork in it,” he told TPM Friday at the Values Voter Summit in Washington. “And conservatives, grassroots conservatives, are either going to start a third party or they are going to launch a hostile takeover of the Republican Party.”
Fischer said he believed Romney would be leading national polls by double digits at this point if he had followed Paul Ryan’s lead and offered more detailed conservative positions on the budget and social issues.
“I think if Mitt Romney loses this election that the pro-family leaders in the United States should get together with Rick Perry on Nov. 7 and start planning for 2016,” he said.
People For the American Way today challenged the Romney campaign for its decision to send vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan to speak today at the Values Voter Summit, an event organized by groups that regularly push false and demeaning smears about gays and lesbians, Muslim-Americans and others. These groups also push extreme anti-woman policies, including defending Rep. Todd Akin after his "legitimate rape" comments.
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“By speaking at the Values Voter Summit, Paul Ryan sends a clear message: a Romney-Ryan administration has decided to embrace the entrenched bigotry advocated by the farthest of the far right,” said Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way.
Anger Rolls Across Pakistani City in Aftermath of Factory Fire
KARACHI, Pakistan — The towering metal door at the back of the burned-out garment factory could have been an escape for many of the low-paid textile workers caught in the fire here on Tuesday. Instead, it stands as a testament to greed and corruption at a factory where 289 trapped employees died.
As hundreds of workers scrambled to escape the flaming factory after a boiler explosion, they found the main sliding door — 30 feet high, big enough for a truckload of cotton — firmly locked. Instead of letting the workers escape, several survivors said Thursday, plant managers forced them to stay in order to save the company’s stock: piles of stonewashed jeans, destined for Europe.
Female Fox News contributor says Michelle Malkin ‘needs to get laid’
Bachmann: Libya attack was effort to impose Sharia law on the U.S.
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—One day after he was roundly criticized by both parties for his comments about Libya, Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney attempted to burnish his foreign-policy credentials today, telling reporters that “no one has spent more time overseas than my money has.”
“My money has served in banks from Switzerland to Bermuda, and from Bermuda to the Cayman Islands,” Mr. Romney said. “I challenge my opponent’s money to equal that record of service.”
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Mr. Romney’s recent foray into foreign policy may have hurt him in a new poll, in which a majority of likely voters agreed with the statement, “Mitt Romney is starting to make his trip to the London Olympics look like the pinnacle of modern diplomacy.”
An official statement from the Romney campaign did not refer to his latest comments, but indicated that between now and the election Mr. Romney’s schedule would deëmphasize events where he might be called upon to open his mouth.
Romney's Incendiary Response to US Embassy Deaths in Libya Proves Him Incapable of Being Commander in Chief
Romney Hooks Himself Off the Stage
In every campaign, there's a moment you know it's all over. [...]
When You Learn They’re Not Ready
“Bungle… utter disaster…not ready for prime time… not presidential… Lehman moment.” And that's just the Republicans.
‘It Makes Me Sick’: Actress in Muhammed Movie Says She Was Deceived, Had No Idea It Was About Islam
I am delighted to report God still appears to be a bit of an unbearable twit.
Petulant. Uptight. Whiny as a third-grader with recurring lice. How do we know? Because, against all deeper understanding and without a single care that He’s not the slightest bit real in the literal sense, the Almighty still insists on keeping score, observing your every move, measuring your capacity to hate others who do not agree with your narrow view of life, or love, or America.
It’s true. If all reports for the past week – and the past handful of incoherent centuries – are to be believed, God does nothing but laze about the couch with a golden iPad, tracking how many times He’s mentioned on television, who won the Packers game, how often you watch porn or say something nice to a gay person, and who commits more acts of guilt-addled fear in his glorious name.
Oh, and love. There’s love in there somewhere. Maybe. Unless you’re a liberal. Or Muslim. Or gay. Then you’re on your own.
It’s a little tricky to unpack, but sometimes it must be acknowledged: There exists in the American mythos this fragile, long-abused idea that when you buy a gun, or a beer, or a Chinese-made pair of Levi’s using a piece of tattered green paper with the word “God” on it, that it actually means something, that underneath it all there’s this tiny, microscopic hint of divine glue holding it all together, somehow....
Or maybe not. Maybe it’s not all that sweet after all. Maybe it’s one of the sadder, more debilitating aspects of the modern American condition, given how it’s no secret that organized religion, conservative politicians, marketers and megacorps alike love nothing more than to prey upon the poor and the less educated, anyone desperate for structure and divine meaning, but not quite willing or able to figure it out for themselves.
Netanyahu: Without ultimatum, U.S. has no ‘moral right’ to stop Israel from attacking Iran
"That Clinton - he talks to people like they're allowed to know something!"
The emerging history of 9/11 reveals that President George W. Bush’s failure to protect the nation resulted from neocon insistence that Iraq was the real threat, not al-Qaeda. The political relevance today is that the neocons want back into power under a Mitt Romney presidency, writes Robert Parry.
So, when the Aug. 6 PDB arrived, it already had a troubling context, mounting evidence that al-Qaeda had placed a team of terrorists inside the United States with plans for a dramatic attack on American soil. Yet, Bush brushed aside the Aug. 6 warning while vacationing at his Texas ranch and literally went fishing. Why?
Eichenwald writes that Bush’s nonchalance could be traced to the success of neocon advisers in convincing the President that the warning was “just bluster.” The neocons have never been known to be humble in their assessment of their own intellectual prowess and that self-certainty apparently swayed Bush.
According to Eichenwald, “An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.
“Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day. In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.”
The Bush administration was soon on course to launch not only an invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, but Iraq as well. The neocons also revived their dreams about using Iraq as a launching pad for additional “regime change” in Syria and Iran. In the short term, the 9/11 disaster worked out so well for the neocons that some cynics began to suspect that the neocons had secretly wished for the attack all along.
9/11 didn't quite turn out the way Dick Cheney and the PNACer's thought it would, did it?
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The neocons got the new Pearl Harbor that they so longed for [...]
To add insult to injury, the GOP will be out of power for decades to come.
The smart neocon bet was soon placed on Mitt Romney, who like Bush was a relative neophyte on foreign policy. The smooth-talking neocons quickly earned a place of trust in the Romney camp. The former Massachusetts government largely delegated to the neocons the job of writing his foreign policy white paper, “An American Century.”
Why Dubya will decide the winner this fall.
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The conventions are over, but the individual who will determine the 2012 election didn’t attend either of them. His name is George W. Bush.
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One day, a Republican presidential candidate will exorcise Bush’s ghost. But most likely, he or she will do so by bluntly telling Americans where Bush’s presidency went wrong, and how their presidency will be different. Until that happens, George W. Bush will be present at every Republican and Democratic convention for years to come, whether anyone invites him or not.
That Biden photo everyone is talking about was apparently an attempt to recreate this classic scene from movie history.
Actually if you haven’t seen this immortal movie, watch this longer clip for the full context of the scene …
TORNADOS TOUCH DOWN IN NEW YORK CITY
Pat Robertson says God angry about ban on oversized soft drinks.
Report: U.S. Healthcare System Wastes $750 Billion a Year
Money that could be spent on advanced weapons systems.
Iran, North Korea Agree to Cooperate in Science, Technology
Israel, South Korea do lunch.
Campaign Ad Onslaught Begins
At least $500 million will be spent to sway a handful of airheads living in Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Hampshire.
