John Westbrook and Larry Gibson performing Sheb Wooley's song at the 2007 St. Anthony, Idaho Cowboy Poetry Gathering
The good news for Obama is that he needn’t worry about the Republicans. They’re committing suicide.
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However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.
It turns out that Utah is the nation's leading consumer of broadband pornography. Which is deliciously ironic news considering that Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, a godbotherer of the Mormon persuasion, just spent a few weeks stonewalling the Senate Judiciary Committee with his hissy kabuki over the nomination of David Ogden for Deputy Attorney General. Why? Because Ogden -- GASP! -- worked for pornographers! (That's what Orrin Hatch calls it when somebody does legal work on First Amendment issues and Playboy magazine is footing the bill.)
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"Politicians never hear the verse; they only hear the chorus."
Songwriter, Gretchen Peters, took solace in those words the night her song, "Independence Day," was used to introduce Gov. Sarah Palin to the RNC. She had just finished a performance in Ft. Worth, TX, and her song — about a woman in a desperate situation — had been used by a politician who didn't know what it was about.
Speaking at a press conference on Feb 25 with DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, and reiterating a position made by the White House following DEA raids in California on February 4, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that ending federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries "is now American policy." The Attorney General's comments are the latest sign of a sea change in federal policy that prohibits the use of medical cannabis in the thirteen states that have enacted such laws.
Easing suffering: What a socialist, pinko commie, hippie, America-hating thing to do.
One of the many pleasant aftereffects of ultraconservatism's crackup is the retirement of a civic need for appalled spectators to demonize its out-patient disciples -- or whacko-ize them, if you will -- because they're doing such a marvelous job of it all by themselves.
"Man, this CPAC thing is crazy," observed Mr. Samuel Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. Joe the Plumber, to fellow attendee Mike Huckabee -- and that's probably the sanest thing we'll ever hear Sam/Joe utter. With concise but tragically fleeting lucidity, he captured the moment, the spirit, the zeitgeisty degeneration of his semi-philosophical compadres.
Sam/Joe Wurzelbacher/Plumber was, as the Politico reported, "a headliner at a Thursday panel titled 'Conservatism 2.0.' " A headliner, mind you: an itinerant, breathtakingly clueless bullshitter was a CPAC-Chosen One to enlighten the multitudes on the fundamentals of conservatism. Breathtaking indeed.
If I were the chairman of the Republican National Committee, I would assume that I had an open invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a meeting of the rightest of the right held in Washington every year about this time. I would express my deepest concern over what this conference is doing to my party, and express it in as blunt of terms as possible, all the better to make the attendees understand what I was about to say. It would go something like this:
Fellow conservatives, each year, you descend upon Washington, D.C., and each year you invite the most divisive, shrill, ridiculous, and downright dangerous people to speak. If I remember correctly, Ann Coulter was here last year, and you all gave her a standing ovation after she said, "(the usual Ann-speak that gets people riled up)" This year, you are giving an award to a man who has said he hopes President Obama fails before a live radio audience of millions.
So please, for the love of God, get the hell out of here and quit stinking up the place while there is still a Republican Party to defend. Just go. And don't let the door hit you on your asses on your way out. Thank you.
Of course, I am not the chairman of the RNC, and I doubt the actual chairman of the RNC would have the stones to deliver remarks like this to a bunch of right-wing crazies exactly one rung higher (? - G) on Darwin's Ladder than the Ku Klux Klan. So instead of expressing concern that will either fall upon deaf ears or provoke hostility, I'll rejoin you all in the cheap seats, order another beer and some nachos, and watch the implosion of the Republican Party in progress.
I know what happens if I Fail To Appear in my local court - a bench warrant is issued and I am arrested and hauled into court in handcuffs and leg irons. Why is Rove any different?
Pentagon to allow photos of U.S. war dead
[...] "Oh my God, did we really do it? Is that lucid, impeccably centered man really the leader of the free world?"
You can even take it a tiny step further. You can, as I recently did, glance up at the screen during Obama's congressional address and see not only a young, composed, African American president speaking to the populace in more thoughtful, articulate language than we've heard in a decade, but also note that he happens to be surrounded by a female Speaker of the House and a female Secretary of State and a smart, funny VP who, refreshingly, is not a sneering warmongering torture fanatic who enjoys sucking the blood from live baby sharks.
I mean, good Lord, what sort of astonishing snapshot is this? Two strong, powerful women and a deeply graceful black president? What country is this again?
(If, for some reason, you're also feeling a bit masochistic, you can take these moments to imagine how it might be if John McCain were the president right now, and Sarah Palin was right there next to him, grinning and winking like a truck-stop Barbie, and just how violently unstable and sour and doomed you would feel. Fun!)
Maybe longtime pundit David Gergen said it best when he noted that Obama's agenda is more than merely a stack of dramatic, expensive proposals. It's actually more akin to FDR's New Deal rolled into Lyndon Johnson's Great Society; the grand sum of what Obama is attempting to do just so happens to be "the greatest political drama in our lifetime."
This seems to be the bottom line, at least for now. We have, for the first time in just about forever, an enormously ambitious, confident, risk-taking president so full of grand and even borderline radical ideas they barely fit into a single generation, much less a single speech, and we have him at a time when we need, well, someone exactly like that.
"Alright, you maniacs, you lunatics, after checking out effin' freaks like Joe the Plumber and John Bolton, you're now qualified to run for president on the Republican platform."
"Attention all CPAC attendees, it's time for your meds."
John Bolton at CPAC: The Benefits of Nuking Chicago.
McConnell: ‘Who wants to hang out with guys like Paul Krugman…when you can be with Rush Limbaugh!’
Beware the "greenwash."
That's the underlying message of famed filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen's latest side-project: A television commercial lampooning the myth of "clean" coal through the visual metaphor of an air freshener that spews black smoke.
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Last year President Bush and Cheney were the stars of the event. And Mitt Romney chose the conference to announce that he was suspending his campaign.
This year, Cheney and Bush are off the agenda, replaced by ghosts of the campaign trail like Joe the Plumber (Joe Wurzelbacher) and documentarian John Ziegler, who has been making the rounds to restore Sarah Palin's self-imposed media debacle with his documentary "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted." And of course Rush Limbaugh will be there as the biggest draw. [my em]
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One day after delivering the official Republican response to President Obama's address to Congress, Gov. Bobby Jindal received high marks for cheering up a recession-weary nation that has not had a good laugh in months.
Across the country, Americans of all walks of life gave thanks to Gov. Jindal for giving them the most precious gift of all: the gift of laughter.
"They say that laughter is the best medicine," said Toledo housewife Carol Foyler. "If that's the case, Bobby Jindal is just what the doctor ordered."
Tracy Klugian, a computer technician in Modesto, California, responded to Gov. Jindal's speech in a way that was echoed by many others: "I peed myself."
The Republican National Committee applauded Gov. Jindal for his performance, and announced that the official GOP response to the president's radio address would be delivered by Carrot Top.