Headline of the Day

Witness: I quit al Qaeda over lack of health benefits

Not much of a burial program either. Nothing left to bury.

The Pulpit Of Bullies

Michael Winship

Here in New York State, of course, we have Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, who combines the boyish charm of J. Edgar Hoover with the sunny quirkiness of Pol Pot. So extreme are Paladino's views, so volatile his temper, that even Rupert Murdoch's right-wing New York Post has endorsed Democrat Andrew Cuomo, which is a bit like the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano dissing the Pope and singing the praises of Lutherans.

Heh.

Which brings us to Joe Miller, [...]
...

The plainclothes rent-a-cops, complete with Secret Service-type earpieces and Men in Black-style neckties and business suits, come from an Anchorage-based outfit called DropZone Security, which also runs a bail bond service and an Army-Navy surplus store - with one of those anti-Obama "Joker" posters pasted to its window. One-stop shopping for the vigilante militiaman in your life - kind of like that joke about the combination veterinarian-taxidermist: either way you get your dog back.

All of this would be funnier if not for the fact that this kind of hooliganism and casual trampling of First Amendment rights from people who claim to embrace the Constitution as holy writ is symptomatic of a deeper problem.

The only way to fight back against bullies and thugs is to stand up and tell them to go to hell. To do otherwise is to give an inch and prepare to be taken for the proverbial mile. That way lies madness. And worse.

It bears repeating: The only way to fight back against bullies and thugs is to stand up and tell them to go to hell.

Somehow ...

I don't think this was the doing of the evil Muslims:

LATEST: The package that was sent to [Rep. Raul] Grijalva’s office today was covered with swastikas and the white powder has been CONFIRMED to be a toxic substance!

This should now be classified as an official TERRORIST attack, just like these types of events immediately after 9/11 were.

...

I wonder if the media will call it a "prank"?

Regular folks and small businesses ...

As we all know, the definition of "small business" in the United States is a very wide, gray area. The other day, Idiot Glenn Beck implored his listeners to contribute to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Beck expressed solidarity with Chamber of Commerce: "They are us." As Media Matters noted, on October 14, Glenn Beck launched a donation drive for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, saying on his radio show, "I would like to make this the biggest fundraising day in the Chamber's history." He also said, "I don't know why we're not" a member of the Chamber and asked, "Can't we join the Chamber of Commerce in New York?" Beck's websites, GlennBeck.com and TheBlaze.com, also encouraged visitors to make donations to the chamber:

...

Yeah, just a bunch of regular folks. Small businesspeople just like "us"*:

Prudential Financial sent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce kicked off a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation’s financial regulations.

Dow Chemical delivered $1.7 million to the chamber last year as the group took a leading role in aggressively fighting proposed rules that would impose tighter security requirements on chemical facilities.

...

I wonder when the rank and file of the Angry White Person Party will figure out they're supporting the people who are trying like hell to separate them from whatever little they have left. I can't believe, still, in my seventh year of blogging, that Americans can be so delusional to willfully blind themselves to their own best interest.

I know a guy who's a full-on teabagger, (he's preparing to take his country back, armed to the teeth, and it's all the immigrants' fault). He gets Social Security, Medicare, State Disability, and a pension from the union job he worked at since he got out of the Navy. What does he bitch about most? The government getting too big and too many people get entitlements. The unions ruining the economy. I just don't get it ...

TGIF!

*Thanks to Chris for the NYT link.

A Defense of Juan Williams and Other Media Idiots

The Rude One follows up on Fixer's post:

One part of the picture that's missing here is that the journalistic landscape has changed. Now, news anchors on all three of the news networks regularly offer commentary on the stories that they're reading off the teleprompter. You can't watch CNN without John Roberts or Tony Harris scoffing at something. And while Fox may have started the smearing of the line between news and punditry, CNN and MSNBC just as surely have stuck their fingers on the painting. That distinction is so blurred now that Wolf Blitzer seems quaint in his attempts to keep objectivity against a full-blown Cafferty assault.

If you're gonna blur that line, if you're gonna encourage your news people to mouth off, if you're gonna tell your commentators to push the boundaries, then don't be surprised if they say something offensive. It's like if you have a lover who wants you to do all kinds of crazy, kinky stuff to him: shoving huge dildos in his ass, stomping his balls, making him wear nipple clamps and a cock ring, jacking him off while he hangs by hooks through his skin, shitting on his chest. But then you punch him in the face and he says, "Whoa, whoa, too far" and breaks it off. How the hell were you to know what was too far at that point? Rick Sanchez's show was essentially about what giant self-righteous douchebag Rick Sanchez was. And they were surprised when he acted like a giant self-righteous douchebag elsewhere? And Williams has said tons of backwards ass shit on Fox over the years, most recently about the Park 51 community center, which he emphatically opposes.

Free speech ain't pretty. It's not supposed to be. But as long as it doesn't get in the way of you doing the job that you have been hired to do, the only combat for it ought to be more speech. And, sure, in the abstract, NPR has a right to fire someone they find offensive, but you know what else it could have done? A story about how a pretty smart guy (even if you disagree with him) can have the kinds of fears and prejudices that Williams talked about. But that would have been more about exploring an issue than having a knee-jerk reaction to anything that might piss off people. NPR was looking for a way to get rid of Williams. Mara Liasson better watch her ass.

NPR and F**Noise are incompatible, to say the least. F** no doubt pays better and I'm sure the gasbags would rather get fired from NPR.

If they bunch up in one place, we can get 'em all with one round.

Snowstorm hampers search for 3 Mt. Whitney hikers

EssEffChron

Snowstorms are hampering the search for three missing hikers on California's Mt. Whitney.

Park spokeswoman Dana Dierkes says the three men from the Omaha, Neb.-area went missing on a hike Monday evening on the 14,494-foot Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental United States.

The Fresno Bee says about 45 people are assigned to the search but snowstorms are making it difficult. A command post dispatcher says Thursday that there's snow above 8,000 feet.

Welcome to California, gents, and I hope you're OK. Notice any differences from Nebraska yet?

GOP candidates' problem in California? Their party

And yer point is...?

Last coupla ¶ of an op-ed by George Skelton, LATimes:

A blogger who calls himself the Cowboy Libertarian, Dorinson added: "There's an old saying that when you're riding out ahead of the herd, you might want to look back now and then to make sure the herd is following you. The herd hasn't been following the Republican Party for some time."

Whitman has been trying, but she's saddled with a bad brand.

Whitman with a saddle? Ride 'em, cowboy?! Make the visuals stop!

Also, I assume her brand is a wingnut lying on its side under a dollar sign (the Lazy gRafter Whackjob?), but I do not care to see it or contemplate where it might be. I know where they put them on bovine cows. Make the visuals stop, please! Maybe a notch in her ear would be OK...

Emaciated Corpses and Zyklon B

Der Spiegel, a 'recommended read'.

US Tea Party Should Keep Its Hands Off Hitler

For most Germans, though, the Hitler comparisons are vastly more offensive. It is almost impossible to finish high school in Germany without going on a class visit to a former concentration camp. They are not pleasant places to be. While the sites themselves might now be little more than windswept rows of foundations where hopelessly overcrowded, disease-ridden barracks once stood, the museum exhibits tend to be much more disturbing. Images of trucks full of emaciated corpses, ovens where tens of thousands of bodies were burned, photos of SS commandos on the Eastern Front shooting row upon row of Jews, a canister of the poison gas Zyklon B -- all are likely to be on display.

During his show on Oct. 5, Glenn Beck said that Obama's science adviser John Holdren's concern about the global population and White House health policy adviser Ezekiel Emanuel's warnings about global warming are "the kind of thinking that led to … the extermination program that eventually led to the Holocaust."

It would be hard to find someone on this side of the Atlantic who wouldn't cringe at the ignorance of that statement. Leaving aside the question as to whether or not one should be concerned about climate change and an overcrowded planet, the kind of thinking that led to the Holocaust was a different one. Hitler wanted a racially pure Germany. People with handicaps didn't fit. Neither did Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, blacks, Asians, Arabs or homosexuals.

Let's just say that diversity was not part of Hitler's program. How'd that work out for ya, Adolf?

Us lefties made the same kind of comments about the Bush maladministration of course, but I didn't see a Spiegel article decrying it. That's because we were right.

And as far as the 'racially pure' country the teabaggers wish for, I suggest they wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which hand fills up first.

Word ...

Fez:

No intelligent statement has ever followed, "I'm not a bigot, but..."

Understanding ...

Most of the time, when Long Island makes news lately, it's because some redneck, cracker assholes (and boy do we have our share) decided to beat an immigrant half to death (or actually kill the poor bastid) or some stupid shit like that.

This, however, is one of the reasons I love living here. As I've said many times, I live in one of the most ethnically diverse places in the country and we generally get along*. In an attempt to further that understanding, our local Mosque invited all the non-Muslims around here to afternoon prayers the other day and many of my neighbors attended.

At 75, Jan Sepulveda, a Roman Catholic, stepped foot in a mosque for the first time in her life Wednesday.

She took off her shoes, wrapped a black scarf around her head, and entered the Masjid Darul Qur'an mosque in Bay Shore while an imam prayed in Arabic.

"I hate bigotry," Sepulveda said in an interview. "I want to know more about people who are different from me."

...

Makes me proud to be an Islander.

...

Wednesday, the entrance at the mosque in Bay Shore was decorated with red, white and blue balloons, as if to underscore the congregation's allegiance to the United States. The sanctuary was visited by politicians, ministers, community leaders and ordinary citizens.

[Imam] Rehman explained some of the basic practices of the faith, such as the removal of shoes in the sanctuary, the separation of males and females into different areas during prayer, and the five times a day that observant Muslims pray.

...

That, my friends, is what America is all about.

Update:

*Come to think about it, I did yell at the Afghani next door to keep his chickens in his own damn yard so my dogs wouldn't pick up any parasites. Heh ...

Heh ...

Being I'm doing the puppy thing right now, this little vid gave me a laugh:

Thanks to Watertiger.

I ♥ New York!

It ain't just Fixer any more! Nuevo York's gubernatorial debate was a heartwarming demonstration of democracy in all its glorious unmitigated silliness.

The Daily Voice, with video.

This week's New York governor's debate was supposed to be a clash between Democrat Andrew Cuomo and Republican Carl Paladino. Instead, by some accounts, it turned into a "farce" in which independent candidates stole the show.

Among the highlights: Kristin Davis, a former prostitution madam, told jokes about brothels and gay bars. And Republican Paladino surprised the audience by actually walking off stage in the middle of the debate to use the bathroom. "When you gotta go, you gotta go," his campaign manager told the New York Times.

But the real show stealer was Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, who spoke repeatedly about the high cost of rent, which had made it difficult for families to pay their bills, put food on the table, and take care of themselves.

Note to Mr. McMillan: You are one colorful dude! The whiskers are magnificent! Your "The Rent's Too Damn High" philosophy is closer to the truth than most would like to admit if you'd drop that "the Jews" shit, and of course you're as crazy as a loon to most people. Kudos also for collecting the 15,000 signatures necessary to get on the ballot by yourself.

You ain't got a chance and I hope you win. The Jews'll wise ya up as soon as you're in.

Mr. McMillan has been endorsed by the AMI.

Reuters

NY state a brothel in need of a madame – governor candidate

At their first debate on Monday, candidates for New York governor made the usual use of metaphor and cliche about the state’s economic woes.

But candidate Kristin Davis (go look at her logo! Whee!) took it a step further when she compared the state bureaucracy to a badly run brothel, and New York politicians to whores.

And she would know.

She sure would! From the look of this lady, she earned every dime she ever made the hard way. One NY politician at a time.

She hasn't got a chance either, of course, and I hope she wins too.

Most gubernatorial and other political 'debates' wouldn't have let these candidates participate because they're a distraction from the corporate message. I am so glad New York did. We all needed it.

If I were not already blessed by being a Californio, I'd wanta be a Noo Yawkah! They're just as crazy as we are.

Three Things to Do When Clarence Thomas’s Wife Calls You

Andy Borowitz

I know what you're saying: "It'll never happen to me. Virginia Thomas doesn't even have my phone number!" Well, that's what I thought, and several years of trauma counseling later, I've come to realize (the hard way) what a fool's paradise I was living in. Consider this: according to a recent study, the odds of Virginia Thomas leaving a threatening voicemail for you are higher than those of Christine O'Donnell correctly identifying the First Amendment. With those grim statistics in mind, here are three simple steps you can take if and when Mrs. Clarence Thomas calls.

3. Get in the habit of answering your phone, "Long Dong Silver residence."

One final note: if you get a call in the middle of the night and there is silence on the other end, that is not Virginia Thomas. That is Clarence Thomas.

Now that's creepier still.

Dozens of law professors nation-wide endorse Calif. marijuana legalization

Raw Story:

The professors, from schools such as Yale, Harvard, Georgetown, New York University, UCLA, Berkeley, George Mason University, Emory and the Washington College of Law, signed an open letter published by the "Yes on 19" campaign, all calling for legalization.

To the Voters of California:

For decades, our country has pursued a wasteful and ineffective policy of marijuana prohibition. As with alcohol prohibition, this approach has failed to control marijuana, and left its trade in the hands of an unregulated and increasingly violent black market. At the same time, marijuana prohibition has clogged California’s courts alone with tens of thousands of non-violent marijuana offenders each year. Yet marijuana remains as available as ever, with teens reporting that it is easier for them to buy than alcohol across the country.

Moreover, we are deeply troubled by the consistent and dramatic reports of disproportionate enforcement of marijuana laws against young people of color. Marijuana laws were forged in racism, and have been demonstrated to be inconsistently and unfairly applied since their inception. These are independent reasons for their repeal.

This country has an example of a path from prohibition. Alcohol is subject to a regulatory framework that is far safer in every respect than the days of Al Capone. Just like the State of New York did when it rolled back Prohibition 10 years before the nation as a whole, California should show leadership and restore respect for the law by enacting the Tax and Control Cannabis 2010 initiative this November.

Damn, ya get them lawyers out from behind the boilerplate for a minute and they can speak straight and well. Who knew?

Teabagger Freak Show

El Rude-o on teabagger candidates in the wake of The Dumbest Candidate Ever's misunderstanding of the Constitution she claims to revere and knows nothing about:

The scramble was on in the mainstream media for a way to present O'Donnell's statements without saying the truth. Last night, on Anderson Cooper 360 (motto: "AC doesn't think his sexuality is any of your goddamn business"), Paul Begala and Jeffrey Toobin came preciously close, but still tiptoed around the obvious explanation: Christine O'Donnell is a fucking idiot, so fucking dumb that she has to remind herself to breathe. It's the 800 pound motherfucker just sitting there: she's too fucking stupid to be a Senator.

It ought to be okay to say that. It's actually important information for voters. Brian Williams ought to be able to declare, "By any objective measure, by any stretch of the imagination, Christine O'Donnell isn't qualified to be elected Cart Wrangler of the Month at Wal-Mart. Because she's just a fucking idiot." Now, there's a good chance people will still vote for her because, yeah, there are idiots who do see themselves in O'Donnell.

There's no mystery here. All the answers are plain to see when it comes to the array of bizarre and unqualified Republican candidates who are in the running for senator, which we used to consider an important position. Let the freaks and phonies huckster their way in the House, which is a Fellini film set of midgets, geeks, and contortionists.

[...] Joe Miller is a bushel of dicks and a gun fetishist who wants to wreck the Constitution."

So it could go. Sharron Angle? Fucking crazy. Rand Paul? Fucking psycho.

A real media would have eviscerated this collection of buffoons and bastards. The fact that we are talking about three of them as serious candidates means we are skidding toward the edge of a very steep cliff and that we are a very unserious electorate. The look on the face of Chris Coons in that debate with O'Donnell said it all. It was the look of a man who thought he had come for a debate to help voters decide who is going to be one of the most powerful people in the country. But when he showed up, it was a pie-eating contest.

So's the media and we're all going to suffer because of it if any of these idiots get elected. The 24/7 freak show will go on as usual.

Are you not outraged?

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford. On American outrage:

It goes like this: the more ridiculous, tiny, arcane or completely irrational the object of your outrage is, the more you know you have attained ultimate freedom. You are living the real American Dream, hereby defined as being endlessly upset and miserable about totally meaningless bulls--t for no valid reason whatsoever because you have everything you could ever want or need in this life, ever.

It all adds up to one conclusion: We are so wildly, stupidly free, it's rather hilarious. And savagely ironic. Because you can also say it culminates in perhaps the ultimate expression of Outrage USA, the single place where all such screeching congeals in a shrill, silly little group, signifying nothing.

It's called the Tea Party, that gaggle of terrified, white, middle-aged men whose actual slogan is "mad as hell." What are they mad about, exactly? They have no idea. What do they want to do to change it? No clue. From whence does their timorous fear and dread come? They can't quite say. Perfect.

This is aimless, abortive outrage in its purest form, just infantile rage aimed straight into the Void, like a baby that has every comfort and hug and blankie imaginable but still screams like a banshee, wailing and squirming at the sheer terror of ... well, of merely existing. Of being alive. Inhaling and exhaling, over and over again, trying to make sense of it all, somehow, even just a tiny little bit, in a glorious neverending tinkling hellride of pure existential terror, until you die.

Wonderful.

BTW, I've been on "tinkling hellrides". When the bike's pistons and/or con rods start going 'tinkletankletunk' in the hot lane at rush hour, by the time the rapidly slowing 'hellride' to the right shoulder is done, some other 'tinkling' has occurred as well.

Welcome Back!

Dan the Man is back in the Army!

Lt. Dan Choi, the Iraq war veteran, Arab linguist, and West Point grad turned "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal activist, today got what he had said he wanted from day one: the opportunity to serve his country in the armed forces again. This afternoon, amid dozens of reporters, and thousands of passersby -- most totally unaware they were seeing history in the making -- Lt. Dan Choi, the former Army infantry officer, re-enlisted in the military, this time, as an out gay man.

...

Thankfully, our armed forces will be able to welcome many other good soldiers and talented people back into its ranks.

The past is never dead ...

Think Anita Hill is having a PTSD episode right about now?

WASHINGTON — Nearly 20 years after Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Justice Thomas’s wife has called Ms. Hill, seeking an apology.

...

"Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas," it said. "I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband."

Ms. Thomas went on: "So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day."

...

Assholes, she and her husband, and, for as long as he is alive, he will play a part in shaping the direction of this nation. Thank you, Republicans.

"Whites Only" ...

That's what it all boils down to:

Senate candidate John Raese, vying to replaced deceased Senator Robert Byrd in West Virginia's delegation, may have inadvertently been outed as a member of a problematic Florida country club by no other than Rush Limbaugh.

...

Limbaugh is a member of the Everglades Club in Palm Beach, which is infamous for having virtually no membership rules but still managing to keep from ever letting a single African-American join through 2008.

...

"Take my country back" ... to the time when people of color had to do as massa told them or fear for their lives. 150-odd years and we have yet to move past the Civil War.

Great thanks to Ol' Fez for the link.

Grip & Reality-free Zone

WaPo

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.

The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools."

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"
...

"You actually audibly heard the crowd gasp," Widener University political scientist Wesley Leckrone said after the debate, adding that it raised questions about O'Donnell's grasp of the Constitution.

No questions here. Like most teabaggers, her grip is, to be charitable, a little tenuous. On reality, let alone the Constitution and the Bible.

"Talk about imposing your beliefs on the local schools," she said. "You've just proved how little you know not just about constitutional law but about the theory of evolution."

I rest my case. Yeesh.