Dear 2010; Be not like 2009

Mark Morford on the end of the worst year and decade in living memory and what the future may hold:

Please let us never go through sh-t like that ever again

Let us just say it outright: Good riddance to the Zeros. It was, as widely noted, the decade from hell. It was easily one of the worst periods in recent American history, upwards of 3600 days drenched in fear and ignorance and bitter divisiveness, nipples and anthrax and macho shock n' awe, economic implosions and endless conservative puling about God and gays and terrorism, all slashed through with so much political misprision and presidential ineptitude it's going to require many more years until we the deep, humiliating scars inflicted by Dubya & Co. are fully healed.

What else? Take your pick. Assuming even modestly successful scenarios, the coming decade will see the end of two botched, miserable, costly wars begun by a president who had little clue as to what the hell he was doing but plenty of hawkish cronyism and false cowboy Christian machismo to make him do it.

Climate change will cause enough ice to melt in the mountains of Turkey that Noah's Ark will finally be revealed as verifiable truth. Archaeologists will discover the big ol' boat was full of Buddha statues and Shakti icons and golden Dionysus sculptures and huge stone fertility penises, giant wine vessels and goddess offerings and the seeds of many hallucinogenic plants, indicating it was actually the site the first and greatest pagan bacchanalia party cruise of all time.

Will all be positive and inspiring? Will there be dancing in the streets and recovered tuna stocks and free Wi-Fi in the Gaza Strip? Will all brooding teen vampires shut up and die? What are you, high?

A million things could go wrong, and almost certainly will. There is no shortage of ignorance, religious puling, teabagging deathpanel birther Palin-esque whinebot Glenn Beck laughingstocks. But if the '00s were the decade of alarmism and a desperate clinging to Christian Puritan myth, let the '10s be the decade of integrity and movement, experimentation and possibility and a complete, messy, fundamental overhaul of all we thought we were. What, you have a better idea?

Sure do. Where do I sign up for that cruise?

Underwear Bombers

Now I'll be scared of my skivvies! You should be afraid of my skivvies too...

Thanks to YubaNet.

A Rude End To 2009

Just go to The Rude Pundit and start reading. Here's some examples:

End of the Year Haiku

The blood of the rich
Flooding our dead nation's streets
May improve my mood

Rush Limbaugh's fat ass
Is kissed each day by the right
Yet Dems fear his farts

Oh, How this year blew.
If Limbaugh kicks the bucket
It will have blown less.

Glenn Beck's dervish whirl
Mesmerized maniac minds
To scream at phantoms

Many more.

Our Destruction Seeds Sown: A Final "Fuck-Off" to This Awful Decade

4. Fuck off, Republicans in Congress. You spent most of the decade sucking the syphilitic cocks of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, turning yourselves into accessories to the crimes that have wrecked the country, and now you actually have the balls to think you're right in roadblocking even minor corrections in our self-destructive course? (Concomitant fuck-off: every pundit who supported the Iraq "war" and who mocked the idea that the housing bubble would burst.)

5. Fuck off, God, Allah, Death, or whoever or nobody. In the last ten years, you took out out just about every single living writer who influenced the Rude Pundit: Arthur Miller, Molly Ivins, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Pryor, Hunter S. Thompson, Spaulding Gray. And then you wasted his favorite city with a combination of Hurricane Katrina and a refusal to smite the incompetent assholes who helped wreck it. Yeah, fuck you hard.

Things That Brought the Rude Pundit Unrestrained Joy in 2009:

3. Lady Gaga's performances at the MTV Video Music Awards and at the American Music Awards. Bleeding and hanging like a corpse at the end of a song? Singing in a nude unitard while sitting at a flaming piano and smashing champagne bottles on the edge? That shit's art, Madonna crossed with Diamanda Galas.

He forgot to mention the whiskey he must have consumed in mass quantities...

Part 2: These White Men Are Gonna Get Us All Killed:

1. Fuck off, Al Gore. If you wanted to pinpoint a single reason that this decade has sucked the hair off monkey balls, you would have to pick the moment that Al Gore decided to be a pussy and give up on the 2000 election. In what should have been a slamdunk of an election, Gore ran away from the Clinton legacy and into a tight race with an inbred Mongoloid. It's not just his stupid-ass decision to want a recount in isolated places in Florida instead of the whole state or his legal team's stupid-ass argument before an already-tilted Supreme Court. It's that if he had wanted and asked, the power was within a single Senator to stop the certification of an election he knew was fucked. It was as if Gore didn't want to inconvenience anyone at that moment, thus maintaining a Democratic pattern that exists to this day. Sure, he's done a great deal of good in "raising awareness" as a glorified spokesmodel for global warming. But do you see any major action occurring to, shit, stop global warming? You know how you could have actually accomplished some of those green goals, Al? By being fucking president.

The Machines Own Us:

For every good use of the technology that now controls every aspect of our lives, there's thousands of ways it is destroying us.

4. Fuck off, Twitter and Facebook. Hey, who needs the government setting up all kinds of surveillance when so many people are willing to announce where the fuck they are and what they fuck they're doing at any given moment. Twitter, Facebook, and, to a lesser extent, MySpace have created a world of exhibitionists who are willing to let strangers look at pictures of their children and where people attempt to be profound in less words than it takes to order a meal at McDonald's. They've created the illusion of "friendship" where none actually exists, thus devaluing what real friendship is. If a click is all it takes to "defriend" people, they weren't friends. It led to this moment for the Rude Pundit: "Oh, really, person I haven't seen since third grade, your cat brought you a dead mouse and gave it to you as a gift? How fascinating." He wanted to write, "Fuck you and your cat. May the zombie mouse eat your brains" and then he realized how pathetic it was to even be tempted to comment on a status update about a goddamn cat owned by a virtual version of someone he hadn't seen in 25 years. And then he just felt sad.

5. Fuck off, internet porn. It mainstreamed porn and somehow made it more degrading than it actually was. It wrecked relationships and jobs. And it fucked up porn. Like overused CGI in films, you can see anything you want. If anyone with a webcam can film two legless Russian women fucking each other with their wooden legs while getting shit on by a donkey that's getting blown by an albino tranny, well...wait, what are we talking about?

(Note: The Rude Pundit uses all of the above. You either join the collective or you will be eliminated.)

O Ja!

Much, much more. Enjoy, if that is the word.

A Recruiting Video You Want To Believe...

There are more of these on YouTube than you can shake a stick at!

Thanks to bobos130.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Beautiful.

From Wembley Festival 1988

Emmylou Harris ~ Diamond In My Crown

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK

Party ...

Like it's 1999. You only got a little under a year and a half left:

Harold Camping lets out a hearty chuckle when he considers the people who believe the world will end in 2012.

...

The real date for the end of times, he says, is in 2011.

...

Camping, 88, has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years and says he has developed a mathematical system to interpret prophecies hidden within the Good Book. One night a few years ago, Camping, a civil engineer by trade, crunched the numbers and was stunned at what he'd found: The world will end May 21, 2011.

...

Marking my calendar now ...

Thanks to Tengrain for the link.

Stuff you can go to jail for today that was OK yesterday...

Fixer and I have sort of an ongoing contest to see which of California's and New York's legislatures is the more useless. It's close. It ebbs and flows depending on the day.

I'm claiming No. 1 today!

Go read some of the new laws going into effect today in California. You decide.

LATimes

California ushers in new laws limiting trans fats, the paparazzi and more

In 2010, hundreds of new rules will be enforced. Among them, a ban on shortening cows' tails; a $20,000 fine for human trafficking; and tougher penalties for mortgage fraud and watching dogfights.

There are many, some good, some kinda silly, but here's one that made me shake my head:

Vietnam veterans: Establishes an annual Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day on March 30.

At first I thought maybe this was long past due until I realized that some of those guys ain't back yet. Maybe about 2050 we'll get a law like this for Iraq and Afghanistan vets. And then another one in 2090 and...

I don't have a problem ...

With it in general, though I don't need the raucous laughter and pointing.

Have We Learned Anything from the Bush Years?

Washington's Blog, a 'recommended read'.

Fear makes people stupid.

It makes us unable to think straight. And it makes us give up our power to tough-talking authoritarians.

The Bush maladministration and Repugs in general well know this. It's their main tool for trying to get what they want to their enrichment and our detriment.

Have we learned anything from the revelations that the Bush administration lied us into the need for a war in Iraq, lied about the need for torture, lied about the reason for spying, loss of constitutional rights, and an overwhelmingly powerful executive branch?

Have we learned anything from the discovery that unnecessary war, torture and panic over sporadic terrorist attacks create more terrorism and reduce national security?

Or will our fear of the underwear bomber and other terrorist acts scare us into stupidity again, as it did so many people during the Bush years?

Sure, if we let them, and they are damn sure still working the fear tactic.

Did we learn anything during the Bush Era? Some of us did and too many didn't.

Continue the march.

Why Did the Bush Administration Send Hardcore Terrorists Back to Al-Qaida?

This ties in somewhat with Fixer's post below.

Evan Kohlmann at Counterterrorism Blog:

One of the most troubling aspects of the recent explosion of activity by Al-Qaida in Yemen (otherwise known as "Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula") is the role being played by Saudi nationals who are former detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At least eleven former Saudi Gitmo prisoners who were sent back home by the Bush administration between 2003-2007 have promptly rejoined Al-Qaida in Yemen -- including individuals who made no secret of their intentions upon being released. [...]

That's correct: the U.S. military repeatedly warned the Bush administration in advance that almost half of the former Saudi Gitmo detainees who have rejoined Al-Qaida continued to represent active threats to the United States--and yet they were released anyway, evidently for political reasons. There are serious questions here that must be immediately addressed by those within the former Bush administration responsible for this inept decision-making process.

Fat chance, and 'inept' is far too kind a word for war criminal terrorist enablers.

FBI lying about Flight 253?

Go read this eyewitness account of what happened after Flight 253 landed.

Following up on a visit from FBI officials about an eyewitness account first described to MLive.com, Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell described the visit in comment sections across MLive on Wednesday.

Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain.

Do not miss this.

Comments here.

Quote of the Day

Greenwald:

It's so striking how often the agenda of America's Right and the desires of Al Qaeda Terrorists perfectly coincide ...

Fun fact ...

From Maru:

...

Bonus: supposedly the hospital he [Rush Lintball] is being treated at is the same one he accused of lying about Prez Obama's birth.

...

Dinosaur ...

Your landline probably won't make it through the next decade:

...

The (almost) one in five Americans relying exclusively on a plain old telephone line should prepare to kiss that wall jack goodbye as the major wireline telephone providers back away from that dying (and expensive business). However, AT&T in its filing doesn’t offer a way to bridge the gap for that 20 percent of Americans relying only on landlines, nor does it address what an all-IP future means for the 33 percent of Americans who have access to broadband but do not subscribe (although those broadband laggards might be paying for a digital voice product from a cable provider).

...

We kissed Ma Bell goodbye last month and now get TV, interwebs, and phone through the cable company. All that costs about as much as our AT&T bill did.

Thanks to Cookie Jill for the link.

2010 ...

Things are already looking up!

TheConservatives.com, the Washington Times Web project that was billed as an ambitious "multiplatform" venture to allow "the Joe the Plumbers of the world to speak up to major thinkers, like Newt Gingrich," has gone silent.

Brian Faughnan, editor of the site, tells us the Times has officially canceled the project.

...

Link thanks to Roger Ailes the Good.

We still ain't square ...

Nucks:

...

It might be 2010 but 2000 to 2009 needs to be seriously remembered as the years that this country got robbed, raped and sent the bill for the pleasure of having it done so many times the drapes are beyond cleaning.

...

Happy New Year

Thanks to bsl128.

It Is Hereby Resolved...

Mad Kane's guide to New Year's Resolutions:

What is it about December 31st that spurs fantasies of self-reform? Is it too much food and drink? Seasonal exuberance? Lunacy induced by crowds?

Every December, otherwise rational people make resolutions meant to transform them into organized, addiction-free souls with clean houses, healthy bodies, wholesome relationships, perfect children, and career paths soaring to the top -- the same vows they made last year and the year before that.

Can our resolutions endure past January 1st? Can we make it to year's end without ripping up our lists?

AGREEMENT entered into this ___________ (Date) by Husband and Wife (jointly called "Couple").

WHEREAS, New Year's Eve is coming and Couple feel compelled to make some vows:

NOW, THEREFORE, Couple make the following New Year's Resolution Agreement:

Go.

Happy New Year, Mad.

"Maybe the problem is that we haven't cleaned up after the Bush administration fast enough."

Worth a watch in case you missed it.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Quote of the Day

Montag:

...

Many would say it is not right to wish ill on anyone. That we should take a christian approach and forgive our enemies, but I am not a christian. I am hoping, despite the best efforts of the cardiac staff that his heart is screaming "FUCK YOU RUSH!" as it does a Palin on him and quits. One less enemy of the United States.

Indeed!

STFU ...

From the White House:

...

To put it simply: this President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action. Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President.

...

Shorter: "Dick Cheney, please go hunting with yourself."

Thanks to Mr. Aravosis for the link.

Is that a bomb in your pants...

...or are you just glad to see me?



I like this one too:



If ya don't catch him before he sets the thing off, never mind...

Thanks to YubaNet.

Headline of the Day

Revolutionary 'light emitting wallpaper' could start to replace light bulbs in 2012

I will assume there'll be a switch so you can turn it off...

U.S. Had Early Signals of a Terror Plot, Obama Says

Here's a 'must read' NYTimes piece on Skivviesbombergate:

HONOLULU — President Obama was told Tuesday about more missed signals and uncorrelated intelligence that should have prevented a would-be bomber from boarding a flight to the United States, leading the president to declare that there had been a “systemic failure” of the nation’s security apparatus.

One of the problems that allowed 9/11 to happen persists. The fuckers still aren't talking to one another or ignoring shit that matters as unimportant because it came from 'them, not us'.

Two officials said the government had intelligence from Yemen before Friday that leaders of a branch of Al Qaeda were talking about “a Nigerian” being prepared for a terrorist attack. While the attacker was not named, officials said it would have been evident had it been compared to information about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged with trying to blow up an American passenger jet on Christmas Day.

Compare notes? What a concept! Yeesh.

Please go read the rest.

War on labor? That's part of it...

Think Progress, links at site.

In the aftermath of the attempted Christmas airplane bombing, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is unrepentant about his hold on President Obama’s nomination for the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the division of the Department of Homeland Security that handles airport security. Obama nominated Erroll Southers — a former FBI special agent, the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department assistant chief for homeland security and intelligence, and the associate director of the University of Southern California’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events — to run TSA in September. Southers’ nomination was approved by two Senate committees, but DeMint has placed a hold on Southers “in an effort to prevent TSA workers from joining a labor union“:

I never saw a picture of Chief Southers until yesterday, but can you spot another reason why Demint doesn't want this guy?



I think perhaps a smart, educated, experienced, competent black cop as head of the TSA does not fit Deminted's throwback view of the correct direction for our country to take. Cops are supposed to be white and protect us from them. They're also to be used to quell union industrial action and protect the money men from the great unwashed whom they exploit in the quest for profit. A black man must never be made equal to a white man, let alone be elevated above white men in any organization.

Best man for the job be damned. In the batcrap right, equality ("race mixing") = socialism and must be suppressed in favor of the old order of white supremacy. Of course he's not supposed to say that, but anti-unionism is Repug policy and will have to do.

Update:

More on Demint's hold at McClatchy.

Irony lives!

From iol.co.za, South Africa. Worth a look.

Mogadishu - A man tried to board a commercial airliner in Mogadishu last month carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe that could have caused an explosion in a case bearing chilling similarities to the terrorist plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner.

So...airport screeners are doing a better job in Somalia than in Amsterdam? Since they caught the guy, it couldn't possibly be Obama's fault...probably why we didn't hear about it 'til now.

Quote of the Day

From El Rude-o's Facebook page:

Rude Pundit reminds you that when terrorist acts happened when George W. Bush was president, it was al-Qaeda's fault. When it happens now, it's Obama's fault.

The first time ...

I heard somebody ask this question.

... That raises the question of just exactly what the Bush administration did the past seven years to put a system in place to stop these explosives from coming on planes ...

The most recent figure I've heard is we've spent $42 bln on aircraft security since 11 September 2001. At this point, a mosquito shouldn't make it onto a plane undetected, let alone some nut with a bomb.

The upside is, for the Christmas season, the guy's nuts were roasted so, thankfully, he won't be able to breed if he ever gets out of jail alive.

The stench of hypocrisy ... Part Eleventy Billion

Since we have all this sturm und drang from the Right over underpants boy getting on a plane being all Obama's fault. Tintin:

...

So let’s set our flux capacitor to January 7, 2002, just days after Richard Reid snuck a shoe bomb onto a plane and see Jonah calling for Tom Ridge’s head on a platter. Oh dear. Not a word about shitcanning anyone in the Bush administration. Instead we have Jonah making the deliriously insane argument that the Reid incident is an argument for racial profiling because had Reid been an Arab named Mohammed racial profiling might have kept him off of the flight from Paris. No seriously.

...

And for a bonus, Ted "Dixie Chick me (if I actually made money off my music anymore)" Nugent is running his yap again.

Remember when ...

Well, do you remember a week ago, when I warned Diane Sawyer about making a fool of herself in front of a head of state by citing some documentation of his nation's 'wrongdoing' during an interview with him?

... You see, Diane, waving around a piece of paper purporting to be 'evidence' doesn't mean shit. Were we (the U.S. and U.K.) still in control of the moral high ground, it might mean something ...

Yeah, well:

WASHINGTON, Dec 28 (IPS) - U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official ... [my ems]

And you wonder why Mr. Ahmedinejad had such a smug look on his face during the interview?

Please mount my hot blue alien

I can only surmise that Mark Morford typed this column with his other hand. I know I read it that way.

Some say the greatness of "Avatar" lies in its lush visual grandeur, the sheer madhouse spectacle, the revolutionary eye candy that only $300 million in computer graphics and 10 pounds of psilocybin mushrooms can buy.

Let's just say it outright: This is a movie about alien porn. It's about the great, timeless, hypererotic white man fantasy of the Other. Inhabiting it, having sex with it, becoming it, moving inside it, running and leaping and fighting and taking spectacular risks just before falling into a bed of florid vines with your significant -- and incredibly hot -- alien companion to fondle her tail as the planet smiles in happy bioluminescent munificence all around you.

Let me be clear. I don't mean "hot" in the typical sci-fi sense. The Na'vi are not cheeseball pneumatic fantasy creations, the males all bloated, vein-popping muscle-bound meatheads and the females sporting Volkswagen-sized breasts and giant firedragon swords and asses from here to Lara Croft. They are not the generic, infantile, 10-year-old boy-lost-at-Comic-Con kind of hot. Not completely, anyway.

No, this is adult hot. Kinky hot. Exoticism wrapped in virile prowess slipped into a giant sheath of sexy blue lizardleather. It would appear that James Cameron and his nefarious crew of kinkhounds probed every nook and cranny and orifice of Freud's extraterrestrial fantasy handbook to invent the dreamiest blue lustcreature imaginable. Yes, this is a movie about fetishism.

Evidence? Plenty.

Go...

Hit the bricks, '09

JibJab

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

We'll do it again in '0-10...

Shovel faster, Janie!

Scholars & Rogues, enough links to play whack-a-mole.

Jane Hamsher ruffled some feathers last week when she forged a temporary alliance with Grover Norquist to call for an investigation of Rahm Emanuel’s activities at Freddie Mac. She also warned us about Treasury’s plan to raise limits on government backing for Freddie and Fannie. She was too late to stop the latter; in fact, Treasury stuffed the fattest, slush fund stocking in history on Christmas Eve. I don’t know if Rahm is guilty. He looks guilty as hell, though that goes for pretty much everyone in that fetid swamp. But the biggest uproar to come from Ms. Hamsher’s activities seems to be the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth that comes from purity betrayed.

So maybe Ms. Hamsher is going to come away from this with cooties, but you know — if you really stop to think about it — that the fundamental problem facing this nation is that two corrupt institutions manage to keep the American people divided against each other. There will always be real differences, and i seriously doubt that Jane Hamsher is going to start calling for bathtub violence against the government. I’d be greatly surprised if she started writing on the benefits of conservative neo-liberal economic policy. She’s no traitor to anyone or anything. Freedom, as you well know by now, is not free; the price is eternal vigilance and the willingness to do what’s right, even when it isn’t the easy thing or the politically expedient thing.

I would like to hold Norquist's head under water in the same dirty bathwater he wants to drown the government in, but since I'm a gentle Librul who doesn't believe in outright murder except in a few cases, only until he craps his knickers. That said, sometimes you have to make a deal with the devil to try and get something done, and when it's done you can kill him.

Here are Jane's charges against Emanuel.

It appears that Jane is shovelling shit against the tide, but when she's involved I wouldn't bet the farm on the tide.

Almost forgot - Jane with cooties? I'm aroused...

Sen. Hatch admits GOP ’standard practice’ was to run up deficit

Senator Hatch (R-Cultah) done stepped on his unit. Heh.

Raw Story, with video:

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow believes she has found the smoking gun proving Republicans' hypocrisy on health care and the budget deficit: an admission by Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch that, during the Bush administration, "it was standard practice not to pay for things."

"Every single Republican opposed the health reform bill when it was voted on on Christmas Eve, and that includes the 24 Republicans who voted for George Bush's Medicare prescription-drug expansion in 2003," Maddow said on her show Monday night. "Now that expansion in 2003, unlike the reform bill that's being currently debated, added tens of billions of dollars to the deficit. And this makes for some awkward politics, because many Republicans are citing worries about the deficit as their reason for voting against health reform now."

Some Republicans say they don't believe the CBO's projections that the health care overhaul will pay for itself. As for their newfound worries about big government health expansions, they essentially say: That was then, this is now.

Project Obama Fail had not begun at that time and the wildly successful Project Bush Fail was just getting up to speed.

If you see a bicycle rocketing backwards in the next day or so, it'll just be Hatch backpedalling. Telling the truth, however inadvertently, is considered a political gaffe in Repug Beltwayistan. This oughta be good!

Problem solved!

Department of Homeland Security Issues Terrorist ID Cards

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - In the wake of the Christmas Day airline terror attempt, the Department of Homeland Security today said it was instituting a bold new series of security measures, including issuing an official "proof of terrorism" I.D. card.

"All potential terrorists must have the terrorist I.D. card in order to be barred from boarding," said Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano. "If you want to get on the no-fly list you'll need a completed application and the $25 fee."

The Homeland Security chief said that her department would continue to crack down on the primary threat to air safety: shampoo.

"We will be looking out for shampoo like never before," she said. "If you want to smuggle it on board, you had better hide it with your bomb-making supplies."

Makes ya proud to be an American, don't it?

In case you're wondering ...

You have a far greater chance of being hit by lightning than being involved in a terrorist attack ... unless you're my wife.

Let's just ...

Round 'em all up and send 'em to Gitmo:

...

If you add in Africans (as you must by this logic) that's about half of the global population right there. But then how do we know that some guy named Bob isn't a Muslim? Or that some young woman named Samira isn't a terrorist? It gets really complicated. The only profiling that will really work is to not let anyone in the US at all and to require all US citizens to wear designations on their clothes to indicate which religion they are. Anything short of that just won't get the job done.

Alternatively, we could invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

...

A conservative wet dream.

Top 20 Funniest Political Moments of 2009

From Daniel Kurtzman. Just go...

Also, the bumpersticker of the year IMNSHO:

Inhofe's Global Warming Solution

Strip Search

On a weenie-shrinkin' day like that, I've got a hunch what it is we'd be searchin' for! I believe I'll take the bus! Even from Amsterdam to Detroit!

Thanks to The Independent, UK.

W**-M*** continues to suck

According to the New York Times, Wal-Mart can give employees "demerits" that can lead to termination if they call in sick! We think the real demerits should go to Wal-Mart for their bad sick days practices, which risk making the public sick and their employees sicker. Give Wal-Mart a "Demerit Badge" today!

Update:

ABC News

A Pennsylvania Walmart Supercenter videotaped employees and customers in a unisex bathroom, several former and current Walmart employees alleged in a lawsuit filed this week.

Several employees discovered an "off-the-shelf" video camera in a store bathroom March 31, 2008, according to the court filing. The unisex bathroom, which also served as a changing room, was used by employees and customers. Customers and employees were not notifed of the surveillance, according to the court filing.

Walmart said two workers were responsible for the camera.

"Two associates were terminated for placing a camera in an associate dressing room bathroom," Walmart spokesman Greg Rossiter said. "When store management learned of the camera, it was immediately removed."

The company declined further comment.

According to the court filing, the camera was installed by Walmart's loss-prevention unit.

The camera was used to monitor employees for possible theft and it is unclear how long the surveillance took place, McLain said. None of the plaintiffs, however, were accused of stealing from the store.

A store manager acknowledged the existence of the surveillance camera only after employees produced a photo of the camera, McLain said.

Monitoring employee theft? The camera was in the fucking TIRE DEPARTMENT! Yeah, when I worked as a tire man, I always snuck tires out in my shorts! Maybe they were just swiping the really cool little green valve caps that signify nitrogen instead of air in the tires. Yeesh.

Three of the plaintiffs were terminated after complaining to store management about video surveillance, McLain said.

They fired the guys who did it and the the guys that did something about it. It's a Repug thing.

Muck Fal-Wart.

An Avatar Awakening

AfterDowningStreet

Let's face it, if James Cameron had made a movie with the Iraqi resistance as the heroes and the U.S. military as the enemies, and had set it in Iraq or anywhere else on planet earth, the packed theaters viewing "Avatar" would have been replaced by a screening in a living room for eight people and a dog.

The Na'vi people of "Avatar" are very explicitly Iraqis facing "shock and awe," as well as Native Americans with bows and arrows on horseback. The "bad guys" in the battle scenes are U.S. mercenaries, essentially the U.S. military, and the movie allows us to see them, very much as they are right now in 177 real nations around the world, through the eyes of their victims.

Rob Kall at OpEd News suggested that we make flyers to hand out at theaters following screenings of "Avatar." Having now seen the film, I think he's right. Here's a flyer (PDF).

Fat chance.

Flight 253 and Alligator Brains

The Last Chance Democracy Cafe

There’s little doubt that I personally stand a much greater risk of dying from a (frustration induced) heart attack in an airport security line than of being killed in a terrorist attack. The recent failed attack on Northwest Flight 253 doesn’t change that.

And, for the most part, we are fairly accepting of these inevitable risks of life. Not so, however, for terrorism. As to it, the acceptable level of risk often seems to be regarded as zero — something that is in reality, of course, impossible to achieve. Yet, in this quixotic quest to ensure total safety we have spent more of our money, bended more of our national principles and created more discomfort for ourselves and others than has been true in the cases of numerous much more likely risks to our safety.

And here we go again with new security measures in response to the attack on Flight 253 — measures destined to make air travel even more miserable than it already is. Will they make us safer? I’m no expert, but mark me down as dubious. But even if these latest assaults against our air travel sanity will provide some small measure of increased security, that still leaves the question of whether they will be worth the cost.

That’s a question we as a society need to be asking more often. Obviously, we must take all reasonable steps to keep ourselves safe, but the line between what is reasonable and what is unduly destructive of other interests and values couldn’t be any thinner. The threat of terrorism is likely to be with us for as long as anyone reading these words is alive, a risk that will provide endless opportunities for fear induced limitations upon our freedom and comfort. And whatever the Obama Administration does, rest assured, it won’t be nearly enough for the alligator brains of the far right.

From the link:

BUFFOON WATCH.... Some have wondered this year if, in the case of a deadly terrorist attack, Republicans could bring themselves to put patriotism over party, and rally behind a president they disagree with.

I think we're getting a sense of the answer.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said Sunday that it is fair to blame the Obama administration for the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit on Christmas Day.

...

Not quite 48 hours after a Nigerian man -- who got a visa to enter the United States from the Bush administration -- unsuccessfully tried to kill Americans, Pete Hoekstra, one of Congress' more offensive buffoons, is going on national television to blame the Obama administration.

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but this is nauseating.

Let's be clear. First, the Obama administration's record on counter-terrorism is very impressive. Second, Pete Hoekstra's record on national security issues is so ridiculous, it's hard not to point and laugh. And third, Hoekstra's attempts to exploit an attack that failed is almost certainly motivated by an effort to impress right-wing primary voters in advance of his gubernatorial campaign, making his attacks against the president cheap and disgusting.

What an embarrassment.

When a candidate like Hoaxtra has nothing, he can always fall back on Project Obama Fail and maybe convince enough morons to keep him on the gravy train.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

SPECIAL EDITION: THE DECADE IN IRONY, 2000-2009

I guess the irony is that the decade actually began in 2001 and has a year to go.

2000

Bush Win Inspires Average Students
Presidency not out of reach for those with poor grades, police records, money.

2002

U.S. Wants to Dump 77,000 Pounds of Nuclear Waste 90 Miles from Las Vegas
Many argue that's not close enough.

Middle Class Losing Health Insurance
But problem is temporary – middle class rapidly vanishing.

2005

Army Asks Congress to Raise Top Recruitment Age from 35 to 42
Lower bottom IQ score from 42 to 35.

Alberto Gonzales to Remove Covering From Breast of Statue In Dept. of Justice
Orders all statues stripped, piled on top of each other in lobby.

2009

Republicans: No Reason to Probe Bush Administration Use of Torture
There was no oral sex involved.
...

Obama Proposes Huge Stimulus Plan
To get Americans borrowing again.

Quote of the Day

Our buddy Nucks (link NSFW):

...

Apparently we have small children running the TSB who have absolutely no concept of airline traffic and passenger safety.

...

Now ...

That's a terrorist.

So ...

David "Bobo" Brooks is in favor of single-payer health care?

...

Brooks support for single-payer comes late in the health care reform debate. Both houses of Congress have passed reform bills which Brooks says he can't support. "I oppose it. It's a close call for me," said Brooks. "My preferred option is to give consumers choice."

...

Be nice if the little twat spoke up when it counted.

The day after Christmas...

Thanks to YubaNet.

The Reincarnation of the Dark Ages

You'll love this 'must read' by Loren Adams.

The king taxed the peasants to poverty while the royals were exempt from paying any. Reason? Unjust tax codes were a design of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. That was the “targeted tax-cut” which invariably became law. “He who hath the gold maketh the rules.”

The Dark Ages was the birthplace of “Trickle-Down Economics.” The caste system was embraced, the church was simply a ruling arm of the monarch, and slavery was legitimatized by the religious righteous.

Republicans constantly decry labor’s “class warfare,” but this is the real war being waged across America. The cultural war is basically a derivative of class warfare – where the ruling class has employed white evangelicals to do their bidding: divide and conquer.

During the Dark Ages, wealth was exclusively inherited, not earned. The legal system was purchased like a commodity resulting in juryless trials, military tribunals, pronouncements by a king acknowledged as sovereign and commissioned by God to rule as if the voice of Providence Himself, executive orders usurping representation, taxation without representation, etc. Anyone disputing the monarch’s sovereignty was designated a traitor and summarily executed, tortured or banished to dungeon. These were the markings of the Dark Ages. Are they not similar to contemporary Republicanism so glaringly demonstrated during the Bush years?

Just...go.

Still ...

Wasting money and lives:

...

Once again, the Army decided to side with the same contractor that has overcharged them for feeding our troops, electrocuted our forces due to faulty work, and exposed them to human sewage through their inability to even get a building properly plumbed.

...

Glad to see we're still supporting the Cheneys.

Link thanks to Cookie Jill.