Well, that was quick. Several hours after Mitt Romney told an Iowa heckler that "corporations are people, my friend" the DNC is up with a video lampooning the quote. Featuring the smooth sounds of Barbara Streisand's "People," no less.
... When you’re bleeding profusely from an open wound, you want a doctor who binds that wound up, not a doctor who lectures you on the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle as you get older ...
Emmylou Harris - Johnny Carson Tonight Show
"Michele Bachmann's first answer, Mark Halperin, was "I wish the federal government had defaulted." Had defaulted, a week after Americans had lost--some of them perhaps lost half of their pensions. Lost half of their 401(k)s, when trillions of dollars went down the drain [pounds the table] with Americans suffering, she said that and got applause, and if anybody thinks that guys like my dad are going to be voting that way when this rolls out of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina, in the early stages, and really gets going, they are out of their mind and they are too stupid not only to prognosticate, they are too stupid to run Slurpee machines in Des Moines. I'll let you go now. I got it off my chest.
Michele Bachmann is a joke. She is a joke. And now I will pass it on to you. Her answer is a joke, her candidacy is a joke, and anybody that sits here and says she has any chance of winning anything is out of their mind. Take your straw poll, take your caucus, but Iowa, if you let her win, you prove your irrelevance once again," - Joe Scarborough (Hit the link just for grins - G).
If Bachmann is a joke, what does that make Palin?
Why No Democrat Will Challenge Obama
[...] The voices of protest bump up against the stubborn reality of divided government. It’s possible, but not probable, that Democrats will get the 24 seats they need to regain control of the House, but there’s a stronger possibility the Republicans will take the Senate; they only need four seats. “If they have the presidency, then the Tea Party is running the country," says Schneider, and Democrats "can’t take any chance that will happen."
In preparation for a day of Sarah-chasing at the fair -- which we predict will result in, oh, nothing of actual news value -- we offer you this a whiff of the Iowa State Fair. The new Heartland delicacy this Fried butter on a stick.
Here's what it looks like. We chased it with a Snickers bar on a stick.
After I ordered, they asked if I wanted anything else. "How about a paramedic?" I snarked. ...and then a very worried looking woman stepped to the window. "Is everything OK?" she asked. "I'm a paramedic."
A kindly paramedic who sells fried butter on a stick. Only at The Iowa State Fair.
Bachmann roughly fucked
Pawlenty with a large red,
white, and blue spiked cross.
(One other note: when Ron Paul is the sanest man in the room, you've got a hell of a lot of problems in your choice of candidates, GOP.)
...
(One other other note: Mitt Romney is scary.)
You mean this wasn't "American Idiot: The Musical"?
In a strange revelation Thursday, Mother Jones magazine unearthed a mostly forgotten 2002 movie that stars none other than Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann during her days as an education activist, warning Americans about a coming second Holocaust brought on by the U.S. public education system.
...
The film, called Guinea Pig Kids II according to the report, was made in conjunction with a conservative group called the Maple River Education Coalition. Consisting mainly of two presentations -- one by Chapman and one by Bachmann -- building upon conspiracies that sound like Glenn Beck's worst nightmares.
He goes on to assert that school-to-work programs, which help students identify core skills needed to get jobs in their chosen fields, are an echo of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's concentration camps. Later the film shows an image of a deserted, foggy area bearing the words "Work Makes Free!," a rough translation of the phrase that hung in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
...
"In essence, we have built a replacement sphincter that we hope can one day benefit human patients," said Khalil Bitar, a professor at the institute. Bitar performed the work while on the University of Michigan faculty.
...
And it's not just judges. The GOP is filibustering left and right on administration appointees across the baord. But again, the Democrats and the White House should be railing about this. We shouldn't have to rely on Ari Melber and MSNBC. All these issues are related. If we kept talking about the GOP filibuster of appointees we'd also have more fodder to go after the GOP filibuster of the debt ceiling increase, of health care reform, of DADT (that we finally surmounted after losing two initial votes). Everything is related to everything else. If you let the GOP slide on one thing, it helps them get you on dozens of other issues.
...
...
Former Obama adviser and longtime consumer protection advocate Elizabeth Warren is moving toward a Senate run, several Democratic sources tell the Huffington Post.
...
Me: Mr. Christ, or can I call you Jesus?.... I gotta ask you this question before anything else. Is it true that you're a Republican?
Jesus: What!? Where did you get that ridiculous notion from, my dear Jewish atheist child. Have you not actually read my book, I mean the Bible?
Me: What about Rick Perry's 'prayer rally' in Texas on Saturday? He was talking to you. Told you "you are our only hope." Were you listening to him? Did you say anything back?
Jesus: First off, let me say neither I or anyone in my family was at that event. That's not my kind of prayer rally. As for me being the only hope, that's quite sad. Perhaps Mr. Perry would be better served to look in the mirror and judge his own narrow-minded, divisive behavior. How he and his conservative brethren prey on the weak, the meek, the needy. Remember Proverbs 14:31...He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. Ok, gotta run...I have a bris in Great Neck I have to get to...
Why has Barack Obama been such a disappointment to many progressives? More importantly, why has he failed the country in a time of crisis?
It's largely because Obama does not understand how bullies operate, according to a prominent political psychologist. [...]
The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.
The arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. [...]
Here’s the thing. I know Tea Party Republicans were behind the debt-ceiling standoff that wreaked needless damage on confidence in the United States. I wrote weeks ago of Standard & Poor’s outrageous nerve in threatening a downgrade when America’s ability to pay its debts can’t possibly be in doubt. In short, I know who the real villains are at this volatile moment.
So why am I so mad at Barack Obama?
The long-awaited debut of the vessel, a refitted former Soviet craft, marked a step forward in China's long-term plan to build a carrier force that can project power into the Asian region, where seas are spanned by busy shipping lanes and thorny territorial disputes.
The aircraft carrier, which is about 300 meters (984 feet) long, plowed through fog and sounded its horn three times as it left the dock, Xinhua said on its military news microblog.
...
It seems that the very rich people... the ones who like to call themselves the "upper class" in this country... may not be so upper class after all. They actually lack many of the personality traits that differentiate we human beings from the dog eat dog, survival of the fittest denizens of the animal world. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of the "lower" animals" who are more capable of empathy for their fellow creatures than most of our elitist rich.
...
Recent studies have verified that the upper class is pretty much incapable of giving a damn about the havoc they wreak on the lives of the common people... otherwise identified by both they and the mass media as the "lower" class... and while there are differences of opinion as to whether this disability is inherited through some kind of genetic disposition or learned, most of them agree that the elite are indeed incapable of or indisposed to giving any indication that they give a damn about anyone but themselves.
...
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has written a letter to the Defense Department and the CIA requesting that they investigate whether the White House leaked classified information to Hurt Locker filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow about the raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.
...
In case anyone was wondering if there would come a point at which basic reality would send a wake-up call to blinkered Tea Party conservatives, you have your answer in the Great State of Texas. Specifically, the town of Kemp, population 1,133:
...
BEND, Ore. -- It was a bittersweet, even ironic "homecoming" day for Bend resident Tim Collette who's home is in foreclosure. His son, Aaron, arrived back home on leave from a tour of duty in Iraq. But hours earlier, his house was sold back to the bank.
...
Gov. Mitt Romney lobbied the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s in 2004 to raise his state’s credit rating in part because Massachusetts had raised taxes during an economic downturn two years earlier.
...
If liberals were doing to the country what extremist tea party Republicans are doing – it would be called unpatriotic. A whole tsunami of sound bites would sweep the country calling for the sabotage to stop.
Liberal dissent is akin to a security breach but conservative economic calamity is given a pass. We’ve treated the tea party like they are our country’s kooky, graying, drunken uncle at Thanksgiving dinner spouting some non sequiturs he picked up on AM radio. When really they are well-funded economic saboteurs who refuse to participate in the democratic process. Their goal of causing the executive branch of government to fail means our entire country goes with it.
...
If liberals did this to their own country they’d be called criminals. The tea party did do this to their own country and they are treated like avant-garde Civil War reenactors.
...
Hey guys, remember that time that Congressional losers Nancy Pelosi and John Boehnerdecided to kill off the Congressional Page Program to save money? Me Neither! Anyway, some former pages are protesting. "Getting felt-up by a horny old man was a life-changing experience for me," said former page "Fark Moley." Anyway, they have set up (wait for it) a Facebook Page to reach out to othervictimsalumni of the program. (Roll Call)...
...
Then [Rep.(R-TX) Michael] Burgess fielded a suggestion that the House move to impeach Obama. "It needs to happen, and I agree with you it would tie things up," he reportedly said. "No question about that."
The U.S. Constitution, in Article II, Section 4, requires a conviction on "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" before an office-holder can be impeached. President Obama faces no such charges.
Asked to clarify, "Burgess said he wasn't sure whether the proper charges to bring up articles of impeachment against Obama were there, but he didn't rule out pursuing such a course," ...
...
A young woman I talked to at the airport last week said that she will not vote in the next election. I hate to hear that. I think if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain the next time around. You have voluntarily ceded your voice in this democracy. I told her that and she said, "After Obama, what is there left to hope for?"
...
Looking past them, at sails being raised on the three other masts and at the sun setting off our starboard, I thought about how rare (and how high) this view is - you can be 10 decks up on a mega-cruise ship, but still feel like you're in an office building. From this perch, there's vastness - a startling amount of empty space between me and the deck, plus an open panorama of stern, prow, port and starboard of the ship.
The Star Flyer, which has four masts rising 206 feet and can set 16 sails totaling 36,000 square feet, carries 170 passengers. My cabin (Category C, with a queen bed) measured roughly 9 by 12 1/2 feet, had a fixed nightstand on the open side of the bed, a padded seat against the hull and a stool beneath the shelf opposite the bed. While the voyage is clearly an upscale experience, it helps to have a flexible definition of "luxury." (The bathroom was a snug 5 by 3 1/2 feet.)
The masts aren't just for show. The Star Flyer is one of the handful of commercial passenger ships that use sails as their primary propulsion.
"We are a sailing ship," Capt. Jurgen Muller-Cyran told me. "The wind, the seas - we want this for our onboard atmosphere. ... Our passengers come for adventure: They don't care where they are going."
It's as if Obama has created this imaginary friend called "Mr. Nice the Elephant," and he's so happy to have Mr. Nice the Elephant around to play with that he just wants everyone to know about Mr. Nice the Elephant. He may as well have said, "Mr. Nice the Elephant and I come up with great ideas all the time. We should all have a pal as terrific as Mr. Nice the Elephant. Isn't that true, Mr. Nice? He says it's true. You just can't hear him, but I can."
Mr. Nice the Elephant is fuckin' awesome. He'll sit down at a table with you and tell you how grand a bargain you can come up with. He'll tell you not to worry about all those meanie rogue elephants out there. Mr. Nice will take care of them. He'll teach 'em all to be nice, like him, Mr. Nice the Elephant.
It's as if nearly all of us are watching Jim DeMint and Rand Paul and Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann and other nutzoids raping Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty and skull-fucking Ted Kennedy's dead head with Ronald Reagan's femur and calling that compromise. And we're all yelling, "Hey, could someone stop them from doing all that? It's really bad." And then Obama says to us, "Well, guess Uncle Sam shouldn't have bent over to pick up that beard soap in the shower. It's his problem because he thinks getting ass-raped is bad. Why is he drawing a line in the sand over the fucking of his anus? Gosh, Mr. Nice, that's not very nice of Uncle Sam."
The Democratic point of view is so degraded right now in the country that people keep telling the Rude Pundit, "But..but...the majority of Democrats support the debt deal." That's because Democrats actually understood that if you didn't raise the debt ceiling, the zombie recession would have risen even more viciously hungry. That's because, if we take John Boehner at his word that he got 98% of what he wanted, Democrats are happy they got 2% and Republicans are angry that they negotiated 2% away.
Here's the question the Rude Pundit would like to ask this President who keeps on attempting to appear post-partisan, who refuses to lay the dead bald eagle at the feet of the people with the gun: "Would you have been elected if you had run as a Republican? No? Then maybe you should lead like you need to defeat the fuckers who want to defeat you."
(Note: That last part presumes a level of hope and bravado that may not be possible at this moment.)
...
The data, taken from Gallup's polling from January 2011 to June of this year, charts the president's rating in all 50 states, using interviews with more than 90,000 American adults. While his national approval rating for this time period in the Gallup tracking poll is below 50%, the map shows an improving picture after the GOP victories of 2010, and much of that improvement in swing states.
...
Bin Laden Turned in by Informant -- Courier Was Cover Story
[...] Sources in the intelligence community tell me that after years of trying and one bureaucratically insane near-miss in Yemen, the US government killed OBL because a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to collect the approximately $25 million reward from the State Department's Rewards for Justice program.
The informant was a walk-in.
The CIA and friends then set about proving that OBL was indeed there. And they did.
Next they approached the chiefs of the Pakistani military and the ISI. The US was going to come in with or without them. The CIA offered them a deal they couldn't refuse: they would double what the Saudis were paying them to keep bin Laden if they cooperated with the US. Or they could refuse the deal and live with the consequences: the Saudis would stop paying and there would be the international embarassment...
The ISI and Pakistani military were cooperating with the US on the raid.
The cooperation was why there were no troops in Abottabad. They were all pulled out. [...]
Although the White House really pissed off the intel and DEVGRU guys with their knee-jerk reaction that tossed the Pakistanis under the proverbial bus, ironically it did have the same outcome as the original CIA cover story: the way they were treated, no one believes Generals Kiyani and Pasha were cooperating with the US.
To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it’s the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation’s prospects.
Let’s start with S.& P.’s lack of credibility. If there’s a single word that best describes the rating agency’s decision to downgrade America, it’s chutzpah — traditionally defined by the example of the young man who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.
So there is no reason to take Friday’s downgrade of America seriously. These are the last people whose judgment we should trust.
No, what makes America look unreliable isn’t budget math, it’s politics. And please, let’s not have the usual declarations that both sides are at fault. Our problems are almost entirely one-sided — specifically, they’re caused by the rise of an extremist right that is prepared to create repeated crises rather than give an inch on its demands.
The real question facing America, even in purely fiscal terms, isn’t whether we’ll trim a trillion here or a trillion there from deficits. It is whether the extremists now blocking any kind of responsible policy can be defeated and marginalized.
There was much talk of "dungaree liberty," a time honored Naval tradition in which sailors donned working uniforms, armed themselves with knives, pipes and clubs and went ashore to wreak havoc on an offending liberty town.
Dow Tumbles 513 Points on Thursday
Oil, gas down; gold, ramen up.
CNN Poll Shows Congress’ Approval Now at 14%
Slightly below Al Qaeda.
Taiwan-based Foxconn, Electronics Manufacturer, Will Replace 1,000,000 Workers with Robots
Workers will be dismantled and sold for scrap.
Only 52% Give God Positive Job Approval Rating
If they had to choose today, 48% would worship “unnamed other deity.”
...
If this is a all a kabuki conspiracy, it's the best acted Vaudeville farce of all time. The other alternative is to concede that we're governed by drooling idiots in Wall St. and Washington alike, largely because anybody with a clue about what's really going on is relegated to the sidelines and not allowed anywhere near real policy decisions.
...
Chalmers Johnson died on November 20, 2010, but -- for me at least -- his spirit lives on in the most active of ways. In his last years at TomDispatch.com, he regularly chewed over the profligacy of the Pentagon, our unbridled urge for military spending, and our penchant for war-making and war preparations without end. He was convinced that we had long passed the point at which we were still a “republic,” that we had decisively opted for empire, and -- long before the U.S. intelligence community came to that conclusion -- that we were on the downward slide, helped along by what he called a “military Keynesianism” run amok.
One question he raised regularly in conversation, but never answered in print, was: What would it mean for the United States -- i.e. a great military superpower -- to bankrupt itself? After all, we aren't Argentina. But if there was no obvious model to draw on, he never doubted one thing: if we didn’t change our ways and reverse course on empire, we would certainly be a candidate for debtor’s prison and a wreck of a country. In his last major essay, also the title of his last (and still unbearably relevant) book, he turned to the issue of “dismantling the empire,” knowing full well that it wasn’t on any imaginable Washington agenda.
...
We are a land of many ‘belts’: the Bible Belt, the Rust Belt, the Sun Belt, to name a few.
But watching the near dissolution of our political institutions and our international reputation as a scientific, medical, and cultural leader at the hands of ideologically puritanical and intellectually useless base idiots, the time has come to name another of America’s ‘belts’: the DUMMY BELT.
This belt encompasses a swath of the United States that, were it drop-kicked from the Union, would instantly join the likes of Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau among the world’s most primitive societies. A grotesque mutation joining Iranian theocracy and Central African poverty would emerge, despoiling the planet and setting back global progress a dozen generations merely by existing.
...
"I find it interesting to see S&P so vigilant now in downgrading the U.S. credit rating. Where were they four years ago when they, and other credit rating agencies, helped cause this horrendous recession by providing AAA ratings to worthless sub-prime mortgage securities on behalf of Wall Street investment firms? Where were they last December when Congress and the White House drove up the national debt by $700 billion by extending Bush's tax breaks for the rich?"