Mitch McConnell and the Chamber of Commerce Tell the Supreme Court to Double Down on Citizens United
...
Yet while the briefs are unsurprising, they demonstrate both the corporate lobby and the Republican Party’s commitment to keeping wealthy interest groups’ ability to buy and sell elections intact.
Hey! See those people sitting next to you at that restaurant? That café? That food court juice bar sushi joint? Ever notice what happens when their food order arrives?
...Food, mind you, that has (usually) been carefully planned, meticulously prepared, perfectly cooked, beautifully presented, food that has been sourced from the finest or at least most fascinating array of growers, butchers, manufacturers, tastemakers, plants and animals from all over the world?
Watch and be sort of... depressed. Many, even most Americans will barely glance at their plates when they land in front of them. It's true. From casual café fare to the fanciest gourmet meal, most will simply take one glimpse to make sure everything appears tolerable and not moldy, and then plow right into it, devour it, perhaps barely chewing, not even noticing what they're doing.
Have you ever noticed? It's sort of tragically rare to see anyone pause for more than a split second to offer deeper thanks, to appreciate any level of beauty, bounty, artistry, nourishment in their food as it hovers near their mouths and prepares to enter the human system. All too often, we just take it all for granted and devour. Hey, I do it, too. I'm trying to do it far less. Aiming for never. Aiming, in fact, for the exact opposite approach.
...
"My fellow Americans, we have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war. Yet here, in the predawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon," the president said.
...
FBI Foils Another Bomb Plot it Engineered
...
Grover Norquist, the Republican strategist who heads Americans for Tax Reform, said in an interview that he did not expect Mr. Romney to lead as president. He just wants him to sign the bills that put Mr. Ryan’s vision into practice.
...
...
It sounds to me as if somebody watched Footloose and walked out before the rave up ending.
...
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) April 30, 2012 – In the first term in office, President Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the previous eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.
...
Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements, as well as his insistence on the correct pronunciation of the word "nuclear," has harmed his reelection hopes among millions of voters who find his unusual speaking style unfamiliar and bizarre.
According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, after eight years of George W. Bush many Americans find it "alienating" to have a President who speaks English as if it were his first language.
Suppressed Dissenting 2006 State Dept. Memo Regarding Torture Seen for First Time
Identity, whereabouts of author still unknown.
House Republicans Working With Big Business to Mine Grand Canyon
Which you’ll be able to watch from Vista del Grand Canyon Luxury Condos & Golf Course.
Pizza Hut Debuts Pizzas With Cheeseburgers in Crust
Delivered right to your hospice.
President of Southern Baptist Ethics Commission Faces Charges That He Plagiarized Racist Comments on His Radio Show
Church wants original racist remarks from its leaders.
NFL Draft, NBA Playoffs, NHL Playoffs Converge
Beer briefly passes gold on commodities market.
Yesterday John McCain took to the Senate floor and shook his fist in the air at the sky and proclaimed there is "no Republican War against Women". Meanwhile in reality: The Violence Against Women Act was renewed by a vote of 68 to 31.
The 31 votes against looked like this, obviously all Republican and naturally...:
... The church leadership never recoiled in horror from pedophilia, yet it recoils in horror from outspoken nuns...
Pot-infused wine is all the rage in dope-friendly California
How could you make a substance like wine, with chemical properties that make you pleasantly woozy and a bit euphoric, any better? Infuse it with another substance whose chemicals make you pleasantly woozy and a bit euphoric, of course! Enter marijuana-laced wine. A bit like the pot brownie's more refined big sister, the aromatic red spirit is on the rise in California where increasingly lax pot laws have brought the decades-old fad back into fashion. The recipe calls for dropping a pound of pot into a fermenting cask of wine, which yields about 1.5 grams of weed per bottle. Plenty enough, we think, to get a group of sophisticated vintners chanting "duuuude" and eating Funyuns.
Romney and his surrogates have revealed an ongoing Cold War fixation. Former Reagan Navy Secretary John Lehman and former Bush administration Ambassador Pierre Prosper, on Thursday derailed Romney messaging in a conference call with reporters by raising the specter of the “Soviet Union” and slamming Obama for not protecting Czechoslovakia — a country that was peacefully dissolved in 1993 and now exists as the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
GOP's Anti-Obama Campaign Started Night Of Inauguration
GOP Tries To Water Down Violence Against Women Act, Expresses Willingness To Tolerate Some Domestic Abuse
In many ways Tucker Carlson’s a better symbol of the pathetic state of what passes for conservative journalism than even Glenn Beck or the late Andrew Breitbart, to name two of his contemporaries with a much larger following. Glenn Beck started as a no-account shock jock and is now a no-account Internet show host. Breitbart at least went from Drudge lackey to successful right-wing media mogul. Carlson, though, began his career in the most respectable fashion possible and has spent the ensuing decades gradually lowering himself into the gutter. His story illustrates why we can’t have a responsible or at least slightly less hysterical conservative media.
...
No one watched “Tucker.” Cool, no-tie Tucker was just as loathed by TV viewers as prep school prick club-tie Tucker had been. [...]
...
Carlson’s Daily Caller was supposed to be a home for edgy, independent voices and serious, well-reported journalism from a conservative perspective. No one actually wants that — if they did, it would exist, right? — because the online right-wing audience simply wants to be told reassuring and outrageous lies. [...]
...
Carlson is now engaged in giving the people — the idiotic, angry, paranoid people — what they want, which became incredibly apparent once The Caller began tackling the Trayvon Martin tragedy by launching a campaign to prove that Martin had been a thug. It was barrel-scraping racist garbage. [...]
...
Some particular low lights from an increasingly regrettable career: The time Carlson said he beat up some gay guy who tried to be gay all over him because Carlson is deathly afraid of gay people and the prospect of anyone ever thinking he is gay. The time he got a video store employee fired, and threatened to “destroy” him, for mentioning that Tucker Carlson rented a video from his store. His remarkably stupid and creepy interview with Elle in which he embodied every repulsive fratty asshole stereotype imaginable [...]
Prison Industries: "Don't Let Society Improve or We Lose Business"
A UN-backed international court has convicted former Liberian president Charles Taylor of war crimes - the first African head of state to be found guilty by an international tribunal.
Taylor, 64, was charged 11 counts of war crimes including murder, rape, conscripting child soldiers and sexual slavery during intertwined wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, in which more than 50,000 people were killed.
...
A Fox News host who joked that women have all the rights the need because they can shop got a two-word response from The Young Turks co-host Ana Kasparian on Tuesday: “Fuck you!”
It is brutally hard to be a Christian in America these days. Some of us Christians take that bit about doing unto the least of us deeply, deeply seriously. Some of us Christians think that it is wrong, sinful, and in fact a brazen form of Apartheid to deny certain Americans the rights enjoyed by other Americans based upon who they love. Mostly, some of us think Christianity in America has gone barking-mad insane.
I am a Christian. I make no apologies for it. I'm not sure if I believe that Jesus turned that water into wine, or if He raised up Lazarus, or even if He rose from the dead. That all sounds like a lot of magic nonsense from two thousand years ago when you think about it, which is why they call it The Mystery of Faith.
But I believe that I am my brother's keeper, that I should worship without bragging about it, that the poor will God-damned-right inherit the Earth, and that what you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do unto me. I believe that the first four books of the New Testament are a wonderful blueprint for being a decent person on this planet, and that's what I live by, as best I can.
...
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to drink some new wine, hang out with a familiar whore, and listen to the dead.
Funny how no one ever talks about the nuns.
I suppose it makes sense. After all, Catholic nuns are so rarely embroiled in sex scandals. They are never caught pants down in the rectory with a 10-year-old altar boy, teaching him of the "mystical secretions" of the Lord. They never cost the church billions in litigious payouts for rape, abuse, millennia of pedophilic atrocity and shame. For that, you gotta look to the priests.
Have you heard? The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the umbrella group representing those 57K American nuns, they've been accused of having "serious doctrinal issues" and promoting nothing short of "radical feminist themes" (!) which apparently consists of gently supporting Obamacare (free health care for the poor? Nuns are all over it), endorsing the idea of female priests, ministering to the underprivileged, and being way too nice to gay people.
Horrible! You can see why the pope is furious. Some nuns are even accused of spending so much time working in local politics to help the needy, they leave themselves no room to bash gay marriage, wail about abortion, attack humanity for enjoying sex, or scold their own gender for having vaginas in the first place. I know! Those wenches.
But if you're like me -- and I know you are -- the question often gnaws like a squirrel in the rafters: In an age of bitter corruption, suspicious sources and ersatz meanings, where do you go to find true integrity of mission? Where do you go to find a quietly intentional upsetting of the long-established doctrine of idiocy and belligerence, patriarchy and hoary dogma?
Now we know. Now we can look to the Catholic nuns, those fierce n' fiery wenches of God, those cool goth cheerleaders of Jesus, for a hint of inspiration and temerity, just a tiny taste of delicious insurrection right when we need it most.
Former Republican candidate Jon Huntsman took a battle axe to his own party, comparing it to China's Communist Party and criticizing its standard bearer in a wide-ranging interview at the 92nd Street Y Sunday night.
...
Huntsman, the former Utah governor and once President Barack Obama's Ambassador to China, expressed disappointment that the Republican Party disinvited him from a Florida fundraiser in March after he publicly called for a third party.
"This is what they do in China on party matters, they punish you, if you talk off script," he said.
REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - An Icelandic court ruled on Monday that former Prime Minister Geir Haarde was guilty of one charge related to negligence in connection with the North Atlantic island nation's financial meltdown in 2008 but gave him no punishment. ...He might not have to go to jail, but I could live with a public shaming of our corporate criminals and their political cohorts. Unfortunately, those here who are responsible own those who make the laws.
The miners faced the grim prospect of going out on strike against the powerful southern coalfield companies, chief among them, John D Rockefeller's Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. The coal operators had steadfastly refused to recognize the Union and had ignored all attempts at negotiation.
The miners had had their fill of dangerous working conditions, crooked checkweighmen, long hours, and low pay. They lived in peonage in company towns, were paid in company script, and were forced to shop for their daily needs in high-priced company stores which kept them always in debt. But, mostly they hated the notorious company guard system. Every attempt to organize was met with brutality on the part of the coal operators.Also see Wikipedia.
Refers to the violent deaths of 20 people, 11 of them children, during an attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914
This is a 10 minute documentary about the Ludlow Massacre that took place in Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914 and resulted in the deaths of 19 people. This doc was created in 2003 and entered in the National History Day Competition where it placed 1st at the state level and was a national finalist for the Junior Group Documentaries. (Written, Directed, and Edited by Sarah Goode and Lila Creighton)
America's longest prohibition dates back to 1937 -- the "Reefer Madness" era when the country's earliest anti-drug zealots (led by former head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger) convinced a gullible public that marijuana caused people to commit unspeakable acts of depravity, such as when the hopped-up stoner runs over an elderly man in the guffaw-inducing exploitation flick....
Perhaps even more harmful is the stereotyping of marijuana smokers as lazy, dumb, slow, passive, apathetic, memory-challenged junk-food addicts. Though anti-drug organizations like the Partnership gladly re-enforce all of these supposed stoner traits, the media has piled on with constant jokey references to pot-heads adding "dude" to every sentence (ok, maybe that one's true, dude) with their groggy heads buried in colossal sized bags of Doritos. Stephen Colbert is one of the biggest perpetrators of this archetype.Hey, I resemble that remark! Duuuude...
Is Peace Getting in the Way of Our War Plans?
This past weekend, the United States and other major nations finally spoke with Iran. In 10 hours of talks (or 5 with translations), minus a lunch break, Iran agreed to a framework for ensuring that its nuclear program is only used for civilian purposes.
If this keeps up, the whole basis for war could be lost. And it's all the result of having finally spent a few hours talking with Iran. The obvious solution is to cut off the talks, issue ultimatums, lower the threshold for what justifies war, and impose more deadly sanctions than ever. And that's just what some of our misrepresentatives in Congress are about to try.No wonder there's all the right-wing backlash against birth control. Their plans include needing young men and women as cannon fodder for decades to come. Permanent war for profit, you know. The poor and unwanted are best because they can't do anything else but join the service and not many will miss them.
Fort Knox drops Ted Nugent from concert plans
Following rocker Ted Nugent's recent comments about President Barack Obama, he has been dropped from a scheduled performance at Fort Knox, the post announced Thursday afternoon.
...I sincerely hope other concert promoters won't want to get their hands all shitty as well.
Army Entertainment and the Fort Knox Directorate of Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation are committed to carrying out the concert, according to a news release. REO Speedwagon and Styx remain scheduled to perform as part of the post's annual summer concert June 23. The possibility exists that a replacement will be selected, post officials said.
Ted Nugent himself is a cowardly pseudo-macho poser incapable of doing any real physical damage on his own. This disgusting pervert would rather sit around in his own feces than join the army and his sexual proclivities run to young girls rather than grown women for whom he has no appeal. Nugent is an admitted rapist and pedophile according to the VH1 documentary at the link.
...
Nugent began his career with The Amboy Dukes and an album called Journey to the Center of the Mind. This was obviously a very abbreviated trip for Ted for which there was no return ticket. His philosophical musings went only so deep as the question Why is a Carrot More Orange than an Orange. The costumes and go-go girls in the video give us a glimpse of Ted's early affectations and his efforts as a guitarist whose musical style was "restricted to the Key of A and as melodic as a dial tone". The rather obvious limited musical talent is what eventually led Ted to his current shtick of gaining publicity for inflammatory rants on stage. As he has become increasingly irrelevant as a musician he has tried to become relevant as an outrageous wingnut firebrand.Go read what bullshit like his can do, correction, has done.
Romney Hires Openly Gay National Security Spokesman for Campaign. GOP Base Implosion in 3...2...1...Heh. I'm hoping for fireworks and a great sucking sound as their heads implode.
[...] But the through-line to it all is that marvelous voice, an utterly American sound that somehow for five decades embodied the field hollers, Delta blues, minstrel shows, rockabilly, mountain ballads, and country crooners all in one exhilarating package. If you want to hear what American music sounds like at its best, listen to what Levon Helm left behind.Word.
West Virginia U.S. Senate candidate John Raese (R) compared no smoking laws to one of Adolf Hitler's most notorious policies.
Said Raese: "I don't want government telling me what I can do and what I can't do because I'm an American. But in Monongalia County you can't smoke a cigarette, you can't smoke a cigar, you can't do anything... I have to put a huge sticker on my buildings to say this is a smoke free environment. This is brought to you by the government of Monongalia County. OK? Remember Hitler used to put Star of David on everybody's lapel, remember that? Same thing."
Scientists may hesitate to link some of the weather extremes of recent years to global warming — but the public, it seems, is already there.
A poll due for release on Wednesday shows that a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually warm winter, last year’s blistering summer and some other weather disasters were probably made worse by global warming. And by a 2-to-1 margin, the public says the weather has been getting worse, rather than better, in recent years.
...
...
Truly great wankers possess a kind of glib narcissism, the belief that everything is about them while simultaneously disavowing any responsibility for anything. The important thing about an issue is whether it proves Tom Friedman fucking right, but if it doesn't we can just move on to the next big thing that will prove Tom Friedman fucking right. If you advocate for wars that go a bit bad, well, it's not your fault. If only Tom Friedman had been in charge everything would have been great.
Such wankers are impervious to criticism because they're always doing battle with straw critics. They never remember what they said last week, and assume you won't either.
...
Over 300 Economists Agree: It’s Time to Legalize Marijuana
Behold, the latest micro-trend story that's not really a trend because no one you know is actually foolish enough to try it, all about how some otherwise healthy but still desperately inept women are paying large amounts of money to have a doctor insert a feeding tube up their noses, down their throats and into their stomachs. For multiple days at a time. By choice.
...
What they're doing, of course, is taking part in a radical new diet. You know, for morons.
...
The ultimate goal? No, not better health, silly. That would be far too intelligent and thoughtful. The goal, of course, is to finally fit into that snug wedding dress, so as look presentable in the wedding photos and feel happy and skinny-ish for a day, safe in the knowledge that you will immediately gain the 10 pounds back in a week or two and never look that way again. See? Marriage is fun!
As Josh Glasstetter at Right Wing Watch noted, "With surrogates like Nugent, Romney should have no trouble alienating moderates." They caught this clip above with Ted Nugent stumping for Mitt Romney at the NRA convention in St. Louis over the weekend.
...
A man whose Australian Cattle Dog Cisco was shot dead by a Texas police officer responding to a 911 call at a wrong address is asking for improvements to how authorities handle animals they encounter during such investigations.
Michael Paxton said he was playing with his 7-year-old dog in his backyard in Austin on a “quiet” Saturday when an officer showed up in his driveway. His dog, who ran out barking, was dead in seconds, he said.
“I told the officer, you know, don’t shoot my dog cause I knew the dog was going to run forward towards us,” Paxton, a 40-year-old lab tech, told msnbc.com. “He (Cisco) ran to the officer’s feet; the officer shot him and killed him.”
...
Toward the end of 2011, former Sierra Sun reporter Jason Shueh took on his final assignment — an in-depth look at the large day worker population in Truckee and North Lake Tahoe.
Weeks of shadowing and interviews in both English and Spanish with the workers themselves, coupled with discussions with the public figures who work with the population and with those who are responsible for enforcement, revealed some clarifying facts regarding these members of our communities — along with an emotional anecdote that goes beyond your typical newspaper report.
It's brash and, at times, vulgar. But it's real. And it's a narrative worth telling.
The day fills with a dry cold and they go bundled down Coon Street, down Fox Street and along the downtown bordering Lake Tahoe. It is a divided march through Kings Beach with the men moving in small bunches toward a 7-Eleven that squats among trailer homes, old motels converted into apartments and, of course, the lake.
...
Most opt to stand along the wood fencing, and the man with the shadowed face moves away to the edge of the roadway, between the 7-Eleven and the bus stop, where work trucks come with güeros — white men offering work — and so he waits.
The scene could be ritual, a type of stage play, a season populated in a climate of interactions that are condensed into a daily happening. Viewed from the car dashboard or across the street, it's a scene marked like a man-made sacrament, a tradition that comes out of necessity but without any church or doctrine. For there is a benediction sounding in car horns, in rumbling engines. And there is a choir that blasts cumbia, reggaetón and the trill of strumming mariachis crackling out of rusty truck radios.
There is even a reverence by the jean-suited clergy: conversations turning to votive whisper, whispers turning to silence as a truck cab opens and work is called out: “I need two to paint, I need one to dig.” And for the chosen, the lucky, the Eucharist of labor comes with a bread made of worn muscle and a wine of spilt sweat.
It's a process all routine and natural, and in this way, I watched the morning go.
...
The wind picked up and the day rolled on. Our conversation grew into many topics. Carlos told me how there were many undocumented who lived in apartments with three or four men to a room, how the foolish ones waste money on lottery tickets, alcohol or drugs, but the good ones, the best ones, work with a purpose, and most for their families. He said he could survive a week on a carton of eggs, and said he once worked on four hours of sleep a night for three days.
“We all want work. If I earn $70 in a day, I can send perhaps $50 home, and this will be something like 700 pesos. My family can live on that, and they'll be able to eat for a week,” he said.
Yet, lack of work is nothing compared to the danger of summers. Immigration operations usually occur twice in the season, Carlos said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers come up in white vans to the 7-Eleven. Officers jump out and everyone scatters, with men running and hiding wherever they can, he said. A phone tree alerts illegals in the neighborhood. But the unlucky are grabbed. Usually they'll be offered a chance to collect belongings, but since most live four or five men to a room, this is impossible.
“How can we lead them to our friends?” Carlos asks.
The only advantage they have is the lake and the snow, he points out. The lake creates distance between Sacramento, and the snow halts traffic. Together, they form a persuasive deterrent, he said.
How does Truckee/Tahoe work with an undocumented labor force?
“I think we need to move past the notion that they are going to go away, because they are not,” Vaca said.
...
It's nice to see the former Veep is feeling so spry. I recommend a lengthy European vacation, preferably beginning in the Netherlands.
The Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, says she expects to pull out most of Australia's troops from Afghanistan almost a year earlier than planned. Gillard said Australian soldiers have nearly completed their mission to transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces, and most will be home by the end of 2013.
...
Tennessee Senate Approves Bill To Warn Students That Hand-Holding Is A ‘Gateway Sexual Activity’
Nazi Party Registers Washington Lobbyist
Hopes to rein in some Republicans who have gone “too far.”
Florida Congressman: 80 House Democrats are Communists
Take their orders directly from Pyongyang.
Cruise Ship Reenacts Titanic Voyage on 100th Anniversary
Follows exact same route, has same number of passengers dressed in period costumes, who eat same food, listen to same music and meet same fate as things go horribly wrong.
Charles Manson Paroled Due to Prison Overcrowding
Space needed for those convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana.
...
Not content to enrage people who like sex? Well, party of Lincoln, you've also bullied Latinos, a giant, socially conservative, upwardly mobile, and demographically growing bloc that many analysts see as key to securing the White House—and that as recently as 2004 swung 42 percent for George W. Bush. That was before GOP lawmakers spearheaded some 160 punitive anti-immigration bills in the last two years. Before Mitt Romney—whose own forebears fled to Mexico to avoid anti-polygamy laws—bent over backward to embrace such "self-deportation" measures. Before Rick Santorum demanded that Puerto Ricans switch to English. These days no more than 14 percent of likely Latino voters can see themselves casting a ballot for any of the GOP candidates. Hasta la vista, Nevada!
...
WASHINGTON — President Obama commented for the first time on Sunday about the Secret Service employees accused of soliciting prostitutes before a summit meeting in Cartagena, Colombia, saying he expected a high standard of conduct from his security team and adding that he would be “angry” if the accusations were proved true.
...
Here is Nanci Griffith singing that iconic bad times tune by Stephen Foster. Included in the video are the picures of some of the players who helped make our current hard times possible by failing to regulate the mega-banks and Wall Street. It's largely still hats & horns for these rogues. At the end of the piece you will see the photos of three prominent bailed out and bonused bankers. Hard times come again no more with the possible exception of a few politicians and bankers.
Paddy Moloney on pipes and whistle
With Rick Santorum out of the race, the Republican base is scrambling to build support around another contender who could beat Romney. And they may have discovered a dark horse candidate: an unidentified shirtless man screaming obscenities at traffic from the parking lot of a Tulsa-area Walgreens.
...
Shortly after beginning his remarks to passing cars and Walgreens security at 6 am, the man surfaced on Youtube, where he garnered more than 100,000 viewers. Conservative groups then raised $3 million in donations to form an exploratory committee for the man, but have not been able to contact him, since he appeared to have thrown his cell phone into a storm drain, before defecating into it. Still, Republicans are hopeful.
...
GOP operatives are not completely convinced the man has the discipline to stand up to Mitt Romney, especially since his first appearance ended with the arrival of the police, and repeated taserings. But Bryan Morris, political science professor at Yale thinks he represents the last, best hope core conservatives have of winning.
"We're looking at 80 year-old Tea Partiers who scream about small government, while they collect their entitlement checks. Politicians making speeches about cutting the deficit, while they refuse to talk about tax revenue or cut a gargantuan military," says Morris. "They say they want a strong defense, while supporting a web of military commitments that does everything except protect ordinary Americans. They say they support freedom, but they want the feds to police your bedroom. I mean, the GOP is doing everything it can to avoid developing any coherent political goals whatsoever. So... some guy hollering about Obama's Arab spies and crapping through a drainage grate seems to be their best bet."
"Unless he's pro-choice."
... Calling the Ten Commandments a "historic document" is like calling The Cat in the Hat a guide to pet care. ...
A New Jersey mayor was hospitalised after entering a burning house to save a neighbour, US media have reported.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker rescued the woman from the top floor of her house in the city's Upper Clinton Hill area, the New Jersey Star-Ledger said.
...
Can drinking beer make you smarter? Perhaps, according to a researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
...
"Not even Joe McCarthy would have said anything so stupid and dissociated from reality," Frank said in a call with The Huffington Post. "It's an indication of the significant deterioration of the Republican Party as a responsible entity that an ignorant, mean guy like Allen West is considered one of their stars."
...
"It is exactly the opposite of those of us in the Congressional Progressive Caucus who are in support of freedom, in support of democracy, in support of people's basic rights and civil liberties," he said. "Communism is really a reference to some of the worst human rights abuses of our time ... It is meant to delegitimize people and allow no basis for debate. It's a very nasty label."
He added, "I very much object to being associated with Stalin or Khrushchev."
It is that second point that is most important. So many on the right want to shut down the debate because they know the outcome once that debate happens. Those atop the Republican Party see what has happened during their primary season. As they have lurched even further to the right they alienate more and more voters. The Republican establishment finally has their candidate, but only after he had to tack hard right to win the nomination. That damage is done and no amount of shaking the Etch-A-Sketch is going to change that.
Frank hit the nail on the head. The real problem is not Allen West. It is that the Republican Party has descended so far into the abyss that someone like Allen West is a leader and is mainstream within the Republican Party. That is what we must keep our eye on. Yes, Allen West is the one who made the remarks. However, he is just one of many capable of making them in the modern-day Republican Party.
This undoubtedly sounds naive, but I keep expecting the GOP to disavow Florida Rep. Allen West’s insane lies. (The guy makes your average Birther look nearly normal.) But so far, it hasn’t happened.
...
Limerick Ode To Rep. Allen West
By Madeleine Begun Kane
The Republican Rep. Allen West
Invents scandalous falsehoods with zest.
His mad claims don’t compute,
Yet his party stays mute —
His lies thus implicitly blessed.
Senior Citizens Grill Republican Congressman At Town Hall For Supporting Ryan Plan To Kill Medicare (VIDEO)
And then came the headline that surprised exactly no one and delighted a great many, even as it openly terrified countless thousands across the deep south and also Utah and Kansas and pretty much the entire GOP. The poor dears....
Case after case, priest after priest, GOP senator after megachurch pastor after spittle-flecked Tea Party zealot -- all suddenly caught pants down in a bathroom stall, in a leather bar, gay chat room, in a Grindr hookup app, living out their real and honest selves even as they rail and oppose and thump their Bibles everywhere else. Hypocrisy, thy name is homophobe.
...
Of course, it's not universal. Not all hardcore conservatives secretly wish for a gay romp or ten. Many just act out of purely poisoned souls, or from the unconscious demon telling them that if they're not allowed to express their deepest selves, if they can't live life at a more honest frequency, no one can.
"How dare you!" they then sneer, to the gay couple, to the Burning Man participant, to the hippie or the artist or the educated deviant, the meditator, the spiritual seeker, the yogi or activist or appreciator of sex and tongue and yes. "What gall you have to be open-minded, autonomous, free to love and screw and dance however and with whomever you want. Don't you know about the rules? Don't you know how ugly life is? Don't you know how flawed and guilt-soaked God designed you to be?
...
This is the lesson: Do not ask deeper questions. Do not tap into your own genuine needs, sexuality, fierce spiritual magma. Do not dare suggest that most fundamentalist notions of Christian God are sort of detestable and gloomy, the exact opposite of what Jesus actually intended. Do not, most of all, dare to define it all for yourself, as your sex, your soul, your internal ethical slut see fit. What the hell do you think you are, free?
MIAMI - Ozzie Guillen returned to Miami to apologize to South Florida's Cuban community and face a five-game suspension handed down by the Marlins on Tuesday for comments he made about Cuba's Fidel Castro.
While his team was in Philadelphia, Guillen was in Little Havana expressing remorse in a news conference at Marlins Park. The manager was quoted in Time magazine saying, "I love Fidel Castro."
...
...
7. “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. [Sex] is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal…but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special.”
~Rick Santorum, opposing contraception and frighteningly suggesting that he would make pre-marital sex illegal.
...
...
For example, take the states with the highest and lowest teen pregnancy rates. Mississippi does not require sex education in schools, but when it is taught, abstinence-only education is the state standard. New Mexico, which has the second highest teen birth rate, does not require sex ed and has no requirements on what should be included when it is taught. New Hampshire, on the other hand, requires comprehensive sex education in schools that includes abstinence and information about condoms and contraception.
...
Nevada Department of Wildlife Requests FBI Investigation of Native American Opponents of Nevada Bear Hunt
Following their appearance at the March Wildlife Commission meeting, where they stated their opposition to the bear hunt on religious grounds, Native Americans from various Paiute Tribes the Pyramid Lake Paiute Band were recently questioned by FBI and U.S. Marshalls. FBI Agent, George Chillito, an FBI agent with the Task Force on Counter-Terrorism in Reno, reportedly stated that he was investigating the Native Americans at the request of NDOW game wardens because the "game wardens" and the "audience felt threatened" by the presence of the Native Americans at the March Wildlife Commission meeting. Several Native Americans appeared at the Wildlife Commission meeting held on March 23rd and March 24th ("Meetings"), and at the Washoe County Advisory Board Meeting held on March 15th, to oppose the bear hunt, adopted in December 2010. Shortly after the Commission meeting, FBI agents and U.S. Federal Marshals began appearing at the homes and places of work of the Native Americans, and questioning them about why they opposed the bear hunt, and what were they going to do if the bear hunt continued, etc.
At the meetings, several Native Americans from various Paiute Tribes were present and spoke on the record in opposition to the Bear Hunt for religious reasons, stating that the black bear was a sacred animal to them, and that to kill one for sport was the same as burning a Bible would be to a Christian.
Shortly thereafter, during the period April 2-4, FBI agents visited and questioned two of the Native Americans who spoke at the open public meetings, by arriving at their homes and places of work. On April 2nd, up to six (6) FBI agents and Federal Marshals came to Lisa Bonta's home in Sparks, NV, stating that the Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) "game wardens felt threatened" by her presence at the meetings, and specifically questioned why she was opposed to the Bear hunt, and what was she going to do if the bear hunt continued. Another Native American, Daniel Thayer, was visited by federal agents at his place of work on April 3rd, and was told that NDOW had requested an investigation because the "audience felt threatened" by his presence, and was similarly questioned. On April 4th, another Native American, Raquel Arthur, saw federal agents watching and surveilling her private residence.
When independently contacted, one NDOW staff member stated that he had no knowledge of any request by NDOW for the FBI to investigate Native American opponents of the Bear hunt.
...
This FBI intimidation comes on the heels of alleged racial slurs directed at the Native Americans when they spoke at the Washoe County Advisory Board held on March 15th.
In a Phoenix courtroom filled with fellow lawyers and some of his biggest critics on Tuesday, the former Arizona prosecutor who served for years as Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s right-hand man was stripped of his license to practice law.
A three-member panel of the State Bar of Arizona ruled that ex-Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas abused his powers as a prosecutor to target his political enemies. Because of that, they ruled he would be disbarred.
...
Investigators with the State Bar of Arizona said somewhere along the way he became obsessed with his political enemies. He turned disagreements over policy into a full-fledged attempt to see his opponents jailed and disgraced.
With Arpaio’s help, investigators said, Thomas used the powers of his office to target his opponents with criminal investigations. He had some arrested and some charged with crimes. The evidence he and Arpaio used in the process was often questionable. The charges rarely stuck.
“We found a witch,” they wrote, purportedly speaking as the public officials who filed charges against Thomas, “May we burn her?”
Notorious arms smuggler Viktor Bout, known as the "Merchant of Death," has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiracy to commit terrorism. Our guest, former United Nations arms trafficking investigator Kathi Lynn Austin, says the case allowed American companies to avoid exposure of their collusion with with the U.S. government and private companies linked to Dick Cheney during the Iraq war, even after United Nations sanctions against him in 2004. Authorities say Viktor Bout was involved in trafficking arms to dictators and stoking conflicts in Africa, South America and the Middle East. He has also been accused of furnishing weapons to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and achieved particular notoriety for selling arms in Rwanda in 1998, just four years after the Rwandan genocide. [includes rush transcript]
The Supreme Court has agreed to take a case that justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer say will give it a chance to rethink its infamous Citizens United v. FEC decision. The court is being asked to look into a Montana Supreme Court decision stating that its law restricting corporate election spending in state elections is fine, because it "arises from Montana history," UPI reports. Essentially, Montana is arguing that Citizens United only applies to federal laws and elections, not state ones.
Two Montana corporations are asking the court to make a summary judgment to the contrary; their lead counsel argues that otherwise, "free speech will be seriously harmed," because states anywhere could "ban core political speech." But Ginsburg and Breyer earlier wrote that the case "will give the Court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates' allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway."
...
OK, so for the record: A collaborative team of researchers from the University of Rochester, the University of Essex (England) and the University of California in Santa Barbara have definitively confirmed that those people who have the most hostile and negative feelings towards homosexuals are themselves secretly attracted to members of their own gender. Their hostility can be seen as either a conscious or unconscious effort to affirm a false heterosexual or bisexual identity to themselves and the world.
...
As The Huffington Post reported in February, a study published in the journal "Psychological Science" showed that children who score low on intelligence tests gravitate toward socially conservative political views in adulthood--perhaps because conservative ideologies stress "structure and order" that make it easier to understand a complicated world.
Ouch.
And now there's the new study linking conservative ideologies to "low-effort" thinking.
...
Does the finding suggest that conservatives are lazy thinkers?
"Not quite," Dr. Eidelman told The Huffington Post in an email. "Our research shows that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism, not that political conservatives use low-effort thinking."
Bar patrons were asked about social issues before blowing into a Breathalyzer. As it turned out, the political viewpoints of patrons with high blood alcohol levels were more likely to be conservative than were those of patrons whose blood alcohol levels were low.
"Keeping people from thinking too much (my em)...or just asking them to deliberate or consider information in a cursory manner can impact people's political attitudes, and in a way that consistently promotes political conservatism," Dr. Eidelman said in the email.
...
I believe that American presidents should do what is in the best interest of this country. To put the interests of any other country before ours smacks of treason.
NORTH KOREA POISED TO LAUNCH SATELLITE, DESPITE PROTESTS
Especially those from three dissidents sitting inside capsule.
BP Arctic Oil Spill Response Plan Questioned by Coast Guard
Calls for immediate deployment of PR agents.
Cheney Leaves Hospital With New Heart
Will take up watercolors, give all his money to ACLU.
30% of Health Care Procedures Not Needed, Say Doctors
Thanks for the tip, say insurers.
Virginia Study Shows Bringing Dogs to Work Reduces Stress
Bringing cats to work reveals you are in need of professional help.
