Miers fingers Rove

Raw Story

House Judiciary Committee released thousands of pages of new documents concerning the firing of nine US Attorneys under the Bush Administration — and they heavily implicate the office of onetime Bush adviser Karl Rove.

Moreover, former Bush Supreme Court pick and legal adviser Harriet Miers fingered Rove during her testimony to Congressional investigators.

Nothing we didn't know or at least heavily suspect, but now it's official.

Now to start on locking the sonofabitch up.

Yo, Turdblossom - be glad I wasn't in charge. I'da had her wearing a red dress to finger yer ass.

More at the link, and

The full interview transcripts and documents can be found here.

Update:

More at NYTimes.

230 mpg?

Real good, but who's gonna buy the fucking thing?

General Motors announced on Tuesday morning that its Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car had delivered a fuel-economy rating of 230 miles a gallon — which sounds outrageous. With that kind of gas mileage, you could practically drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on a single gallon of gas, or for around three bucks.

...

Of course the range on pure electric power is about 40 miles, and then the gas engine kicks in to keep the battery up. That's fine, it's still pretty economical and most people drive less than 50 miles in a day, so driving it should still be inexpensive.

I'd like to know who can afford to buy one with a price tag of $40K?

Ein Volks auto ist 'es nicht.

Honda, Toyota, Ford, and Chevy make hybrids (I'd stick to the Japanese brands if you're in the market) a lot cheaper which are also economical to buy, drive, and repair (something unknown about the Volt). The Chevy Volt is nothing more than a cachet vehicle; something with which the well-to-do can show off their 'greenness'. Hopefully, GM will use the technology to make small sedans in the $12 - $15K range that will be more accessible to the masses. Thing is, as GM has done for the last 30 years, it looks like they've already missed the boat:

...

Team Nissan is referring, of course, to the electric vehicle in the photograph above (and the video below). The LEAF, which will go into production next year – with a tentative release date of 2012 – is expected to be much cheaper than the Volt. How much cheaper? Nissan isn’t saying. Wired, for one, thinks the cute-as-a-button car could come in at $25,000 – some $15K cheaper than the Volt.

...

Toyota has had electric vehicles for the better part of the decade and Honda is also producing their own version. It's probably a safe bet the Japanese will do them better.

And if you do want to spend a lot for an electric, Herr Daimler has a car for you:

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Daimler plans to roll out a Mercedes-Benz model that runs on electricity in 2010, its chief executive said in a newspaper interview.

"We plan an electric Smart for 2010 and for the same year a Mercedes (electric) model as well," Dieter Zetsche told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in comments to be published in the Saturday edition.

Daimler currently has in London a fleet of 100 first-generation Smart cars that run on electricity.

...

I'm sorry to say, as reports have claimed, that if GM has staked its survival to the Volt, there won't be many sunny days ahead.

Cross-posted at F&G.

Quote of the Day

Ol' Fez:

Apparently, Sarah Palin's political career did not make it past her "Death Panel".

Heh ...

What the 'teabag', 'birther' twatholes don't get ...

Is that you shouldn't feel so warm and comfy (like you just peed yer pants in a dark suit) if you have some sort of health insurance:

... Plainly, those who have insurance are on thin ice too, every last one of them.

...

No shit. How many can afford their COBRA payments for any amount of time after they're laid off? How many, after they're laid off can find a job that gives them the same level of benefit and coverage? How many will take a job with no benefits at all?

An aside: I worked for a guy once, in a gas station (a Mobil station in Queens), who employed a buncha Indian (Indian-Indian, not American-Indian) guys to cashier in the snack shop and pump gas at the full-serve islands. The prick owner also owned the apartment building where all these guys lived. He paid them little-to-nothing and let them live almost free in a rat hole. They worked 12 hours a day (the gas and snack shop were 24 hour operations), 7 days a week. One of the Indians asked for a shift off one day to go to a family function. The owner basically told him that there were a hundred guys waiting for his job and if he took the day off, he might as well not come back.

The mechanics didn't get benefits, think the Indian guys did? How many 'American' guys are in the same spot now? There are a lot of bastards out there who don't give a shit if you got 5 little kids at home and a 6th on the way. With millions of jobs lost over the past 18 months, do you think folks can afford to pick and choose where they want to work and expect their employer to give them health benefits?

So now, those all happy with their insurance, how long you think it'll last once you lose your job? How fast will you be screaming for a 'public option' when you're on the unemployment line? A job you feel secure in today could be gone tomorrow. Try not to look down your nose at those who are going under because they had the misfortune of getting sick.

I got mine ...

So fuck you. Mr. Philadelphia in toto:

Republican on medicare is worried about government health care because nobody can compete with the government. He does, at least, recognize that Medicare is a government program, he just doesn't think most people should have it as good as he does.

Update:

To wit.

See yas later

I am just so disgusted and fed up with corporate-led and media-enabled wingtard hate, bigotry, and ignorance that I am taking the day off.

And you wonder ...

Why I'm cynical about anything worthwhile emerging from the 'health care debate'?

I'm no fan of Chuck Schumer ...

But Oliver Willis is correct:

... Schumer is progressive, aggressive, has no fear of losing his seat to a wingnut, and knows how to operate in the media.

...

He'd be a decent Sentate Majority Leader. Show Harry Reid the door.

Quote of the Day

Josh Marshall:

Once you thoroughly unfasten yourself from reality, truly all things are possible.

...

I lost my grip once for a few years. I can't understand how people would actually want to live their entire lives in that state.

Link thanks to Watertiger.

More on Sibel's testimony

Here's a little follow-up on Fixer's post.

Thanks to VRAdmin.

More Sibel Edmonds videos here.

Also, National Whistleblowers Center.

"Mom, what's a blow job?"

Something a little different. The clip below is the most work-safe one I could find from the Joan Rivers Roast last night on Comedy Central. Many, many more.

From her wiki, I discovered she's a Russian Jew from New York. Imagine that! (wink)

I remember Joan from her early days at Marshall Edson's Ye Little Club. I was too young to go inside and couldn't have afforded a drink in that joint anyway, but I could hear the laughter from the sidewalk. There wasn't much to do in Beverly Hills.

From HuffPo:

Actress and comedy writer Whitney Cummings took it from there, saying Joan looks like David Spade after a grease fire,

Roast of Joan Rivers	Sun, Aug 9 10pm / 9c
Melissa Rivers
www.comedycentral.com
Live Twitter Roast Roast Master Kathy Griffin Zombie Paparazzi Game

Froomkin's New Home

Canned for telling the truth at a major newspaper, Dan Froomkin has found a new gig.

As for me, this is the first of many posts in my new capacity as Washington bureau chief for the Huffington Post. Starting today, I hope to write fairly often - but that won't be my main job anymore. I'll also be working with a team of reporters who are redefining how Washington should be covered.

We'll be putting a premium on accountability journalism, focusing relentlessly on the corrupting effect of lobbyists and money on our government, and calling out those people in the national discourse who traffic in misinformation and know-nothingism rather than argue in good faith.

It's an opportunity to directly encourage and shape the kind of journalism that, in my previous incarnation, I occasionally championed - but more often yearned for.

Wish us luck. Follow our work. Come back often. I'm glad to be here.

I'm glad you're there too. Best of luck, bud. We'll be watching.

Fuck You, Sarah Palin, Just...Fuck You

El Rude-o on Moosebreath's "death panel" statement:

The only possible response? "Hey, quitter, fuck you." And, then, as if to demonstrate said "fuck you," the Rude Pundit offers the following:

From the Columbus, Ohio TV station WBNS, here's a story about Margaret Druko, a woman with a four and a half year-old child with Down's Syndrome. Druko had to quit her job because child care centers wouldn't take her daughter. The only insurance she could get was for catastrophic care at $5000 a month. "Margaret said insurance companies told her Emily was considered a death risk. Without health insurance Margaret couldn't afford to pay for Emily to continue with her physical and occupational therapy. The Druko's go without medication for themselves because it's just too costly." The final fuck-you-Sarah? That story is from two weeks before Palin made her statement.

Or, in other words, ex-Governor, the death panel is there. It's called "the profit margin." Indeed, if the Grukos were a bit poorer, they'd qualify for government-run health care. Which would ensure that their daughter gets the care she needs. Denial of private insurance coverage because of Down's syndrome is unsurprisingly common. That's called "rationing."

Or, in otherer words, ex-Governor, now that you're out of a job, and by the time your COBRA runs out, and you're applying for new health insurance policies, Trig better hope that pre-existing conditions clauses or excessive risk denials don't bite his mom on her lying ass.

If all her lies and general bullshit bite her on the ass all at once, it'll be like the biker who put 'Odor Eaters' in his boots - all they found of him was his Buck knife and belt buckle.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Stimulus: $2.4 Billion to Make Cars Greener
Earl Scheib announces 10,000 job openings.

Paula Abdul Quits “American Idol”
Exit could signal presidential run.

Procter & Gamble in Deal with NFL
Cover Girl named official eyeshadow of Pittsburgh Steelers.

CORRECTION

Responding to the Senate Finance Committee’s desire not to rush the drafting of health care legislation, we quoted Barack Obama saying, “Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. The time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and that protection.” In fact, the quote comes from a speech by Harry S. Truman on November 19, 1945.

Sibel Edmonds testifies ...

The back story is long and has been going on for years, interwoven with the Valerie Plame case, and Edmonds has been gagged by a 'State Secrets' order imposed by the Bush administration. She testified at the National Whistleblowers Center this weekend and Brad has been on it since the beginning. You know you won't hear any of this on CNN; maybe Olbermann and Maddow might mention it, so you owe it to yourself to read Brad's live blog of the event.

...

From my opinion, if I'm some of the current members of Congress, I'd be very very worried about the information that's going to come out of this. There are current members of Congress that she has implicated in bribery, espionage. It's not good. It's crazy, it's absolutely crazy. For people in power situations in the United States, who know about this information, if they don't take action against it, in my opinion, it's negligence.

[Which current members have been implicated?]

...

You know they'll do their best to cover all of it up. You. Must. Read. The. Whole. Thing.

"... Linda Lovelace without the talent."

Our pal D-cap is one of the best bloggers around (in league with the great Driftglass) and I can read his writing all day. This time he takes on the 'Palin Fan Club' with sexual analogies that make his point so very well:

...

Even worse than the idolization of Sarah Lovelace is the fact that the so-called "fourth estate" – there to protect the public from lies and deception - has barely made a whimper about her saying Obama will murder her child or about the other lunatics on the right who claim Obama is going to euthanize granny. For politicians and insane cable hosts - if there is no negative consequence for their irresponsible behavior and incendiary speech, you betcha there will be a lot more of it – and a lot more of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. What passes as journalism today is nothing short of dildo party.

...

Why bother?

Reporting from Washington -- U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said.

A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws. [my em]

...

If you're gonna do it, go all the way. If you're gonna do it half-assed, don't even bother. It was the interpretation of the laws that was criminal in the first place. Everything else flows from that.

Marine Corps Rap

These guys seem to be in good spirits, but I'm not sure whether we need to bring them home now to prevent further brain damage or to leave them overseas (NOT in Iraq!) for the rest of their thirty years and let the brain damage run its course where the rest of us can be safe from it...

Run-DMC ~ It's Tricky

Thanks to stingdar.

Quote of the Day

Avedon:

...

Now, at this juncture, we expect the Republicans and the Villagers to do this crap, but I really wish I could smack those lefty bloggers who went along with the idea that it was over-the-top to compare the Bush regime with the Nazis, because they helped make it even easier for the little fascists to do what they did then and do what they're doing now. [my em]

We're stupid ...

U - S - A! U - S - A! I've been saying it for years, stupid has become chic over the past decade. Bill Maher thinks so too:

...

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.

Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.

Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge."

...

It's always been amazing to me that people pay more attention to soap operas and the other drivel on TV (almost everything) than they do to the workings of the government. The annoying part is they feel free to spout their uninformed bullshit to the rest of us (and that they're allowed to vote).

...

And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? ...

And the big problem is that we give morons the same credibility we give those who know what they're talking about. We are stupid, and it's the corporate criminals who (face it, they run everything) exploit it for personal gain. Collectively, we deserve everything we get if we're dumb enough to let them brainwash us into complicity.

Cynic that I am, I get the feeling we've already passed the proverbial 'point of no return'. The 'American IQ' has fallen too far to work our way out of the mess we let the last Moron-in-Chief get us into. The 'teabaggers' and 'birthers' are just the latest example of 'American Stupid' in action. And you wonder why so many people fall for African email scams?