Wednesday Stuff

I got a kick out of this...



...and the prior video was an intentional parody, but this was an unintentional one; I don't know anything about Tim Burns, and fortunately it doesn't matter now - he deserved to lose for this, and he did...



..."Worst Persons" (Yep, Just Plain Folks Sarah Palin turned out to be dead right about PA-12, as noted previously, didn't she; Sue "Chicken Lady" Lowden in Nevada tries to walk - cluck? - back her legendary political gaffe, with no luck; but Phil Hammonds, the superintendent of schools in Jefferson County, Alabama gets it for ignoring a "practical math" example from one of his teachers, Gregory Harrison, about shooting a certain 44th President of the United States...his state must truly be The Land That Time Forgot - good question by Keith at the end)...

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...and I'm not exactly sure what's going on here, but I admit that I have a thing about zebra masks in indie rock videos.

Wednesday Mashup (5/19/10)

(And I also posted here.)

Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone has an really well done – and disturbing – article in the latest issue on Republican fundraising efforts (basically, Michael Steele isn’t anywhere near the real money since the real party “base” is ignoring him, with the LA nightclub spending spree noted here the proverbial last straw).

And you'll just never guess who's in the middle of it all...

The linchpin of Rove's coup is American Crossroads – a shadow version of the RNC for the party's richest donors. Organized under the same part of the tax code that gave us Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the fundraising group can collect unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations. Before the Citizens United decision rewrote the rules of campaign finance, these so-called "independent expenditures" could only be used to support issues, not candidates. But now groups like American Crossroads can use their funds to openly back GOP candidates – or quietly work to destroy Democratic opponents by investing in the dirty tricks of which Rove is a Jedi master.

The group is intended, (senior Repug strategist Ed) Gillespie tells Rolling Stone, to become a fixture in GOP politics for 2010 and beyond: "The idea is that there needs to be an institutional entity – a transparent, professionally run Republican operation – that will be there every cycle." The strategic logic behind the group is simple: to narrow the fundraising deficit that has daunted the GOP since Democrats discovered how to raise megabucks online. "Obama had $1.1 billion in 2008," says Gillespie, who chaired the RNC under Bush. "John McCain and his supporters spent $634 million. That's a sizable gap." American Crossroads, he boasts, will be the place where the real money goes to "play."

In the weeks since its secretive launch in March, the group has already secured commitments of more than $30 million. That's halfway to the $60 million it plans to spend by November – nearly equaling the $80 million that the RNC itself spent in 2006. That startling sum, according to one lobbyist, can be chalked up to the formidable one-two punch of Gillespie's salesmanship and Rove's Rolodex. Officially, the two men are described only as "advisers" to American Crossroads. But party insiders reveal that Rove is calling the tune, just as he controlled the RNC from the White House as an adviser to Bush. Even the cast of deputies is the same: The directors of American Crossroads are all former top officers whom Rove installed to run the RNC. "American Crossroads is not the return of the old RNC," confides one prominent committee member. "It is the return of Rove." (Through his chief of staff, Rove refused to comment.)

Gillespie maintains that American Crossroads isn't meant to displace the RNC. "I've urged people to give money to American Crossroads, but I believe their first dollars should go to the RNC," he says. And what about the timing of the group's launch, just as top party donors like billionaire Richard Melon Scaife have been abandoning the RNC? "Coincidental," Gillespie insists.

Oh, sure (continuing)…

With the RNC a shadow of its former self, (Rove and Gillespie’s) shadow party is now ascendant. Though Steele is likely to keep his post, he has been excluded from top strategy sessions on the GOP's plan to take back Congress. One of the RNC's top fundraisers quit in April, and large contributions have dried up: An audit leaked to The Washington Times revealed that the party is actually losing money on its major-donor program, spending $1.09 for every $1 raised. The RNC has devolved into the small-donor arm of the party. The average contribution: $40.

And I got kind of a perverse kick out of the statement that “(Rove and Gillespie plan) to raise $25 million for its campaign efforts this fall – expenditures that will be directed by a former chief of staff to House Minority Whip Eric Cantor,” thus taking the dead RNC carcass, if you will, completely out of the fundraising equation.

I also had just a few random observations from the elections last night:

Once more, congrats to Joe Sestak for defeating Arlen Specter in the PA Dem senatorial primary. I would be remiss, though, if I didn’t say I thought it was a boneheaded maneuver on Sestak’s part to provide grist for the right-wing echo chamber about Obama supposedly offering him a job for dropping out. Even if that’s true, shut your mouth about it next time (or have a ready response when either Toomey or some Repug “Astro turf” group brings it up again, since you know they will).

Also, with the victory by Bucks County Commish Jim Cawley in the Repug Lt. Gov. Gubernatorial Primary, I find myself in a bit of an odd position, secretly hoping for a Tom Corbett victory since that would get Cawley out of Bucks for good (just kidding – I’m for Dan Onorato, of course).

The last observation (not mine, I’ll admit) is that, for all the talk of a Repug resurgence in November, how many people have noticed that, with the victory by Mark Critz in PA-12, keeping John Murtha’s old seat in the “D” column, the Dems have won their seventh special election in a row? That streak may end this weekend in Hawaii, but it definitely works for now.

Finally, as a bit of a follow up to the first item here yesterday, I’ve decided to put together a teabagger quiz of sorts, since they’re supposed to be so knowledgeable about the Constitution and the workings of our government, to say nothing of participating in a public forum (some of the questions may be duplicates from the citizenship quiz, but I’ll try to be original - I'll start off easy)…

Who is the President of the United States?

Who is the Vice President?

Can you tell me the order of presidential succession in the event that the president either leaves office or is temporarily incapacitated? Which Constitutional amendment stipulates this?

Can you tell me which presidential election was decided by a ruling of the Supreme Court?

Can you tell me a presidential election that was decided by the U.S. House of Representatives?

Who was the only president who served longer than two terms?

Who was the only president who served two non-consecutive terms?

What was the shortest term in office for a president, and whose term was it?

Did a president ever hold office with a vice president from his opposition party? Who were the two?

Now to Congress:

Who is the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives?

Who is the House Majority Leader?

Who is the House Majority Whip?

Who if the House Minority Leader?

Who is the Senate Majority Leader?

Who is the Senate Minority Leader?

Do you currently depend on any type of federal government assistance?

Now for state and local questions:

Who is your U.S. House Representative? Which party does he or she belong to?

Please name at least one of your U.S. senators and his or her party (what is the maximum number of U.S. senators per state? Which Article in the Constitution tells you this?)

Who is your state representative?

Who is your state senator?

Is your municipality or township governed by a board or council? If a council, please name your councilman or woman. If a board, please name at least one member.

Media time:

Do you read a newspaper? Daily? Once a week? Once a month? Once a year?

Have you ever written a Letter to the Editor or submitted an opinion to that paper’s editorial page?

How do you learn about politics? Television? Radio? Print? Online news sites? Online social media, including blogs, wikis, or other collaborative forms of communication? Democratically oriented? Republican oriented? Third party-libertarian-other oriented?

Now for the good part (here):

Which Article of the Constitution tells you that only a “natural born Citizen” may be President?

Which Article details the judicial power and duty of the Supreme Court?

Which Article tells you that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”?

What fractional amount of the House is required to agree in order to amend the Constitution? Which Article tells you this?

Which Section of Article II stipulated the conditions for impeachment?

Which amendment to the Constitution tells us that a warrant is required before a search of someone’s property?

Which amendment allows for the Federal Income Tax?

Which stipulated the right to trial by jury in civil cases?

Which amendment stipulated the voting age at eighteen?

I’ll tell you what – if I hear of a “teabagger” out there who has taken this test or something close to it and either passed or come close, then no matter how forcefully I may disagree with them, I can assure you that I will respect their opinion.

And if somehow this test were administered to a teabagger and an illegal immigrant and the illegal got a better score…well, that sure would be a hoot, wouldn’t it?

Tuesday Stuff

Exuent, Arlen - this was the well-deserved fatal blow (congrats to Admiral Joe)...



...and congratulations to Jack Conway also in the Kentucky Dem Senate primary (I always thought Mongiardo was a creep - by the way, Blanche Lincoln vs. Bill Halter is headed to a runoff)...



Update 5/19/10: All class, Dan (and on the wingnut side in KY, teabagger and winner Rand Paul wouldn't take the concession call from Repug challenger - and fave of Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao - Trey Grayson; something in the water?)...

...and K.O. gives us more proof of what those zany teabaggers think of the Constitution; some nut jobs in Idaho want to repeal the 17th Amendment - for real...

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...and RIP, Hank Jones.

Tuesday Mashup (5/18/10)

1) Chuck Norris has the answer to the illegal immigration debacle (here – and why exactly didn’t I think of this, I wonder to myself)…

…our Founders enforced four basic requirements for "enrollment and acceptance" into American citizenry. We still utilize them (at least in policy) to this day, but we desperately need to enforce them. The Heritage Foundation summarizes: "Key criteria for citizenship of the Naturalization Act of 1795 remain part of American law. These include (1) five years of (lawful) residence within the United States; (2) a 'good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States'; (3) the taking of a formal oath to support the Constitution and to renounce any foreign allegiance; and (4) the renunciation of any hereditary titles."

You hear that, you illegals trying to get over the danged “fence” (as “Straight Talk” McCain calls it here) from Mexico into Arizona and New Mexico? Start renouncing those hereditary titles PDQ!

Actually, anyone applying for citizenship already has to take a test, as noted here (I don’t know if Norris knows that or not). And I’d really like to see how the teabaggers would do if they had to take it as a condition of their citizenship as well.

Another thing – Norris is, as you might expect, a teabagger also (here), and I’m more than a little fed up with this notion that, somehow, people of his political ilk can claim to either be knowledgeable in or supporters of the U.S. Constitution, particularly when, as noted here, some of them don’t know that that confers on the U.S. government the right to collect taxes. The Constitution also stipulates, under Article I, Section II, that the government shall conduct a census every ten years, and as noted here, there are teabaggers who have a problem with that also.

And just wait until next week, boys and girls, when Chuck “will lay out his plan, drawing inspiration from our Founders, for dealing with the 12 million-plus illegal immigrants in our country today.”

Somewhere, I have a feeling that our founders are glad they can deny any knowledge of Norris whatsoever.

2) Also, the AEI’s Danielle Pletka is all up in arms over the recent statement from the U.S. and U.N. Security Council member nations about Iran (here)…

There was a collective sigh of relief in D.C. about the U.N. resolution—after all, it’s taken the administration months on end to dilute the thing down enough to get the Chinese and Russians to sign on. Some had even feared that the president would take up the lousy deal cut by (Brazil and Turkey) and restart negotiations with Iran toward a fuel swap. Wow, I was told, lucky the real men in the administration—Hillary Clinton and U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice—won that internal squabble.

Oh, please – as noted here…

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran agreed Monday to ship much of its low-enriched uranium abroad and then rolled out a new obstacle to nuclear compromise by insisting it would press ahead with higher enrichment – bringing it closer to being able to make atomic warheads.

The deal forged with Turkey and Brazil appeared to be another attempt to stave off U.N. sanctions – a doubtful endeavor judging by reactions from the United States and other Western powers.

The White House showed deep skepticism about the pact, warning it still allows Iran to keep enriching uranium toward the pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

"Given Iran's repeated failure to live up to its own commitments, and the need to address fundamental issues related to Iran's nuclear program, the United States and international community continue to have serious concerns," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

…

Western nations insisted Monday they remained on the sanctions track.

"Our position on Iran is unchanged," said Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman, Steve Field. "Iran has an obligation to reassure the international community, and until it does so, we will continue to work with our international partners on a sanctions resolution in the United Nations Security Council."

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero agreed, saying the world was awaiting "credible answers from Iran" on its nuclear agenda.

For his part, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev cautiously welcomed the agreement but said it may fail to fully satisfy the international community. He alluded to Iran's intention to continue its higher-enrichment activities as a cause for concern.

Yes, Iran is a bad actor, and there’s really very little we can do aside from diplomatic maneuvers unless (God forbid) the shooting starts for real, as they say.

Which I think would be fine with Pletka, by the way, based on this…

Danielle Pletka, born in Australia, is Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policies at the neocon American Enterprise Institute.  Andrew Sullivan, who once worked for her, has described the integrity of her scholarship in an article she wrote urging Washington to tighten the screws on Iran:  "The form is set by the neoconservative agenda and she mobilizes a narrative that fills in the blanks to serve that agenda.  Unwilling if not incapable of producing an article any other way, she is more than content to reverse engineer her position …  Her final statement is telling.  ‘…Iran neither needs nor wants accommodation with the West,’ and it is clear to me this would have been her conclusion regardless of what the preceding 800 words had been."  Pletka supported the Iraq war, was a leading cheerleader for Ahmed Chalabi, believes in torture, and wants to go to war with Iran.

Of course, given her raging aggression, maybe we should call Pletka “Daniel” instead.

3) Finally, I have a bit of a “two-fer” of current and former Repug politicians in action, beginning with Jim DeMint (here) and ending with a co-author of the “Contract on America.”

Basically, it turns out that DeMint’s track record as a supposed Tea Party “kingmaker” isn’t so hot; his support of Marco Rubio in Florida drove out Charlie Crist, to the point where Crist, as an independent, stands much better odds of winning the general election (actually, what DeMint really did here, as opposed to outing Crist, was to really throw a monkey wrench, as they say, into the campaign of Dem Kendrick Meek – I would guess that that was DeMint’s plan all along, but that gives him way too much credit).

Also, DeMint supports Chuck DeVore in the Repug senatorial primary in California (DeVore is last), and DeMint also supported Sen. Marlin Stutzman who was defeated by former U.S. Sen. Dan Coats in the May 4^th Repug primary in Indiana.

So I’m starting to wonder if the Tea Party really isn’t The Club for Growth in disguise, wearing funny hats and carrying misspelled and often racist signs.

Still, this doesn’t prevent a certain Baby Newton Leroy Gingrich from trying to curry the favor of the teabaggers, as noted here (another tempting quote from the disgraced former speaker, another dig at Obama, and another plug for another book, with appropriate commentary from Jed L. here, who astutely notes that Gingrich isn’t winning over the teabag crowd by endorsing Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao).

But just returning to the Politico story on Gingrich, I want to point out that this is nothing but rote Beltway stenography by Mike Allen. And I’ve been trying to find a way to reference this profile on Allen by Mark Leibovich of the New York Times a little while ago, and I finally have the opportunity (here).

It is exhaustively researched, and, while reporting thoroughly and dispassionately, Leibovich wants to cast Allen as a sympathetic figure. And in many ways, he does. However, there are some personal tidbits cast about concerning Allen’s personal life that, while not creepy, are certainly odd…

…even Allen’s supposed confidants say that there is a part of Mikey they will never know or even ask about. He is obsessively private. He has given different dates to different friends for the date of his birthday. I asked three of Allen’s close friends if they knew what his father did. One said “teacher,” another said “football coach” and the third said “newspaper columnist.” A 2000 profile of Allen in The Columbia Journalism Review described his late father as an “investor.”

It is almost impossible to find anyone who has seen his home (a rented apartment, short walk to the office). “Never seen the apartment,” volunteered Robert L. Allbritton, Politico’s publisher, midinterview. “No man’s land.” When sharing a cab, Allen is said to insist that the other party be dropped off first. One friend describes driving Allen home and having him get out at a corner; in the rearview mirror, the friend saw him hail a cab and set off in another direction. I’ve heard more than one instance of people who sent holiday cards to Allen’s presumed address only to have them returned unopened. One former copy editor at Politico, Campbell Roth, happened to buy a Washington condominium a few years ago that Allen had just vacated. She told me the neighbors called the former tenant “brilliant but weird” and were “genuinely scared about some fire-code violation” based on the mountains of stuff inside.

Allen deserves credit for working tirelessly and establishing himself as an “influential,” to use the Beltway parlance. And he is portrayed in good measure as a kind, decent person in Leibovich’s story.

However, when whoever or whatever comes after us writes the story of our current life and times, one theme that will emerge will be undue deference to authority by our corporate media in the face of catastrophic political decision making. And as far as I’m concerned, Mike Allen is one of the most culpable people on that score, no matter how many people read his “cross platform” missives.

Monday Stuff

Time to “leave it all in the road” tomorrow, people (click here)…



…and RIP, Ronnie James Dio.

Monday Mashup Part Two (5/17/10)

(Part One is over here.)

Having recently emerged from its bankruptcy restructuring, The Philadelphia Inquirer nonetheless gave column space again to Bushco torture architect John Yoo yesterday (here), who dutifully concocted more fiction on the Supreme Court nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan…

Another example comes from her views about her future coworkers. In a 1995 book review, she claims that Clarence Thomas' "substantive testimony" in his confirmation hearings was "a national laughingstock." The "weakness of Justice Thomas' objective qualifications and the later charges of sexual harassment" deprived him of a solid confirmation (and rightly so, she suggests). Elsewhere, Kagan praises Justice Antonin Scalia for his brainpower, and she considers Justice Thurgood Marshall, the liberal black justice for whom she clerked, her hero. She adopts the lazy but standard liberal prejudice that conservative minorities are stupid, while liberal ones are heroic.

By the time of his appointment, Thomas, for whom I clerked, had served on the federal appeals court in Washington for two years, headed a major federal agency for eight years, and served as an assistant cabinet secretary for two years. Kagan will have been solicitor general for about a year, a deputy White House official for four years, and a law school professor for the rest. Whose qualifications are "weak"?

I’m not sure it’s very wise on Yoo’s part to recall Thomas’s days chairing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), since, as noted here, he left a backlog of approximately 42,000 cases after eight years. Also, during his term as assistant cabinet secretary (given both jobs in the administration of The Sainted Ronnie R), he first encountered Professor Anita Hill; this is a link to her statement during Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing (and I never heard Thomas say that Hill was wrong; all I heard was Thomas’s cries about a high-tech lynching and similar expressions of supposed victimhood).

And speaking of the testimony by Anita Hill, a certain one-time Republican senator from PA figured prominently in her questioning. Can you guess who? I’ll give you a hint – he’s trying to win a primary tomorrow (and to do something in response, click here).

Also, the recent rule change by the National Mediation Board (which I posted about here) was criticized in this post, including the following…

Airline and railroad employees will soon be forced into joining labor unions thanks to a shocking decision by the National Mediation Board (NMB). The decision was conveniently announced the same day President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court so it received much less media coverage than it might have otherwise.

In the prior post on this, I noted that a benefit of the NMB decision is that a “not-voting” vote would no longer count as a “no” vote, which tilted the odds more against the “yes” votes. Also, employers would no longer decide who would vote on the question of joining a union; in the past, this excused employers from providing a list of workers seeking collective bargaining.

Heaven forbid that Katie Packer of the Workforce Fairness Institute would admit that, however (and with a name like that, you can almost smell a Repug front group, which is what the WFI is).

When you navigate to the groups’s web site and check the About information, it doesn’t tell you who the members of the organization are, though it does tell you about allied groups, such as the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, the Employee Freedom Action Committee, and of course (inevitably) the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

And as noted here, former Dubya ad man Mark McKinnon of the WFI wouldn’t say who funds the group, which was “founded by several longtime Republican operatives.” Also with its hand in the WFI, so to speak, is Rick Berman’s “Center for Union Facts,” one of Berman’s many front groups which ran print ads comparing union leaders supporting the Employee Free Choice Act to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling the bill a "scheme to eliminate workers' right to a secret ballot" (which is demonstrably untrue).

Actually, given all of this, it’s no wonder Packer and her crowd want to maintain the secret status quo whereby employers can hold sway over workers trying to join a union. Whatever effectiveness she and her group enjoys would be greatly diminished if its own operations were likewise held up to scrutiny under the cold light of day.

Finally, let us return to The Hill for more wingnuttia on the Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination, apart from Yoo’s latest blatherings (here)…

Republicans introduced a new argument against Elena Kagan's nomination today, suggesting she believes in banning books.

In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pointed to the argument Kagan's office made before the Supreme Court in Citizens United vs. FEC, a controversial campaign finance case.

"Solicitor Kagan's office in the initial hearing argued that it would be OK to ban books," McConnell said. "And then when there was a rehearing Solicitor Kagan herself in her first Supreme Court argument suggested that it might be OK to ban pamphlets.

"I think that's very troubling, and this whole area of her view of the First Amendment and political speech is something that ought to be explored by the Judiciary Committee and by the full Senate," McConnell said.

Nice try, Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao; as noted here by Media Matters, Kagan specifically stated that federal campaign finance law had never banned books and likely could not do so.

And this is funny coming from the Republican Party, which brought us Sarah Palin inquiring into possibly banning books when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska here (Palin backed off under pressure after threatening the Wasilla librarian with her job – no, the books weren’t actually banned, but it’s not as if Palin didn’t try). The party also continues to countenance the presence of “Lonesome Rhodes” Glenn Beck, whose lizard-brained followers tried to ban a book here (also, as noted here, federal prison officials tried to ban the books of a certain 44th President of the United States).

I would seriously hope that it is unnecessary for me to spend any further words pointing out how stupid this practice is (and here is a clip listing books banned in various world countries for different reasons…I don’t think there can be any other answer to the question at the end except “yes,” to say nothing of bothering some people’s delicate sensibilities).

Friday Stuff

Wise words from someone else who is leaving, unfortunately (I can't recall "crossing swords" with Dorgan over anything - a "straight shooter" who we need, and someone else whose seat may end up flipping to the "R" column - more here)...



...and tonight on "Countdown," Howard Fineman said that voters would get turned off by rhetoric such as this from Obama - I say that if any Dem is going to go down (which isn't certain either), it's better to do it giving it your best shot than to do it with your own hands tied...



...also, though I detest Ed Snider, congratulations to the Flyers for rallying from a 3-0 hole to beat Boston four games to three tonight here (only the third time in NHL history this has happened - maybe they'll drive Adolf and Montreal over the edge again - dare I hope?...how's the view, "Cindy"?)...



...and I think this is a cool new tune (no vid) - ah, say hello to the weekend!

Friday Mashup (5/14/10)

(By the way, for some reason, there was no congressional votes writeup in the Inquirer last Sunday, so I can’t bore you with my opinions on that subject for today...and I also posted here.)

Looks like Just Plain Folks Sarah Palin Dontcha Know has put on her red high heels again and is stomping around on the war path about some other make-believe instance of umbrage (and yes, I suppose I shouldn’t care either).

Anyway, she’s being interviewed here by Fix Noise humanoid Megyn Kelly on an Illinois school administrator's decision to cancel a girls' basketball team's trip to Arizona, which has apparently attracted nationwide attention. George Fornero, superintendent of District 113 in Illinois, which oversees Highland Park High School, defended the decision by Assistant Superintendent Suzan Hebson and said it was not a political statement in response to Arizona's new law.

Yeah, right (and as noted here, the girls had apparently been selling cookies to pay the expense for the trip – I think, on balance, Hebson did the right thing, though it was deflating to the players I’ll admit, and for Hebson to claim that this is not a response to the law is ridiculous).

With that in mind, I now give you Palin…

I want these girls to feel empowered and "go rogue" if they must. Figure out a way to protest a decision like this and figure out a way to get there on their own. If it can be done, not being sanctioned by the school, [they should still go to] this tournament.

Without their parents or a family member? Does thinking like this give us some unintentional insight into how Palin’s daughter ended up “in the family way” before marriage (hey, the ex-guv is the one who put her family in the spotlight, not me)?

As I read this, though, I couldn’t help but think that many people who side with Palin no doubt opposed the initiative noted here, which was “midnight basketball” proposed by Bill Clinton in the early ‘90s (soo…it’s OK for people with whom Palin feels a kinship to develop their character through the sport, but nobody else?).

And by the way, before you tell me that, “yeah, well, what Sarah is proposing has nothing to do with the ‘gumint’ and you tax-and-spend li-bu-ruuls,” remember that midnight basketball was first proposed by Poppy Bush as one of his “thousand points of light.”

Update 5/15/10: More on Hebson with the appropriate context here (h/t Atrios)...

As noted here, U.S. House Repug Mike Pence of Indiana has been busy propagating another wingnut talking point making the rounds, namely that the U.S. shouldn’t do anything to help bail out Greece through the International Monetary Fund, which makes me wonder what on earth Greece ever did to earn wingnut enmity in this country (yes, I know the country is a little “leaky” when it comes to Terra! Terra! Terra!, but as nearly as I can see, its worst crime has been financial ineptitude and nothing more...I got into some of this also here).

This post, though, tells us that, though the cost of any U.S. funds is still in question because aid would be pooled among at least 15 IMF countries, it could end up to be the comparatively small amount of $3 billion.

I’m sorry, but given that number, I’m not inclined to beat up on Greece over an aid request of this amount, when you consider that, as noted here, “allowing (Dubya’s) tax cuts to expire for married filers with incomes above $250,000 and single filers with incomes above $200,000— the top 2 percent of U.S. households[1] — will avert $826 billion in added deficits and debt over the next ten years.”

And guess who favors continuing those tax cuts? Why, that would be the same Mike Pence, as noted here.

Also, the perpetually angry Brent Bozell criticized Comedy Central here for “censoring images that might offend Muslims,” though, as he sees it, they have no problem with satirizing Christianity and a certain 43rd president, focusing his ire on “South Park” in particular (disclosure: I don’t watch the show any more because the gross-outs got tiresome).

I give you Bozell…

In the 2005 Comedy Central special "Merry F-ing Christmas," Denis Leary called the Christmas story "bull(bleep)" and said the Virgin Mary must be a myth since someone surely "banged the hell" out of her. In the 2006 "South Park" episode that spiked Mohammad themes, the show ended with Jesus wildly defecating on President Bush: "Look at me, I'm Jesus. Would you like me to crap on you, Mr.

Bush? Mmm, yummy, yummy crap!" And there was Stephen Colbert’s 2008 Christmas special, where Toby Keith sang about (and a cartoon Santa laughed at) Christians blowing up an ACLU lawyer's house.

Gee, I would have thought Bozell would like something like that. Color me shocked!

And by the way, criticizing cartoons is one thing, but criticizing a live adult person who allegedly is not a cartoon (and I’m referring to Keith) is something else, since the Dixie Chicks basher-and-non-apologizer at least has a say in whether or not he chooses to participate in the behavior Bozell finds objectionable (and as noted here, Keith certainly isn’t a stranger when it comes to objectionable behavior).

Finally, in a story related to behavior one might consider objectionable, the New York Times reported today on ads in which words for “ass” and other terms related to male body parts have been bleeped or sanitized in one way or another.

Even though I am a parent of a child, I will not get myself exercised if he occasionally uses the word “ass” or some kind of mild scatological reference, as long as we point out to him that he is not to use these words in the company of others. Besides, I was always taught that kids react inversely to the extent of the original adult response generated by their behavior; in other words, if the young one sees me overreact in response to something, he might be more inclined to try it again as part of a game of one-upsmanship (of course, as a parent, I am a final arbiter of bad behavior, and doling out the correct response and/or punishment is my responsibility).

With that in mind, I should tell you that we stress to him that proper communication using age appropriate, reasonably intelligent language is something we expect, and to do any less diminishes the way others see him and, in all likelihood, the way he sees himself.

Oh, and by the way, I found out today that “Law and Order” was cancelled (here).

…

What the fuck??!! :-)

Thursday Stuff

If I ever find myself living in a place where a political campaign ad like this is acceptable (Uh, questioning the teaching of evolution? Didn't we settle that, oh, say, about a hundred years ago?), I hope I am in a state where I have basically passed on to the "pearly gates" (hopefully) and my inert earthly remains are all that can be subjected to such idiocy...



...and Jon Stewart does it again (the problem is that I don't think the "choke on a pretzel" moment ever ends for the idiots in question)...

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..."Worst Persons" (Tom Shales has no room to lecture anyone on journalistic ethics as it turns out, his smarmy condescending sexism notwithstanding towards one of K.O.'s buds - another would be attacked shortly; the roadside team in Sparks, Nevada needs a proofreder...oh, excuse me, prufreader...oh, skip it; but Just Plain Folks Sarah Palin gets it for criticizing Rachel Maddow's neck for supposedly protruding veins while the former half-term governor spoke at a backup sump pump convention - the jokes write themselves, people)...

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...and speaking of Maddow, she filed a report tonight on the 25th anniversary of the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia that I got into here, and I can think of no other song for the occasion (I'll add the video report when it is available).



Update 5/14/10: Here is the Maddow clip on MOVE.

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Thursday Mashup (5/13/10)

(And I also posted here.)

This tells us that congressional Dems were getting ready to pass the COMPETES Act, a bill to increase investments in science, research and training programs, as The Hill tells us.

Yeah, well, the bill was ready to pass, but guess what happened…

House Democrats had to scrap their only substantive bill of the week Thursday after Republicans won a procedural vote that substantively altered the legislation with an anti-porn clause.

…

…the Republican motion to recommit the bill -- a parliamentary tactic that gives the minority one final chance to amend legislation -- contained language prohibiting federal funds from going "to salaries to those officially disciplined for violations regarding the viewing, downloading, or exchanging of pornography, including child pornography, on a federal computer or while performing official government duties."

That provision scared dozens of Democrats into voting with Republicans to approve the motion to recommit. After it became clear the GOP motion was going to pass, dozens of additional Democrats changed their votes from "no" to "yes." In the end, 121 Democrats voted with Republicans -- only four fewer than the number of Democrats who voted with their party.

But because of additional changes contained in the motion, Democrats decided to pull the bill from consideration immediately following the passage of the motion to recommit.

Soo…in the name of some twisted impulse of budget austerity (which was nowhere to be found in the earlier part of this decade when they were in charge, of course), the Repugs play some game of “values voter” nonsense to scuttle funding in job-creating technologies.

Just remember that the next time you hear about a Republican resurgence in November.

And by the way, watch this to find out why this matters (more here).

Also, as noted here, Tom Carper is at it again, people…

The White House said Thursday it would fight efforts under the Wall Street bill to limit states from pursuing tougher consumer regulations than the federal government.

Diana Farrell, deputy director of the National Economic Council, said the administration opposes amendments – including one backed by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) – that would restrict state attorneys general.

“We intend to fight those and oppose those,” Farrell said on a conference call with the Iowa and Connecticut attorneys general.

As a reminder, it should be noted that Carper voted yes on that horrible bankruptcy bill in 2005. And as also noted here, he asupported Holy Joe Lieberman in the U.S. Senate Dem primary in Connecticut against Ned Lamont. And finally, as noted here, Carper floated that ridiculous idea of the state-run co-ops in an effort to get it introduced into health care legislation.

I know a lot of this stuff is common knowledge, but it bears repeating (what a shame that Carper’s seat isn’t open this year – I know it would hurt to flip it to an “R,” but that’s just about what Carper is anyway).

And finally, wingnut (te?) Debra Saunders tells us the following (here)…

During most of (Elena) Kagan's tenure from 2003 to 2009, Harvard University gave the military a one-finger salute, then let recruiters in through the back door.

You're supposed to feel better about the "ban" -- I should note Kagan has called it a "ban" -- because it didn't really ban anything.

When the Bush administration threatened to withhold federal funds from Harvard University in accordance with the 1996 Solomon Amendment -- which requires colleges to grant military recruiters the same access as other employers or forfeit federal funds -- the law school relented and opened the door for the university to continue receiving federal funds.

But Kagan did not go gently. She sent out a strongly worded memo denouncing the government's "don't ask, don't tell" policy as "deeply wrong -- both unwise and unjust." No doubt, the memo had an important symbolic effect as well.

Saunders goes on to call Kagan “a bully in an ivory tower” for supposedly leading the charge against military recruiters on Harvard’s campus.

It’s a funny thing, though – as Think Progress tells us here…

In reality, Kagan never booted, banned, or barred recruiters from Harvard Law School. As White House adviser Valerie Jarrett noted on MSNBC this morning, “One of the years she was dean, actually [military] enrollment went up on campus.” Here are the key facts:

1) Kagan briefly prevented the military from using the school’s Office of Career Services (OCS), but never barred recruiters from campus, allowing them to operate through the school’s Veterans Association during her entire tenure.

2) Harvard Law School has a long-standing policy designed to prohibit employers that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation from recruiting through the OCS, but made an exception for the military, which Kagan observed.

3) Seeking to fully enforce Harvard’s policy, Kagan supported an effort to overturn the Solomon Amendment, which would have stripped Harvard of $400 million in federal grant money had she barred recruiters from using the OCS.

4) In 2004, a federal appeals court ruled against the Pentagon on the Solomon Amendment, and Kagan briefly prohibited the military from using the OCS.

5) In 2006, the Supreme Court overturned the appeals court, and Kagan reinstated the military’s right to use the OCS.

Even ultra-conservative Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano understood this, explaining that Kagan was “following the law as it then existed.”

So, I have only this to say in response to deflating more military-related fiction from the wingnutosphere on Kagan:

Dis-missed!

Wednesday Mashup Part Two (5/12/10)

(Part One is over here.)

Kathleen Parker of the WaPo doesn’t think Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is “ordinary” enough (here)…

Certainly New York City dwellers would argue that they struggle with ordinary concerns, just in a more dense environment. But New York, like other urban areas, tends to be more liberal than the vast rest of the country. More than half the country also happens to be Protestant, yet with Kagan, the court will feature three Jews, six Catholics and nary a Protestant. Fewer than one-fourth of Americans are Catholic, and 1.7 percent are Jewish.

One does not have to be from a rural Georgia backwater (Clarence Thomas), or the child of recently arrived immigrants (Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito), to qualify as a justice, though it might help in claiming identity with ordinary people. One could even argue that it matters only that one regard the law with utter neutrality.

But the president adheres to the ordinary-people principle, and so the question must be asked: Does Kagan meet the standard? She may have other qualifications, including her willingness at Harvard to invite conservative scholars to her faculty. But a New York City girl who attended a prep school, Ivy League colleges and law school -- who once barred military recruiters from Harvard's recruitment office and was an adviser to Goldman Sachs -- can't be characterized as anything close to mainstream America.

Either Obama may want to tweak his operating narrative -- or geography may well be Kagan's wound.

And Parker won a Pulitzer for stuff like this, people (i.e., how “ordinary” is anyone in Washington anyway?).

Closer to home, the Bucks County Courier Times tells us the following here about Daryl Metcalfe...

Last week, state House Rep. Daryl Metcalfe introduced House Bill 2479, described as an Arizona-style immigration law that would give police new, wide-reaching power to enforce immigration laws.

GOP lieutenant governor candidate Daryl Metcalfe is running on a simple platform: the governor should do what the Butler County state lawmaker believes Pennsylvania residents want - or else.

And, what Metcalfe, 47, believes Pennsylvanians want is the person running the state to protect their pocketbooks and personal freedoms.

As noted here, Metcalfe also protested a resolution to recognize last October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month because “it has a homosexual agenda,” and he called Iraq and Afghanistan war vets “traitors” for opposing his energy policy here.

And by the way, Metcalfe’s own version of Arizona’s “illegal to be brown” law is supported by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR); not really surprising I guess since FAIR was involved in the Arizona law.

However, did you know that, as pointed out here, the Southern Poverty Law Center that FAIR is a hate group whose "key staff members have ties to white supremacist groups”?

The Courier Times tells us that the current leader in the Repug Lieutenant Governor’s race is none other than Bucks Commish Jim Cawley. However, given the fact that the ticket with presumptive Repug gubernatorial nominee Tom Corbett would likely implode with a teabagger-simpatico wingnut on the ticket, I have only this to say.

Go, Metcalfe!

Also, there has been a lot of right-wing yammering about whether or not the Obama Administration supports a so-called value added tax, or VAT (here). I don’t know whether or not that will ever be implemented, and somehow I have a feeling that those screaming about it the most know about as much as I do, or possibly even less. I also don’t know whether or not it would be detrimental to our nascent recovery.

What I do know is what I learned from here, and that is the fact that our tax burden in this country is at its lowest level since 1950.

Still, though, those zany teabaggers with their funny hats and their oh-so-clever signs will always complain about how our Kenyan Marxist president who won’t reveal his Hawaiian birth certificate (snark) is such an oppressor to them. And with that in mind, I came across the following in this New York Times story…

The rise of Tea Party advocates, accompanied by protesters across the country waving copies of the Constitution as they demonstrate, underscores the degree to which voters could be aroused by debate at the confirmation hearings over interpreting the Constitution.

I should tell you that I read that sentence three times and still didn’t understand it. However, I should also point out that, if the teabaggers were supposed to be such experts on the Constitution, they would know that Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 clearly states as follows, as noted here…

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.

Gee, I hope nobody tells Glenn Beck. He might have another one of his crying jags leading to a nervous breakdown (hmmm – on second thought…).

Tuesday Stuff

"Worst Persons" (Matthew Ray Creel of Galveston, TX kept his "weed" in the court order paperwork he was given for - wait for it! - smoking the aforementioned cannabis; Brian Kilmeade of Fix Noise tries to blame the New York Times for supposedly revealing Terra! Terra! Terra! stuff about the would-be Times Square bomber - yeah...the problem is that the cellphone stuff Kilmeade is braying about was all in the public domain already - like, WAAAY already, people; but Shandy Cobane of the Seattle Police Department gets it for his utterly vile attack on a suspect while kicking him in the head and spewing racial epithets at him...diversity training is good for some people I believe, but not for this numskull, though I'm sure new employment in Arizona awaits)...

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...and as I watched this, I recalled Monty Python's "How To Defend Yourself Against Fresh Fruit" - "derdang?"

Tuesday Mashup (5/11/10)

It didn’t take Fix Noise long to try to take charge of the slowly-unfolding (and you KNEW it would) Elena Kagan corporate media circus, did it?

As noted here, under the headline “Kagan Slobbers All Over ‘Rock Star’ Obama” (sourcing this story)…

"[Obama has] rock star qualities. The eloquence, the magnetism, the great looks, the brilliance."

In response, I give you this item, in which the following was said about the relationship between former Bushco education secretary Margaret Spellings and Number 43…

“She and Bush have a special relationship, a camaraderie,” Mr. Spellings said of his wife, adding, “She trusts him, and she loves him.”

If Kagan acted like a groupie, then Spellings acted like a “work wife” at the very least (and I’ll reserve comment on Spellings’ husband).

And oh noes, we have another “OMIGOD the Dems are DOOMED!” story (here)…

Despite a slight uptick in hiring this spring, the May 7 jobs report could show an increase in unemployment among twentysomethings as the strengthening economy entices job seekers who had given up back into the labor market.

Unemployment has been stuck at 9.7 percent since January, and for those under 25 it's a considerably higher 18.8 percent. Fewer than 60 percent of 20- to 24-year-olds had jobs in the first quarter, the lowest level since 1964.

…

The bottom line: Unlike hopeful college graduates who aided Obama's 2008 campaign, grads are busy job hunting and are abandoning Democratic politics.

Really? “Abandoning Democratic politics” you say? Even though, noted earlier in the story, we discover that “55 percent (of younger voters) leaned Democratic, vs. 37 percent Republican, according to polls conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press from October 2009 to March 2010”?

In response, I give you the following (from here, among all voters)…

PRINCETON, NJ -- Republican registered voters' enthusiasm about voting in this year's midterm elections has declined significantly in recent weeks. As a result, Republicans' advantage over Democrats on this measure has shrunk from 19 points in early April to 10 points in the latest weekly aggregate.

So why do I bother to respond to stuff like this from Business Week? Because trying to drill home misinformation like this leads to the very apathy predicted in the story, to the point where Democrats decide to sit out the election and our corporate media can crow about how brilliant they supposedly are.

When elections are based on the issues, by and large Dems win. When elections are based on extraneous “values voter” nonsense, faux teabagger umbrage and veiled threats from politicians, the media elite and their acolytes, Repugs win (and for the results of those sorrowful outcomes, see McDonnell, Bob, Christie, Chris, and too many others).

Also, the following letter appeared in the New York Times today (here)…

To the Editor:

Re “Fear Itself” (editorial, May 6):

The Terrorist Expatriation Act, which Senators Joseph I. Lieberman and Scott Brown introduced last week, updates a 1940 law to account for the enemy we are fighting today and provides our government with additional antiterrorism tools to help prevent the type of attempted attack that occurred at Times Square in New York.

The bill makes essential updates to Title 8 United States Code Section 1481, which has seven very clear grounds for which American citizens can lose their citizenship. It updates the law by adding an eighth category of acts: providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization or actively engaging in hostilities against the United States or its allies.

The proposed legislation would not retroactively deny Americans due process. The bill is not retroactive in any way. Additionally, there is a robust administrative procedure within the State Department, including an appeal process, that permits the loss of citizenship to be challenged in American courts.

The Terrorist Expatriation Act will enhance our ability to defeat terrorism and does not threaten our civil liberties. Those who join our enemy with the intent of waging war on America should no longer be entitled to the rights and privileges of American citizenship, including the rights and privileges of having a United States passport that can be used as a tool to wage terror against America.

Marshall Wittmann
Washington, May 10, 2010

The writer is the communications director for Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut.

In response, I give you George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley (here)…

While the burden would be on the State Department and you would have access to court review, the agency process could make it difficult to contest such findings — particularly with the use of secret evidence (and barring the use of evidence by the defendant on national security grounds).

Stripping citizens of their citizenship could also create stateless persons — a problem in international law. Moreover, this process could occur at the same time that a person is fighting criminal charges — adding to the practical and financial burden.

I object to Lieberman’s bogus bill on principle, and also because….well, because it comes from Joe Freaking Lieberman, people, who I have no reason to trust on anything!

Besides, as noted here, the law exempts those who would fight for Israel.

And given the information listed here (as well as that country’s Iraq war cheerleading, which of course they’ll never admit), that exemption is both laughable and utterly insulting.

Monday Stuff

"Worst Persons" (Joe The Plumber wants to beat up Bill Maher and tried once to steal women's underwear...and would you believe this guy actually won elected office as a Repug in Ohio?; Mann Coulter gives us another crackpot history lesson, this one about those "liberal" World War II isolationists - shouldn't this woman be in jail for legitimate vote fraud in Florida by now?; but Oklahoma Repug Mary Fallin gets the honors tonight for using taxpayer dollars to publish and send a mailer telling her constituents - and others in her state, since she's running for governor - how she doesn't waste...taxpayer dollars - yep, this supposedly august civil servant watching her constituents purse voted for the bailout, as noted here...you can also read about some "funny business" with Fallin and a state trooper)...

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...and now, time for another chapter in the ongoing saga of "Young Goths In Love" - don't hurt yourselves, kids (and Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are nowhere in sight, shockingly enough).

Monday Mashup (5/10/10)

(I’m heading into another iffy posting period, by the way – maybe yes, maybe no…and I also posted here.)

Frank Rich opined as follows in the New York Times yesterday…

In his speech in Ann Arbor, (Obama) keyed off from a question written to him by a kindergarten student in Virginia: “Are people being nice?” As the president joked, “even a kindergartener” could be provoked to ask that question by the “24/7 echo chamber” of cable news, where talking heads make “their arguments as outrageous and as incendiary as possible.” He called yet again for the restoration of “a basic level of civility in our public debate.”

As president, Obama is a seriously flawed messenger for this sermon. First, as he conceded in the same speech, fisticuffs (not always verbal) have been a staple of American politics since the birth of the Republic. Second, anything he has to say about shouting pundits will be regarded as special pleading from a Democratic president who is the target of nightly shoutfests on Fox News, a frequent subject of public White House complaints. Third, his administration is notorious for its fierce message management, restrictive press access and undisguised hostility to nettlesome journalists of all media and stripes.

I understand Rich’s point. However, when a “Jeff Gannon” equivalent appears in the White House press corps, then I’ll take notice.

As opposed to, say, throwing a luau for the press or some kind of a Fourth of July barbecue, there’s something Obama could support that, I believe, would ease the sometimes tense relations between his administration and the Fourth Estate (justified on occasions like this, I’ll admit), to say nothing of representing an act of basic fairness. That would be a press shield law overseen by an actual court judge, as opposed to the watered-down version he currently supports that would “not (allow) any shield protection on any instance where the administration declares that the matter involves ‘significant’ harm to national security,” as noted here.

In some ways, this administration has a little bit too much of a Bushco mindset. A press shield law is one of them (and on the issue of land mines also, as noted here – kudos to Sen. Patrick Leahy for forcefully advocating on behalf of U.S. participation in the treaty to ban these wretched devices - update: related info appears in this prior post).

Returning closer to home, our PA-31 State House Rep Steve Santarsiero informs us of the following from his home page…

Many Bucks County residents would be adversely affected if the New Jersey legislature approves legislation that would require all state, county and local government employees, as well as teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees in the state, to reside in New Jersey within four months of employment for new hires and two-and-one-half years for existing employees. Join me in opposing this regulation and urging New Jersey to 'grandfather' in current employees, making them exempt from the residency requirement, rather than force them into an unplanned, negative economic situation.

Oh yeah, this is the legislation that Steve’s Repug opponent “Self” Ciervo doesn’t think is a big deal.

Nice constituent service orientation there, Dr. Rob.

Steve also co-sponsored a bill that “protect(s) our state forests from additional natural gas drilling until its impact can be evaluated and would give the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources enough time to assess the impact of natural gas drilling on state-owned land” (H.B. 2235).

Also, according to Steve…

…“the state House Intergovernmental Affairs Committee approved my proposal to call for a federal convention to amend the U.S. Constitution in order to limit campaign contributions and expenditures….the resolution (H.R. 653) cleared the committee by a vote of 12-9. It now moves to the full House for consideration. In light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling to end restrictions on corporate and union money in politics, this effort to reform our campaign finance system is needed now more than ever. I remain hopeful that support for a constitutional amendment that protects campaign finance laws from being overturned will continue to grow on both sides of the aisle.”

To contact Steve, click here.

Finally, I give you some true hilarity from Repug strategist John Feehery here…

Always a left-of-center newspaper, the Post is now best known for being a lapdog to the current White House occupant. On the cable television shows, the Post’s line is best exemplified by the almost comical devotion to the president by Eugene Robinson, Jonathan Capehart and E.J. Dionne. For them, everything the president does or says or thinks is simply wonderful, and everything that his opponents say or do or think is well, either stupid, racist, fascist, sexist or un-American.

These are the folks who represent the Post to the cable world.

We have now learned that the Post is taking it a step further in the cyber-world. They don’t see their competitors to be The New York Times, The Associated Press or even Politico.

Nope, they see their competition to be left-wing bloggers from The Huffington Post, the left-wing Talking Points Memo or even the more left-wing The Nation.

Oh, and Feehery also gives us this mystifying sentence…

And as anybody can see from the ratings of Fox News and MSNBC, being a liberal lapdog for this president is just a bad way to make money.

I’m quite sure Feehery isn’t seriously suggesting that Fix Noise is a “liberal lapdog.” And as far as MSNBC not making money, I give you the following here from February concerning “Countdown”…

Ratings can be read many ways, and Olbermann put a more immediate spin on his numbers last night. “This program’s ratings actually grew from December to last month by 5 percent at 8 o’clock and 6 percent at 10 o’clock,” he said. “Grew, in a month in which CNN did exceptional, almost continuous coverage from Haiti. Grew to 27 percent ahead of CNN and 24 percent ahead of Headline News. Grew from the end of a year, in which MSNBC replaced CNN as the number two-rated news network among younger viewers in prime time.”

So the idea that MSNBC is getting rid of Olbermann is ludicrous. He put the cable channel on the map in prime time. And he still has the most-watched cable news program that’s not on Fox News Channel. (Olbermann averaged 1 million viewers last month.) What network would get rid of its most valuable player? That wouldn’t make sense.

And Feehery thinks the WaPo is descending into some kind of liberal internet hell? I guess that’s why they concocted this little scam in which participants could pay for access to D.C. “movers and shakers,” as well as cutting pay checks for George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Gerson, David Broder and Fred Hiatt (to say nothing of firing Dan Froomkin, after they did everything they could to hide his blog and try to drive his hit count to zero).

Why do I have a feeling that this is merely sour grapes on Feehery’s part? Maybe it’s because the paper hasn’t given him any more column space to write fluff fodder for his fellow Repugs, as it once did here for the benefit of a certain “Dancing With The Stars” castoff.

Update: Oh, and here is another "liberal" WaPo moment.

Sunday Stuff

I recently wondered if a "Red-Eyed Sheep 2" ad was on the way - here is my answer (funny stuff with a serious message -h/t The Daily Kos)...



...and I realize that the BP spill in the Gulf is utterly horrific, and as far as I'm concerned, Bushco's fingerprints are all over it due to the MMS mismanagement, though Ken Salazar doesn't look too good at the moment either; still, though, I couldn't help but think of this song.