He's a Veggie

Glenn Beck's Tossed Salad Festival: "Beck did include one clip of a GOP senator, Lindsey Graham, telling Sotomayor 'unless you have a complete meltdown, you're gonna get confirmed. And I don't think you will.' Beck ridiculed Graham for this: 'Does anybody remember when Lindsey Graham wasn't a worm?'"

Pulled it out of his ass again, waved it around, called the doctor, and got a raise. That's how righty-radio works.

Justice Roberts is a Fraud

Roberts Is An Anchor, Stuck On The Muddy Bottom, Stopping America From Completing Its Voyage:

"For all the talk of "modesty" and "restraint," the right wing Justices of the Court have a striking record of ignoring precedent, overturning congressional statutes, limiting constitutional protections, and discovering new constitutional rights: the infamous Ledbetter decision, for instance; the Louisville and Seattle integration cases; the first limitation on Roe v. Wade that outright disregards the woman's health and safety; and the DC Heller decision, discovering a constitutional right to own guns that the Court had not previously noticed in 220 years."

...and:

Benito Mussolini with a new skin - and a more boring personality: "...in every major case since he became the nation's seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff."

Did you catch the phrase, "in every major case"? What that means is that in "every major case" this asshat has sided with the state or a corporation over the individual.

Roberts is a powerful, rancid GOP repeater of myth and fear. Drag him off the bench and find a plaza and a rope.

The Turd Blossoms of Audra Shay

Audra Shay Flowers Amid Racist Republican Throwbacks: The GOP gets what it deserves. She'll be a beacon to which the tards will flock, and a tabloid generation-machine for both the adoring and repulsed blogotarians that pass for journalists in post-intelligent America. Plus, she froths at the mouth when excited.

Future's Needs

When God makes a mistake, she means it: "Before he became John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla had a telling all-or-nothing formulation: 'If it should be decided that contraception is not an evil in itself then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit is on the side of the Protestant Churches.'

...But authority—not truth, not love—prevailed: Pope Paul VI, listening to the advice of Wojtyla, disagreed with the majority of these advisers, who had voted 69 to 10 for change, fretting that to change this position would weaken his authority."

The fear is real that interfering with the circumstances leading to procreation is to threaten the holy requirements of life itself.

Careless Sower of Discord

An Elite Confection: from Peggy Noonan -"The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think."

..."She can memorize the names of the presidents of Pakistan, but she is not going to be able to know how to think about Pakistan. Why do her supporters not see this? Maybe they think "not thoughtful" is a working-class trope!"...

..."Here are a few examples of what we may face in the next 10 years: a profound and prolonged American crash, with the admission of bankruptcy and the spread of deep social unrest; one or more American cities getting hit with weapons of mass destruction from an unknown source; faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate.

The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.

It's not a time to be frivolous, or to feel the temptation of resentment, or the temptation of thinking next year will be more or less like last year, and the assumptions of our childhoods will more or less reign in our future. It won't be that way.

We are going to need the best."

Joe The Scarborough Plumbs The Depths

Joe "Unplumb" Scarborough Stops Bitch-Slapping Pelosi: "The unaccountable ability of some cable TV hosts to just pretend to their audiences like they know what they're talking about is really staggering."

Joe is that bully with the 2x4 standing there in the mist between you and your union job. To get past the line of Joes one must take away their air supply.

Sarah of Alaska

"Don't write off Saint Sarah all you political pundits, press smartypants..."

"...beware to all Republicans and Democrats who count her out of the 2012 presidential race."

The Enlightenment Ends Again:

If America really has decided it will not go progressive, then Sarah Palin is the most electrifying of the remaining choices; maybe the only one. But in choosing her, America will return to its slow nose-dive to the museum, with a strained and desperate working-class stripped of dreams and accomplishments; merely toiling through the years.

The deafening collapse of American relevance would not be lost on the rest of the planet. The world will never welcome Sarah Palin - which further endears her to the hearts of America’s republican-confederates - as time goes by.

Audra Shay - The Latest In GOP Bagheads

What's New In Racism: "“Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist… Muslim is on there side [sic]… need to take this country back from all of these mad coons… and illegals.

Eight minutes after that, at 2:02, Shay weighed in on Piker’s comments: 'You tell em Eric! lol.'"

..."her friend Piker came roaring back: “I agree with dale… this is still America… freedom of speech and thought is still allowed… for now any ways… and the last time i checked I was a good ole southern boy… and if yur ass is black don’t let the sun set on it in a southern town…”

Audra Shay does not belong in front of an American audience.

And the beat goes on...

Whoa, it's a double bagger !: "'This is an outrage and I CAN NOT believe this nation has him as our leader! It makes me sick!' She posted a few minutes later: 'My disdain for Obama is directly proportionate for his disdain of this country.'"

..."A friend of Shay’s named Derick Moss soon weighed in, writing: 'Here's what I am getting tired of: If you call Obama a socialist, terrorist, anti-American, whatever, then you're kinda calling me that, too, cause I voted for him and support him (for the most part). Or, you can claim that I didn't really know what I voted for, and in doing so you're kinda saying I'm ignorant and questioning my intelligence…'

Three minutes later, in response to Moss’ suggestion for rational discourse, Shay replied: “I think that you are ignorant if you believe this man is anything but anti american. He freely rights [sic] about Marxist philosophies. I never called him a terrorist, but if his policies are socialist (which they are) then what would you call him? His actions speak very loudly and his actions are very anti american. You just can not get past it. You might not like it but the truth is what it is.”

Killing McNamara

A Great Pleasure: "'I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great leasure.' —Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)"

..."He immediately opened the door and told McNamara there was a radiophone call for him on the bridge. McNamara set down his drink and stepped outside. The artist immediately grabbed him, wrestled him to the railing and pushed him over the side. McNamara managed to get his fingers through the holes in the metal plate that ran from the top of the railing to the scuppers.

McNamara was screaming bloody murder; the artist was prying his fingers loose one at a time. Someone heard the racket and raced out and pulled the artist off.

By the time the ferry docked in the vineyard McNamara had decided against filing charges against the artist, and he was freed and walked away."

Now that's an anecdote !!!

An i for an iPhone

"His Precious, Mad With Heat, Nearly Dies", say Police: In Winneka, Illinois "...a local resident, whose name is being withheld by police pending a full investigation, left an iPhone unattended for more than three hours in a car parked in the hot sun."

..."'What kind of a human being is capable of such callous disregard for a precious, precious thing?' said one concerned Winnetka resident, tax lawyer Ben Klein."

..."'My husband and I have been trying for months, but so far, we've been unable to have an iPhone,' town assemblywoman Janet Nuetreer said. 'But if we did, we would understand that there is nothing more important. Every iPhone is a gift from God.'"

Wow! I say sentence the perp to the Vista Lockup at Camp Windows for a few years - then reboot her. And you can't tell me the kid wasn't in on it.

The Golden Mousse

"It's still the same old story..." - Rick, in Casablanca

What is American culture? It's whatever's on the menu board at Walmart; it's the manifest desires of vast legions of idiot children of the rich; commanding tables, yachts, your lover, your banker; everything at all times, easily and disgustingly.

This is the wonderful world of Conservative Republican goals achieved. It's money money money the likes of which the world has never seen and it's all there is anymore - money and the plan and desire for more money.

There is no art world, revered and followed by young people; there is no "Great American Novel" about to be published - only Joe Scarborough cash-raiser books of political derangement; there is no American Way because money is all that you need. Screw Hemingway, get Monet out of the way, and what's that Warhol crap?

Americans sail outward in darkness to the screech of Harpie music, jettisoning their culture and indulging the unquenchable appetite for Golden Mousse - trapped by choice within the same old story of human corruption.

"Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story." - Margaret Thatcher

The Vast Asshat Community

Joe The Plumber Suggests Lynching Chris Dodd: "Referring to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., more than once, Wurzelbacher asked, 'Why hasn't he been strung up?'"...

This plumber needs a helper. The shit is piling up, Joe.

"'Let me give you another extremist view, 'In God We Trust,' ' he said to wild applause. 'Say that too loud in some parts of America and you will be shot. It's terrible.'"

Here's what's terrible Joe: bullshit is terrible; lying is terrible, ignorance is terrible so yeah, it's terrible alright, but it's not even a contest - the American landscape is flush with victims of right-wing terrorism and violence: Oklahoma City, Dr. Tiller... on and on and on. Don't get into a pissing contest with us on this - we've got the facts and they'll choke you.

We're not talking about 'cranks' with a typewriter, or just a low-voltage Samuel "Joe" Wurzelbacher. Dangerous rightie terrorists are out there in the night in America, stewing at their laptops, laying there listening in their bunks, in their twin beds, grinding their thoughts of unsane inanities, hot fueled by Rush and Beck and Malkin and Coulter and the vast asshat community of the right-wing GOP.

NEDA

NEDA

"Call me, irresponsible, call me..."

Barbara Boxer joins moths in flight to the flames: "'Thank you for calling me 'Senator' and not 'sir,' McCain said to the host, grinning."

See? It's started already; just one of a gadzillion snipes speeding into the lexicon.

It’s Liz and Babs week in DC. Evidently Barbara Boxer screwed the pooch and missed the news – wrong week to whine over appellations. Didn’t she hear about the obsessed and now famous “Elizabeth” going berserk over being called “Liz”?

Now Boxer is “Babs” in every GOP jokefest in every bar on every coast. Of course, in the heartland she’s still the good ‘ole San Francisco liberal bitch, scratching endlessly on the blackboard with her hippie fingernails.

The Raised Seal - the soul of the new GOP

Tom "Birther Bill" Coburn crawls back under: "...federal candidates must affirmatively prove their eligibility."

In Coburn's world of guns for gods and Coulter gibberish, a candidate for federal office would be required to provide a 'state government-issued birth certificate with a raised seal' - just like they do in Oklahoma.

Hold that club, 'Birther Bill', there may be a problem:

"Under the Oklahoma bill, wouldn't McCain have been ineligible? I don't believe he has a 'state government-issued birth certificate with a raised seal.' " - MJ, comment to Politico 6-9-09

MJ's right. He's the soldier who caved to the commies !!

We wanna see his raised seal !

"Uh... like, uh..."

We Need More Than A Bump In The Rode To Stay Interested: "McCain also pointed a finger at the Obama administration in Bush's defense, saying she felt that the Obama administration 'has to stop completely blaming everything on its predecessor.' When Maher asked McCain if she really thought this is what Obama is doing, McCain said 'I do to a degree.' A clearly annoyed Paul Begala immediately shook his head and said 'not to enough of a degree, I'm sorry not nearly enough.' He then began to explain how President Reagan blamed Jimmy Carter for years, to which McCain responded blithely 'you know I wasn't born yet so I wouldn't know.' Going in for the kill, Begala fired back 'I wasn't born during the French Revolution but I know about it.'"

Ooooh, thanks Paul.

"I thought Begala's best line was about how his Catholocism taught him that sex was a filthy, dirty, disgusting practice that you save for those that you love the best." - Robodweeb (HuffPo commenter)

"Bring an end to this false prophet Obama”

Into the Void with Voight: Jon Voight’s "devout wish was to 'bring an end to this false prophet Obama.'

This kind of rhetoric, with its pseudo-Scriptural call to action, is toxic. It is getting louder each day of the Obama presidency. No one, not even Fox News viewers, can say they weren’t warned."

I've written this before, but it still feels so pertinent: It's all around us, like particles in the air; everyone feels it, and feels it gathering into something else - something to dread, some first act of a most frightfull drama that will engulf the world.

Ahh...

Jennifer Aniston Honored At Film Gala: "'If anyone has a movie called Everlasting Love With an Adult Stable Man, that would be great!' Aniston joked. 'I'm at table six...'"

Gingrich treats most women as if they were "the oldest trick in the book."

Gingrich Accuses Sotomayor of Faking Broken Ankle: "'She's only wearing that fake cast to help her rack up votes,' Mr. Gingrich said. 'The minute she's confirmed, she'll whip it off and start dancing a jig.'"

"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich accused Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor today of faking a broken ankle in order to get sympathy votes during her Senate confirmation.

While Ms. Sotomayor reportedly broke her ankle while rushing to catch a plane, the former House Speaker said, "The fake-ankle-cast thing is the oldest trick in the book."

Tool and Die

GOP Tool Scarborough Claims He Didn't Criticize DHS Report, But He Did:

He's like one of those headless women in an R. Crumb drawing - a brainless thug-creature used by GOP fans needing a quick fix of rightie gibberish.

Borrowing a phrase from Mary McCarthy, "every word he says is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."

Let's Hurt Americans

Right-Wingers To Boycott GM: "They have to say no to GM products and services until such time as the denationalization occurs"

This is the GOP slithering along the floor looking for bugs.

Slap Your Father

"That Conservatives Are Not To Be Trusted Now Confirmed": "Liberals and conservatives disagree about whether disgust has a valid place in making moral judgments, Pizarro argues. Some conservatives think there is inherent wisdom in repugnance, that feeling disgusted about something - gay sex between consenting adults, for example - is cause enough to judge it wrong or immoral, even lacking a concrete reason, Pizarro explains. Liberals tend to disagree, and are more likely to base judgments on whether an action or a thing causes actual harm, he said."...

..."Research published in 2007 in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that people who think of themselves as having high moral standards often become the worst cheats because they pursue what they believe to be a moral end at all cost."
______________

"Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don’t worry as long as Dad has given permission."

Pat Buchanan: "Hitler Was an Individual of Great Courage"

Buchanan laughs about his support for white supremacist politician: "Now, where ever would anyone have gotten the idea that Harrold Carswell was a racist? Maybe from a speech Carswell gave at an American Legion gathering in which he said: "I believe that segregation of the races is proper ... and the only practical and correct way of life in our states. I yield to no man in the firm, vigorous belief in the principles of white supremacy and I shall always be so governed.

Yeah, that's probably it."...

..."Pat Buchanan is perhaps the best-known bigot in America. He called Martin Luther King Jr. 'one of the most divisive men in contemporary history.' He called Adolf Hitler 'an individual of great courage' and wrote a column questioning whether World War II was 'worth it' and wondered, 'Why destroy Hitler?' He defends a self-proclaimed white supremacist from charges of racism. Nearly every day, he demonstrates contempt for women and minorities.

MSNBC's continued employment of him says a lot about the cable channel."

Neo-Nonslappers

"Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal", says Nicholas Kristol: "Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don’t worry as long as Dad has given permission.

Likewise, conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination or perceive disgust. People who would be disgusted to find that they had accidentally sipped from an acquaintance’s drink are more likely to identify as conservatives."...

..."For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust."

Ralph Peters Calls For Killing Of War Journalists

Ralph Peters is deep into the shit: "Future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media."

The Boomers Stripped Bare of Their Savings, Even

New Age chanting better protection than SEC, say hedge fund managers: "Though older workers in previous recessions were less likely than their younger counterparts to be laid off, that advantage has eroded in recent years, said Munnell, who analyzed more than two decades of Labor Department data on layoffs.

Fewer workers are now protected by union contracts that require newer employees to be laid off first. And older workers now typically have less of a seniority advantage in a workforce that more frequently switches jobs."

The "hired last, fired first" doctrine was one of the foundation stones under the floor of the old factories; so steady and sure that corporate management and union haters could pretend that it was a fact of capitalism rather than the benefit it is - fought for and won by organized labor.

Dead Again Christians

Jerry Falwell Junior's monster factory shuts out Democrat's club because it slows down the production line: "Claire Ayendi, who was chairman of the Republican club last year and graduated this spring, said she didn’t regard the university’s disbanding of the Democratic group as a political act.

'I think it’s more like a moral issue,' Ayendi said. 'Letting a club like that exist goes against what the school is founded on,' she said."

Back in the age of the senior Falwell, and Pat Robertson - and the jive Jimmies like Swaggart, Jim Jones, and Jim Bakker, places like Liberty University concocted a fabricated reality, a spoiled intellectual fish, gutted of all truth. Now, as if a given fact - an accepted, ageless ceremony of life, they routinely drag out their ridiculous creation, their Paenisaurus Rex, scales and all, wearing the Christian smile and cavorting with Noah's kids, speaking without words the only facts of life.

3rd Degree Bernie Madoff and Total Dick Cheney

McClatchy Newspapers: Cheney's Speech Contained Omissions, Misstatements: "Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements."

The GOP is puttin' on a show, and we're all supposed to watch, but especially the "base" of the Republican party. But "Powerful White Guys That Screwed the Pooch" is a startling show for Americans used to seeing their culture as a wondrous and grand affair, and a boon to the planet. Instead we all watched in horror as Bernie Madoff stole our retirees money and ruined their lives, and as Dick Cheney covered our national honor with filth while he tortured in our name.

Cheney knows that millions upon millions of Americans can never accept torture in any form for any reason because of strongly held spiritual beliefs and because of proscriptions that must always be upheld. So, when you see Cheney now, under the lights, the beads of sweat forming as he talks, you are looking at a man who knows what he has done and knows what it means and knows that we are out here.

Oh. My. God !!!

Newt Gingrich Opens Up on Catholic Conversion and Embracing 'Overt Christianity: "As a college student at Emory when the Supreme Court ruled that school prayer was unconstitutional [in 1963] after 170 years of American history, I didn't notice it. As a graduate student at Tulane I probably would have said it's a good decision.

I've now had an additional 40 years to think about it. And I think about the world of my grandchildren. I don't think American children are healthier, safer, and better off today than they were in 1963. So I have actually become more conservative in response to the failure of the liberal ethos to solve problems."

The Top of the Heap

Whoopi Goldberg Calls Glenn Beck A 'Lying Sack Of Dog Mess': "Beck talks about how he hates everyone in Congress and how everyone should resign. But then Beck gets stumped by a question from Barbara: 'What are your real convictions?'

His answer: 'I believe in God. I believe in the founding of this country. I believe George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson were geniuses.'

So there you have it. Glenn Beck really, really believes in God, the names of some Presidents, and that the United States was founded, somehow, at some point in the past."

Terrorism

Ireland church: Thousands beaten, raped in Irish reform schools: "The report found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities..."

..."Girls... suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless. 'In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body,' the report said. Personal and family denigration was widespread."...

..."Today's report also highlighted the rarity of human kindness in the institutions.

'A word of consideration or encouragement, or an act of sympathy or understanding, had a profound effect. Adults in their 60s and 70s recalled seemingly insignificant events that had remained with them all their lives,' the report said.

'Often the act of kindness, recalled in such a positive light, arose from the simple fact that the staff member had not given a beating when one was expected.'"

"Future Of Capitalism"

CNBC Devotes Hour To "Future Of Capitalism": The participants tackled their topic "...like a bunch of people struggling to graduate through the Kubler-Ross model of grieving without cycling back to denial every five minutes." - Jason Linkins

Kaboom! ...that's a lot of fun to read !

Joe Barton's Stem Cells Speak Out

Joe Barton, GOP Congressman, Explains Why CO2 Is Harmless: "It's In Your Coca-Cola": Joe thinks CO2 is a gas! He loves the stuff. "I'm creating it as I talk to you." Gee Joe, there's other stuff you're going to create over the next 48 hours. Do you love that too?

"The problem with Mr Barton is that he is wholly uninterested in the science and statistics of the global warming debate. He is about as curious as a dead cat, as is his colleague in the Senate, James Inhofe."

These clowns are business paraphernalia - like company cars, or printer-copiers, or escorts.

GOP Screws the Whole Dog Pack

Rachel Maddow Finds Flaw In GOP's Pelosi Gambit: "Here's GOP brilliance at work: their plan is to make a gigantic media fuss over the issue of - wait for it:

When did the Democrats learn that the Republicans were torturers and schmucks?

If this is the Republicans at their smartest then their party is surely over - except for the fact that they are all Republicans and as such can't stop anything - not a party, not a war, not a bad speech, and certainly not the mouth of Gingrich - the candyman of hypocrisy."

Here Newt, pull this finger...

Taking Stock

Ang Lee's 'Taking Woodstock' Premieres: "Woodstock 'has a symbolic meaning to me. It's the innocence of a young generation departing from the old establishment and trying to find a more refreshing way, more fair way, to live with everybody else,' Lee said Saturday before the Cannes premiere of 'Taking Woodstock...'" - Ang Lee

"'...there's a different look to today's young people, with their passion for fitness and disdain for pubic hair.... When you think about it, a generation of people who weren't fat, who weren't staring at themselves in the mirror all the time, and not shaving everything off down there, it captures the difference of 40 years right there.'" - Screenwriter James Schamus

"The Good Folks Come To Burn Thee"

Radio Armies: "There is something dangerous afoot -- an alienation that can easily morph into extremism. With the national Republican party in disarray, an argument is solidifying among grass-roots conservatives: Liberals, who are now in power in Washington, hate America and want to dismantle its foundational institutions and liberties, including capitalism and private property. Liberals are rootless internationalists who cravenly appease those who want to kill us. The primary principle of conservatives, on the other hand, is love of country, for which they are willing to sacrifice and die. America's identity was forged by Christian faith and our Founding Fathers, to whose prudent and unerring 18th-century worldview we must return." - Camille Paglia

I too think there is something afoot. It's all around us, like particles in the air; everyone feels it, and feels it gathering into something else - something to dread, some first act of a most frightfull drama that will engulf the world.

It Drips With Bile

Liz Cheney begins her presidential run: "'We are seeing a situation where this administration, for some reason, continues to release information that is helpful to the terrorists,' Cheney declared. 'Releasing details about what was involved in the enhanced interrogation program, releasing the techniques involved in that program, helps the terrorists. It helps them train to those techniques, it takes those techniques completely out of the realm of possibility for future presidents to use. So it was a very damaging thing to do. ... They seem to be only interested in releasing things that really paint America in a negative light.'

In addition to accusing Obama of siding with terrorists, Cheney also argued that Attorney General Eric Holder, by offering to work with foreign governments, was refusing to 'stand up and defend American sovereignty.'"

If you're feeling cheney, grab a malkin and wipe your coulter. That sometimes helps.

Kill 'em and grill 'em

Jesse Ventura: "[Water-boarding] is torture... It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you -- I'll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."

Obama the Commie

Republican throwback Pete Sessions says Obama wants more unemployment: "Obama 'intended to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it'"


Ah, I see. Obama is a communist wanting to have America fail so that capitalism will die. I knew it was something like that...

"If you ask for ketchup, you'd better be under the age of twelve."

What kind of man orders a cheeseburger without ketchup?: "It took all of Sean Hannity's brain power to come up with a joke about it, but he finally decided to make fun of the fact that Obama wanted a "spicy" or "Dijon" mustard on his cheeseburger, just like the undead Nikita Khruschev prefers."

..."What kind of man orders a cheeseburger without ketchup? Uhm, how about a FULL GROWN ONE? Ketchup, and it's cousin "catsup," doesn't come near my food, because I am no longer a small child.

And Media Monitor Phillip G. adds the following insight into ketchup: It's a Chicago thing. Ketchup (in particular on hot dogs) is a serious faux pas."

High-ranking official says "Jay Severin's Mother Was A Ho"

Boston Radio's Jay Severin attacks Mexicans to avoid explaining mother's career choice: "'So now, in addition to venereal disease and the other leading exports of Mexico - women with mustaches and VD - now we have swine flu.'

Later, he described Mexicans as 'the world's lowest of primitives.'
'When we are the magnet for primitives around the world - and it's not the primitives' fault by the way, I'm not blaming them for being primitives - I'm merely observing they're primitive,' he said."...

..."millions of leeches from a primitive country come here to leech off you and, with it, they are ruining the schools, the hospitals, and a lot of life in America," he said.

He added: "We should be, if anything, surprised that Mexico has not visited upon us poxes of more various and serious types already, considering the number of criminaliens already here."...

..."On a 2004 broadcast, he compared US Muslims to a fifth column, and when a caller suggested that the United States should befriend Muslims, Severin responded: 'You think we should befriend them; I think we should kill them.'

He has called former Vice President Al Gore 'Al Whore,' Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton 'a lying [expletive],' and Senator Edward M. Kennedy 'a fat piece of lying garbage.'"...

..."Severin has also been criticized over the years for falsely saying that he had won a Pulitzer Prize and that he had earned a master's degree from Boston University."

-------------

Another shining asshat in the Republican pantheon.

Noonan's Daily Walk

Pundits Whitewash Torture: "'Some things in life need to be mysterious,' said Noonan, adding, 'Sometimes you need to just keep walking.'" - Peggy Noonan

"If you're ever facing felony charges, give this a shot and see how well it goes over. 'Your honor, I could offer a defense, and we could explore the charges against me, but sometimes in life you want to just keep walking. Some of life just has to be mysterious.'"

Ann's Ferociously Judgmental World

Ann Coulter's memorial column following her mother's death: "She had a rare combination of being completely moral and completely nonjudgmental at the same time -- the exact opposite of liberals who have absolutely no morals and yet are ferociously judgmental."

The judgment above is a gem. This family of vipers has a perfect mouthpiece.

Slithering Away From Decency

The United Snakes: Three movements in the force: first, the government says that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month; second, both Rove and Cheney say that U. S. officials, using sanctioned interrogation methods - which included waterboarding, learned of a terrorist plot for a devastating attack on Los Angeles and consequently thwarted that attack; and in the third event, Liz Cheney is coined and begins circulation among the minds of conservatives, with her stealth launch offering a stern and familiar political trajectory.

But, "As Timothy Noah and Daily Kos TV have documented, however, the Rove timetable just doesn't add up. While Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested in March 2003, the plot was stopped in February 2002 -- more than a year earlier. Rove's tale could not possibly be true."

It's "All Waterboarding - All The Time" !! Actually, it's Cheney squared, and in both the Rove 'n Dick and the Dick 'n Liz view, there were no instances of criminal torture because all actions were the result of following orders assumed to be lawful - and important for the nation's safety. There would be no problem with the public because, as Hermann Goering instructed, "the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy.

All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

It works the same way in any country."

Wow, if we'd realized earlier that Hermann Goering was just doin' what his boss said, he could have gone on to play Colonel Klink and be buried at Forest Lawn - many years later.

Republican's Frantic Search For Validation

Why Republicans are devouring one book: "“We don’t know — because we weren’t there — what would have happened if they had left the market alone,” she said. Or, as she puts it in the book, “Of course Hoover and Roosevelt may have had no choice but to pursue the policies they did. They may indeed have spared the country something worse — an American version of Stalin’s communism or Mussolini’s fascism.”"

High There

What 420 Means: The True Story Behind Stoners' Favorite Number: "had nothing to do with a police code -- though the San Rafael part was dead on. Indeed, a group of five San Rafael High School friends known as the Waldos - by virtue of their chosen hang-out spot, a wall outside the school - coined the term in 1971."

-----------

In 1970 and 71 I lived on San Francisco Bay in Marin County, complete with dock and boat , and remember well that Marin was one of the hot centers of my generation's universe. I can't explain exactly why it was, but it was - maybe because the whole world had been looking at San Francisco for a number of years, waiting for some new sign of the apocalypse or some cool sci-fi solution to everything or a new drug as a consolation for not finding one.

And Marin County delivered: gorgeous weather, unmatched beauty in its woods, around its lakes, on its bayshores and seashores, in it's small towns. We had the peacock feathers, Lucas Ranch, coke on the tabletops, and the highest number of stoned musicians-per-square-inch in the known world.

In 1971 San Rafael had about 30,000+ people and was not yet yuppied-up with lacquered barstools and leggy blondes. We guys still called our girlfriend our "old lady" and we accepted the granny-dress as she prepared the oh-so-cheap lentil soup and put a tie-dyed patch on our jeans.

420 was not widely known for many years, but now it is a small gift from the past, reminding everyone who cares that we did exist and that we did change the universe and that we did do it as it needed to be done.

A Crack In The GOP

Meghan McCain: "Old School" Republicans Are "Scared Shitless": "'There are those who think we can win the White House and Congress back by being 'more' conservative. Worse, there are those who think we can win by changing nothing at all about what our party has become. They just want to wait for the other side to be perceived as worse than us. I think we're seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party. But it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past.'"

She may misstep at some point, but she's not doing it now.

Fox Owns the Tea Party

What In the World Made Us Once Respect Greta?:

"For at least the second time in three days, Fox News aired on-screen text describing 'tea party' protests that Fox News hosts will be attending as 'FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.' Fox News has often described the protests as a response to President Obama's fiscal policies."

Grits-eating Surrender-necks

"If I owned Texas and hell, I'd rent out Texas and live in hell." - U.S. Gen. Phillip Sheridan, 1866: "Here are a few embarrassing tidbits about Texas that Governor Rick Perry doesn't want the rest of the nation to know so he can start planning his little fantasy of national politics:

1) 49th in teacher pay
2) 1st in the percentage of people over 25 without a high school diploma
3) 41st in high school graduation rate
4) 46th in SAT scores
5) 1st in percentage of uninsured children
6) 1st in percentage of population uninsured
7) 1st in percentage of non-elderly uninsured
8) 3rd in percentage of people living below the poverty level
9) 49th in average Women Infant and Children benefit payments
10) 1st in teenage birth rate
11) 50th in average credit scores for loan applicants
12) 1st in air pollution emissions
13) 1st in volume of volatile organic compounds released into the air
14) 1st in amount of toxic chemicals released into water
15) 1st in amount of recognized cancer-causing carcinogens released into air
16) 1st in amount of carbon dioxide emissions
17) 50th in homeowners' insurance affordability
18) 50th in percentage of voting age population that votes
19) 1st in annual number of executions"

So, yes, let them secede. And, wow, the French are gonna have a lot of fun with these grits-eating surrender-necks.

Yea !!! The Texans Are Leaving

Gov. Rick Perry: Texas Could Secede, Leave Union: "Perry called his supporters patriots. Later, answering news reporters' questions, Perry suggested Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union"

We all know how charming conservative Texans really are. Losing them will be so hard... well, I'm all choked up.

If only they would really do it, but I doubt they've got the fortitude to pull it off. But they'll have no problem dropping their "americanism" - they have little to begin with.

Plus, let's beat them to shreds once and for all.

"Burn the books"

Tea Party Insanity: "'They're doing everything they can to brainwash our public...This thing they're putting on our TVs,' he says, presumably referring to digital cable converters, 'it's a brainwash unit!'

As his speech winds down, he exhorts his listeners to get their kids 'the hell out of college. They're brainwashing 'em!'

The anti-school message resonates with one woman.

'Burn the books!' she yells from off-camera. The surprised camera man asks if she's serious, and which books she'd burn. 'The ones in college, the brainwashing books, like the evolution crap.'"

GOP... Dead Ahead !!!

"Did you say Ice Berg, or Ice Cream?: "'On the day we learned that jobless claims rose to their highest levels in 26 years, Eric Cantor's charge that anyone is 'overreacting' to this economic crisis typifies the Republican just say 'NO' approach. Whether it's because they are simply out of touch with the pain American families are feeling, or they understand but are choosing to play politics instead, the lack of urgency shown by the Republican party at this time of crisis is appalling.'"

Now, now, now. Settle down Dems and move along. There's nothing to see here.

Fox on Fox Action - Angie Harmon, Republican, Actress

Republicans "Have Class": She is a genuine republican. I've got a few in my family and they are obnoxious in any discussion about reality. I still love them of course - them being family and all, and I make an effort to think of them as Labrador Retrievers mixed with too much Terrier, instead of the jerks that they are.

I was an adolescent once and used it all up, so I don't need to keep hearing the same unexplored theories about glory and truth. My true home is with the progressives, where everything is a spiritual quest with serious consequences for all.

GOP Distemper Shots Now Available

Joe The Plumber Needs A Royal Flush: "It's no wonder that actual plumbers hate this phony like he was feline leukemia."

Obama Does - Romney Can't

Romney backs Obama auto decision, praising ‘backbone’: "'I think a lot of people expected the president just to cave, write a check, and just hope for the better,' Romney said Tuesday morning on CNN. 'I think he's expressing some backbone on this.'"

Obama has skipped over the bull like Fred Astaire.

Anus Watch 2009

Glenn Beck - "I'm a rodeo clown": "If you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot."

He says it best, and he further wonders if a guy from some jerkwater town can make it in the big city atmosphere of Liberaland, America? Sure he can, making a ton of cash in the process.

The Old Dame Farts

"Criticism over Obama invite mounts at Notre Dame...", says a headline on Drudgereport.

Bishops John D'Arcy and Thomas Olmsted set an ugly tone right out of the gate, stirring the panty-bunched Alumni to send letters - over 90 percent of them opposing family man and doting father Obama's appearance at commencement, preferring instead the advise of a couple of bachelor Priests.

However, as the actual article states, "73 percent of student letters supported his appearance. Among the 95 seniors who wrote letters, 97 percent supported the president's invitation."

AP Uses Broken Men As Writers

Fascination With Obama Driving Righties to the Men's Room: Hey Obama, why-ya waiting so long to comment on the issue????, asks AP's best.

"'It took a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak.'"

Good plan.

But AP's Ron Fournier is a follower of snark, and as such doesn't need to think as long as there is a freeway onramp wall he can decorate. And he's the AP Washington Bureau Chief.

You Owe Us All Your Money

Suze Orman To Bush: "If I were you, I would feel so absolutely horrific that I would take every penny I had and distribute it to anybody and everybody to help them in whatever way I could. You owe the American people every penny of your fortune and your family's fortune.'"

Making Peas From Pea Soup

An Army of Quants Has Annihilated A Country

In trying to understand this whole bank disaster situation and the concepts involved - like derivatives, etc., I came across this article from 2003 by a guy who teaches some of these concepts to people called “Quants” who are the geeks who develop these theoretical valuations of assets that are used by these Wall Street “Fund” makers to make oodles of profit and gigantic salaries.

In the article he muses on about the school/real-world methods of learning. In doing so, he presents a fascinating picture of a science that today has our culture by the balls - a science that isn’t even a science, but rather a system created to explain things that only exist if you believe the explanation. When I read the article - here in 2009, with chaos flooding through the financial world, I could finally understand how greed had constructed a fake world for its own purposes, and why the value of our homes - and America itself, is helplessly sinking until it finds it's true worth.

GOP's Most Out Of Work Brain Donor

Ari Fleischer Shows His Stuff: "'After September 11th having been hit once how could we take a chance that Saddam might strike again? And that's the threat that has been removed and I think we are all safer with that threat removed.'" - Ari Fleischer

Ah!, Saddam and 911, together again !

Help Wanted: Scum Removal Expert Needed

Jim Cramer Defines The Modern Asshat: "'What's important when you are in that hedge fund mode is to not be doing anything that is remotely truthful, because the truth is so against your view - it is important to create a new truth to develop a fiction,' Cramer advises. 'You can't take any chances.'"

Citizens are being educated likkety-split in the workings of American capitalism. We are all coming up to speed and realizing that soft-cloth, easy-to-digest crime is un underlying engine in all of this. It's now horrifying to see that the business community around us is filled with crookery and that a smile above a Brooks Brothers suit is something to distrust.

The only thing that an American capitalist can smile about is that at least their immortal idol, Ronald Reagan, was right about something important; when it comes to the enemy - trust, but verify. I put it differently: demand professionalism every minute of the day until the bad guys are dead.

The Wolf At The Door

How the Wealthy Waged War on Each Other: "So if you want to find the real culprits in the war on wealth, don't look to Washington. Walk down Fifth Avenue, get on a chairlift at Aspen, turn on CNBC, or charter a jet to St. Bart's." - Newsweek

He's Got A Problem With His Hole

Fox News' Glenn Beck strikes ratings gold by challenging Barack Obama: "'Look in your rear-view mirror; we just passed France,' he said. 'I think our country is on the verge of disintegration.'"

Can't wait to see the website with a list of his sponsors.

Morning Game Hunter

Joe Scarborough has picked his deer and nothing's gonna change his tightly focused little brain. He's gonna shoot Geithner over and over until he stops wiggling.

Joe's a Pullman bully on the lines smashing 2x4s into worker's heads. He may not be good at it, but he's definitely at it... that's his limited charm and the reason I watch his show.

The Blink of an Eye

Space rock gives Earth a close shave: "An asteroid of a similar size to a rock that exploded above Siberia in 1908 with the force of a thousand atomic bombs whizzed close past Earth on Monday"

GOP Descends To Hell

Anger Rises Among Unemployed Over Govs Who Want To Reject Stimulus Funds: "As governors in nine states, mostly in the South, consider rejecting millions of dollars in federal stimulus money for increased unemployment insurance, there is growing anger among the ranks of the jobless in those states that they could be left out of a significant government benefit."

Hurting the sufferers is an unsane indecent act by the GOP that will define them for years.

These Governors deserve our complete contempt for putting people second and stupid, dumbass theories first. Only a bad person would do what they intend to do.

But now that everyone has handguns - thanks NRA/GOP thugs !!! - I wonder how secure and safe these Governors think they are? A panicked father with no money does what he needs to do.

The Changelessling

Kick Her In The Crotch: "...as long as the nation is obsessed with historic milestones, is no one going to remark on what a great country it is where a mentally retarded woman can become speaker of the house?"

Another cute little fart from the anethema.

But it's all just part of her well-known "Cash Raiser 2000" plan. Sure, she hates most of what she says she hates, but mainly that's just her emotional cover for her need to be obnoxious. Ask one of your shrink friends to give you the lowdown about this type of annoying behavior. Kicking her in the crotch is the only known treatment short of euthanasia.

"It's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." -- Charles Darwin

Santelli Uses McCain's Brain

Smart As Whips: "On September 2, just days before the initial financial collapse, Rick Santelli said, 'I think the economy is healthy.'

If McCain had won, this statement would've made Santelli our Treasury Secretary."

A GOP Asshat - In All Its Glory

Watermelon Man Inspires Outrage: Mayor Dean "Grose confirmed to the AP that he sent the e-mail to Price and said he didn't mean to offend her. He said he was unaware of the racial stereotype that black people like watermelons."














It is beyond belief that these asshats still parade their ignorance and flawed souls in public.

'Astral Weeks' 2080 weeks later...

Van Morrison: 40 Years Later, 'Astral Weeks' Chills and Thrills:

Terrific article by Jesse Kornbluth !!!

And you are so right. I was the recording mixer on some of his live on-the-radio recordings - the legendary PHR recordings. Never got to really know him, and never worked with him on any of his albums, but he was around the area and in and out of the fantastic PHR studios many times. Not an easy guy to know, but the music is as wonderful as you say, and the original Astral Weeks - which I have, is one of the greatest music recordings ever made. Word.

"I Want One Million Per Episode" like Chandler Bing

Nada Bing Nada Boom - Rick Santelli Has Psychotic Episode - Insults The Contessa

A golden piñata just broke in front of Santelli – and Joe the Plumber’s bullhorn is screaming “Big Bucks in the Bank for Bitching”, the birth cry of the whining asshat. It doesn’t sound like Santelli plans to resist the siren.

The Professionals

Bye Bye Miss American Pie:

Forget all the other stuff. The death of professionalism is the wolf at the door.

The wolf lived with the GOP for the last 8 years as they built up bigger and bigger piles of federal debt, embracing and celebrating any and all theories that justified making truly gigantic piles of money - where customers are consumers who need only to hear a professional tell them to "buy it, it's all going up forever."

The professionals - on whom we must depend, conned the common man and may have buried the American dream.

The Glans Professional:

Alan Greenspan says, "The vast increase in the size of the over-the-counter derivatives markets is the result of the market finding them a very useful vehicle. And the question is, should these be regulated? Well, indeed, for the United States, they are obviously regulated to the extent that banks, being the crucial creators of these derivatives, are regulated by the banking agencies, but not beyond that. And the reason why we think it would be a mistake to go beyond that degree of regulation is that these derivative transactions are transactions amongst professionals. And the institutions which are involved have very considerable what we call counterparty surveillance, where, for example, one major bank will know far more about its customer, whether it's a bank or something else, than we could conceivably know as regulators. In a sense, this counterparty surveillance has become the crucial element which has created stability in that particular system."

Now you know.

Hey, Stop Mistreating Madoff

SEC And Madoff Reach Agreement On Fraud Case: "Madoff, who has not been indicted, is widely expected to eventually enter into a criminal deal with prosecutors in which he would plead guilty in exchange for some form of leniency."

Yes, that certainly would be a 'criminal deal'.

Leniency !

Yeah, all kinds of leniency - just as soon as we disembowel the disgusting insect, slap around the prosecutors, the SEC and the judges in this case, then make the evil curr adjust Christian Bale's lights.

Then give him to me. He stole one of my best friend's money - all of it. She can no longer afford health insurance and must un-retire and return to the job market at 62 years of age.

If this man is given any comfort or any leniency, I will haunt the fuckers that did so. Word.

"It Cures Horseness !"

Carnival Worker Burrows Deep Into the GOP Wilderness: "Brad Blakeman, a senior aide to Mr. Bush from 2001 to 2004, said the new president's language is immature.

'It's not presidential. An American leader needs to be hopeful and optimistic - and truthful. Everything he says is parsed; everything he says is searched for deep meaning. When he goes to 'DefCon 5' on the economy and says that we're on the brink of catastrophe, it's absolutely insane.'"

Brad is a total sleaze. He's a sparkly-eyed rattle-pate that sells crap to assholes. But he calls it delivering truth to power. Not to worry; just flush and he goes away - at least until the next...

The Theory Theory

The Betrayal That the Centrists Have Wrought: "This is really, really bad." - Paul Krugman, NYT

I’m with Krugman on this one. Cutting funds to the states is a fatal flaw of the Senate bill. Moving funds to the state level provides demonstrably faster and well-focused ways to provide relief. And most of the infrastructure already exists to implement the benefits.

For the GOP, to protect its grand old theories of government, to deliberately deny the American people a powerful strategy with a good chance of success, infuriates me to no end.

The GOP version of Capitalism – with its Weegee Board, “invisible hand” fantasies, looks ugly as sin when the curtain is pulled back to reveal a bazaar of criminal corporations run by value-proof amoral nerds and made legitimate by lawyers fully able to loot anything of everything.

So here we all are, stripped and abandoned – truly looted, hiding our nuts and buying very little; our banks hiding their nuts and lending very little. An unprecedentedly huge population of the mega-wealthy waits uninvolved in another landscape, while the rest of us find American life suddenly out of focus, recognizing in our bones that everything we counted on may be in play and at stake.

It is that serious, but even as we are pulled into the center of the misery itself, the GOP and its bile-filled air bullies will still sell us all out for a theory.

---------------------

Update: Here’s what I think people expect of their government right now: provide big amounts of money to the states and let their channels of distribution get needed assistance to out-of-work citizens. Remove the catastrophic inability of financial institutions to evaluate the quality of their assets, or others’ assets, by carving out the toxic debt and placing it in Federal Government ownership and control for further disposition. Then when you have an extra moment, incarcerate the Wall Street Bugsies and seize their assets. Then stand by for further instructions.

The Groans of the Rusties

Wall Street Deserted the Rust Belt States: and now what's left are the groans of the jobless as they contemplate their fate and fear for their withered families.

But one of the loudest sounds of all is the Mayor of Lansing, Michigan when he speaks to the issue of jobs with near perfect pitch, his voice strident and quaking with anger and honesty. American workers are being screwed quite handily by greedsters and power monkeys - living far from the values and realities shared by the vast majority of Americans, and it is quite clear that this guy, Virg Bernero, is reluctant to shut up and ride the Titanic.

Bernero hears Wall Street say that manufacturing is the way of the past and that we must now become a service industry nation, and asks, "What are we supposed to do, sell each other hamburgers?" And, he knows that Wall Street's answer is "yes."


Virg Bernero is the real deal for his constituents. He is demanding that everyone know that some of their fellow Americans have been written-off and abandoned in agreements made by their own leaders. He is insisting that the powers-that-be deal with the fact that the country is flooded with cars from countries where auto manufacturers don't even have to provide health-care to their workers - their government pays for it.

He demands that we all bear witness that "between these two means of death we are either killed or drowned."

If the groans of rust-belt workers are not answered with solutions, the rusties will be as abandoned as were those old Roman Britons who sent their "Groans of the Britons" to a beleaguered Emperor - and then disappeared from history as their pleas went unanswered.

I'm for an America that doesn't suck, how 'bout you?

"J.O.B.S. is on the way !!!"

( Yes, the Firesign Theater did indeed say it best. )

I think Americans want to hear about a Jobs Bill - nothing else.

Americans fearing the loss of their jobs will never spend enough to rebound the economy until there is a safety net beneath their feet.

So why would anyone be interested in championing Republican ideas that were drenched in failure as recently as 3 weeks ago?

If trapping Obama is all they've got, then Republicans have nothing - helped along by mean little cranks like Charles Krauthammer and his egg-beater fake rhetoric. The America I live in should be rid of these dark, damp men who stew and quicken their bleak nastiness.

"This Fabulous Moment"

Posted by: Lia January 21, 2009 at 06:15 AM in a comment to a Huffingtonpost.com article:

"Im here so far from you guys..Beauty city in Africa...My english is poor because my official language is Portuguese... I dont understand about politics and god or bad pronounces, i only know 2 things: "mistakes are human things". Prs. Obama can did mistake with words, but "you" did others mistakes in your life more badly and worst that a simple word...so before see other peoples mistake take a look of you. The second thing i know is CHANGE-PEACE-AND-LOVE... you guys should try to accept that the change came, and try to live better with that... dont waste time thinkin and lookin for Obama words mistakes, take a time to breath and be open eyes to see his WORK. for now, just live your life better, "carpe diem", because we are human and we only live one time in this world. Stop talking shits because whatever you do or say it not gone change the fact: OBAMA IS A NEW PRESIDENT OF USA, 44TH OR 43TH, BACK OR WHITE...IS YOURS PRESIDENT,WHATHEVER YOU LIKE OR YOU HEAT...

im glad to be alive to see change in the world... im glad to live this fabulous moment that America gives this gifth to all of the world...im African Women, but now i can say without debuts that AMERICA IS THE TOP OF THE WORLD...not because they have economy but because they have mind...

GOD BLESS AMERICA AND GOD LOOK FOR AFRICA!"

And I thank Lia for the expressive mix of language and passion in her wonderfully fractured blessing for America.

Gone With The Web

News from Newspapers - it won't survive: On 'Morning Joe' today, guest Jack Welch said that going forward the news will be delivered from the web - newspapers will be out of that business.

Ok.

I get nervous contemplating that still unknown danger to a city's cohesion when it loses its "paper of record" - heretofore one of the essential components of the modern-world-community. How essential was that component to our emotional safety?

I'm just sayin'...

The Dick Armey

Dick Armey to Salon Editor-in-Chief Joan Walsh on 'Hardball':

"I am so damn glad that you could never be my wife, 'cause I surely wouldn't want to have to listen to that prattle from you every day."

It's instructive to remember that Dick Armey admires Ann Coulter, and Ann Coulter admires Dick Armey - in fact, if she could she'd join it.

No Place To Hide

The Tiger Rides Are Coming:"The financial crisis is 'attributable to inappropriate macroeconomic policies of some economies and their unsustainable model of development characterized by prolonged low savings and high consumption; excessive expansion of financial institutions in blind pursuit of profit." - China's Premier Wen Jiabao.

"The entire economic growth system, where one regional center prints money without respite and consumes material wealth, while another regional centre manufactures inexpensive goods … has suffered a major setback." - Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Rupert Murdock - "World financial markets are in a great state of disarray": "'It doesn’t really matter where you’re talking about in the world,” Murdoch said. “There’s no hiding place.'"

This bell tolls for you: "There's a sense among many, certainly here in New York, that we somehow had it too good too long, a feeling part Puritan, part mystic and obscurely guilty, that some bill is coming due." - Peggy Noonan

It's all around us, like particles in the air; everyone feels it, and feels it gathering into something else - something to dread, some first act of a most frightfull drama that will engulf the world.

I Wanna Be A Slave

The Boomers Got A First-Class Education - The GOP Will Never Let That Happen Again!: "'There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or by brainwashing; or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.'

Aldous Huxley
California Medical School
San Francisco California
1961"

Gulp !

The Obvious Prevails

Matt Damon Is From Where I'm From: "''Look, the best line about torture I've heard came from [retired CIA officer turned war-on-terrorism critic] Milt Beardon,'' Damon says. ``He said, `If a guy knows where a dirty bomb is hidden that's going to go off in a Marriott, put me in a room with him and I'll find out. But don't codify that. Just let me break the law.'"

That's how it should be. It's awful, it's an ethical mess, and it's barbaric from every angle. But it's the way it should be.

Zero Republicans

Masters of the Men's Room: "A nearly $820 billion stimulus package passed the House of Representatives Wednesday without a single Republican vote."

Repubs have nothing. They brought the country's economy to its knees, exposed the criminal intent and actions of major capitalists, and killed over 4000 soldiers fighting the wrong enemy.

They are liars and crooks and hardly far enough out of the ground to be sanitary.

Word to the mother - there's nothing that conservatives like better than a good lie that brings home the bacon.

Watch your wallet and watch your six.

Morning Dump - Joe and Mika Pull The Chain

Mika refers to Boxer's proposed education funding as "dumping" because she believes in a mythical capitalism that doesn't even exist - except in pompous tones at the breakfast table in a manse.
These days, Americans are surrounded by idiots like Joe and Mika who hawk books, kiss butt, rub each others egos, varnish their warped political pronouncements - all the while looking into the camera with a promise to viewers that their dribble is a value to someone.

It isn't.

Yet I watch, like a kid watching a house burn down.

Peter King - The Idiot

King of N.Y. Is One Sick Puppy - "Always has been", say those in the know : "Smile, say cheese and hold that pose till you hear the 'click'. A new bill introduced in the Congress by New York Republican Rep. Peter King requires mobile phones with digital cameras 'to make a sound' when a photograph is taken."

That's gonna be terrific! Now at concerts and weddings and impeachments you will hear a cacaphony of "clacks".

I urge folks to read more of what this asshat has proposed in the past. I can smell this guy - and so will you. He is a fake, mean man and cares about nothing except his unsane poltical stance.

Biden Cuts Another One

We knew he's the cringe-worthy gaffe-machine, but I actually thought he would self-correct. I shudder to realize that maybe he can't, and that maybe Joe Biden doesn't know that his mouth is digging a hole beneath his feet.

The Motor Home Driver

Black Like Him is Nobody's Goal - Clarence Thomas Unqualified for Emulation: "But he is not crazy, he's just... Clarence; Uncle Remus wearing a robe: an embittered, eclipsed, forgotten Negro -- outted by the most admired man in the world, the first African American President, a Black man who earned his way to the top, a self-made man, not an appointed man, who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and never forgot or rejected his people.

And Clarence Thomas? Once a footstool of the right wing, now just a footnote, He will be known now and forever for what he really is: The Unqualified Justice. Thank goodness Obama has pulled that robe off, and laid bare this pathetic little man who thought himself a king, but was and is, only a pawn. And Thomas knows only too well that the real king resides down the block."

Great, scathing article - must read it !

Clarence Thomas has famously expressed a lack of enthusiasm for the position he occupies and has declared that he would rather just drive his motor home. He might as well have said that his shit smells, for all anyone cares. He has proven to be a debased coin of the realm and nothing seems to be too low for him to grasp to further that legacy.

The Care and Feeding of History

Hmmm...: "Lincoln likely would have been appalled. How could he not? He was a 19th century white man who famously said in 1858 that 'there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which . . . will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality.''

How do you reconcile that with all those cartoons of Lincoln congratulating Obama? You don't. You simply recognize it for what it is: yet another illustration of how shallow our comprehension of history is, yet another instance where myth supersedes reality."

Yet, if Lincoln had lived from then to now I suspect that he would be pleased with the fact of President Obama.

On a Wing and a Pilot

All Hail Sully !! ... one guy on TV said it "was a miracle", and the other guy replied, "yes, a miracle of training and experience."

I say it was a magic choreography created by a bunch of very good people dancing with every move they knew.

It was humans supreme - All Hail Sully and the Ferries of the Shining City !

The Unbearable Lightness of Citizenship

Ted Haggert - Speaker Pelosi Sent Words of Comfort and Support After Scandal: "Our view of what it's like sitting in an emergency room and not knowing if your insurance card is going to work—I understand that emotion now. I know what it feels like to walk somewhere instead of driving somewhere to save gas. And so, I'm different. And I am optimistic about the new administration. This whole thing had changed me. I never dreamed I would be left out this quickly."

Healthcare - the humanity within citizenship

..."And we knew that if something happened, if that that support didn't come [from New Life]—because I was an incredible failure at trying to find a job that would work—we knew we would have to depend on programs that Democrats had put in place."

The Seventh Pooch

"I can't quit you!", cries Microsoft, and screws the pooch yet again!

Windows 7 beta hits the street: "I was looking for a 'mea culpa' and some solid integration tools and compatibility features. What I got was a prettier GUI and new ways to share music with my dog. Ugh!"

If you keep screwing pooches you're gonna get - wait for it - more dogs !!

The Big Chilada

Like so much else in W's America, there's no such thing as a Big Chilada: but to W it will always be the evil pretzel that almost killed him! "This is Bush's legacy -- a stunning series of alibis," writes Nora Ephron.

"It's true what he said: we misunderestimated him.

George Bush came into his presidency with a huge wave of goodwill. Not from me, but from many others. An amazing number of people who should have known better thought of him as a charming guy whose intellectual limitations would somehow be as benign as Ronald Reagan's, whose promise of a fairly passive presidency would be as survivable as Dwight Eisenhower's..."

"He was misunderestimated in every way. It was hard to imagine that this feckless leader could do so much damage.

"...after all these years in the dark, we're ready for a little overestimation. Which is, unlike misunderestimation, an actual word. But come to think of it, misunderestimation ought to be a word. I certainly know what it means."

Meth Labs on Mars

Life on Mars - Nasa discovers methane gas on Mars: "UK Mars expert Professor Colin Pillinger believes the methane can only point to the presence of life on the planet."

Out there in the ether you can still here Percival Lowell yelling at his family's trust fund managers, "Give me the fucking money you Edwardian retards!, they ARE CANALS !!! Live with it !!!"

Joe's Got the Conch

Joe the Magic Plumber Fights With Israeli Reporter:

"JOE: The story here is people are being killed and the media's slanting it and trying to make it Hamas is, uh, as far as, that Israel's being bad. Do you believe Israel is bad?
REPORTER: Do I believe it?
JOE: Yeah, do you?!
REPORTER: I'm Israeli, so...
JOE: So answer the question"
REPORTER: No, I don't think Israel is bad.
JOE: Do you think Israel has every right to protect itself?
REPORTER: Yeah.
[pause]
JOE: You do?!
REPORTER: Yeah.
JOE: Have you said that on air?
REPORTER: I'm just a reporter."

Many of America's more obnoxious middle-aged Republicans were conceived in the back seat of a car at an aging drive-in theater while Fox Movietone News blared out of a cheezy speaker box. That's the only way to explain why there is a whole slice of society filled with Joes that can't get it up unless Fox News is somehow involved.

"The culture of the Internet is that information wants to be free."

Eric Schmidt wishes that Google could save Newspapers: "I wish I had a brilliant idea, but I don't."

"I don't think our purchasing a newspaper would solve the business problems... Until we can answer that question we're in this uncomfortable conversation."

I shudder a bit to think that soon I won't feel that hard-to-fold thickness, where all the news is in your physical grip.

I want to ask, "is there anythnig here that we should be thinking about before we pull the drapes on printed things, and paint over the still-life of "Book on a Table" and "Man Napping with Sports Section Ripped to Shreds On His Lap?"

And while it might be true that "information wants to be free", it's also true that reporters need to be paid or you don't get any.

State of Shame

Mickey Rourke: "When you used to be a somebody and you aren’t anybody any more, you live in what my doctor calls a state of shame. It’s when you had a career, then you mess up and you don’t have a career any more — and it’s all your fault."

Are We Being Lied To About Pirates ?

Our breathtaking gullibility: "In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was 'to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.'"

"Think Global, Act Global"

Local, Schmocal, says outgoing US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson: "Mr Paulson cast the crisis as partly the result of a collective failure to come to terms with the way the rise of emerging markets was reshaping the global financial system. These imbalances – arising from differences in the inclinations of different nations to save and invest – are reflected in large current account deficits and surpluses around the world.

The US Treasury Secretary said that in the years leading up to the crisis, super-abundant savings from fast-growing emerging nations such as China and oil exporters – at a time of low inflation and booming trade and capital flows – put downward pressure on yields and risk spreads everywhere.

This, he said, laid the seeds of a global credit bubble that extended far beyond the US sub-prime mortgage market and has now burst with devastating consequences worldwide."

This is the new thinking, analog to the mental landscape of climate change, with events seen in global focus.