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."

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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."

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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.