So...

I hear Voldemort is pregnant...because someone I will not name decided they needed more publicity. See, babies really are a blessing.

A little metaphor for the morning

And somewhere a FoxNews talking head is screaming

"It's all about Benghazi!"

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was hospitalized Sunday with a blood clot, which is related to the concussion she suffered recently while recovering from the flu, according to a State Department spokesman.

Let's hope for a quick and full recovery. Because not only is recovery here possible it is highly likely. Recovery not so likely, here:

Boehner continued: "Republicans made every effort to reach the ‘balanced’ deficit agreement that the president promised the American people, while the president has continued to insist on a package skewed dramatically in favor of higher taxes that would destroy jobs. We’ve been reasonable and responsible.

(pic via Mike Nitro at flickr.com)

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

IOKIYAR

Republican theory...

If you attempt to organize collectively to improve the wages and benefits of you and your fellow employees YOU ARE A UNION THUG!

If, however, you bring a gun wielding henchman into your "think"tank and threaten others YOU ARE A SHREWD NEGOTIATOR!

Well it's a "lot of Americans suck" Sunday

Part two of a piece:

A 31-year-old woman was arrested on Saturday and charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime in connection with the death of a man who was pushed onto the tracks of an elevated subway station in Queens and crushed by an oncoming train. 

The woman, Erika Menendez, selected her victim because she believed him to be a Muslim or a Hindu, Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said. 

“The defendant is accused of committing what is every subway commuter’s nightmare: Being suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train,” Mr. Brown said in an interview.

In a statement, Mr. Brown quoted Ms. Menendez, “in sum and substance,” as having told the police: “I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.” Ms. Menendez conflated the Muslim and Hindu faiths in her comments to the police and in her target for attack, officials said. 

The victim, Sunando Sen, was born in India and, according to a roommate, was raised Hindu.

What can you really say -- morally reprehensible and really really extra stupid?

I'm going to go on out on not too much of a limb and say I bet I know Ms. Menendez's viewing preferences.

Update:

Take with a grain of salt, but according to a Gawker commenter:

SoccerMummy 8 hours ago
Pamela Geller should be proud.
One of her ads is up at the station where this happened.

What a glorious tribute to "freedom"

This sure makes us look good:

Double Olympic champion Mo Farah has said he has been questioned by US border officials on suspicion of being a terrorist.

The team GB star even got out his two gold medals to show the customs officers who he was, but to no avail.

Farah, who was born in Somalia and moved to Britain with his father when he was eight, was detained as he was heading to Portland, Oregon, to spend Christmas with his family.

He moved to America last year to work with his coach, marathon champion Alberto Salazar, at the Nike headquarters.

Despite his international fame, the long distance runner revealed he often gets stopped at customs because of his Somali origin.

Farah, aged 29, told The Sun: "I couldn't believe it. Because of my Somali origin I get detained every time I come through US Customs.

False Advertising

I'd like to remind Hobby Lobby that as I am a liberal they should know that my favorite hobbies are recreational sex and performing non-abortions.

Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby will defy a federal law that requires employee health care plans to provide insurance coverage for types of contraception that the firm’s owners consider to be “abortion-causing drugs and devices,” an attorney for the company said Thursday.

Advertisement

With Wednesday’s rejection of an emergency stay of that federal health care law by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Hobby Lobby and sister company Mardel could be subject to fines of up to $1.3 million a day beginning Tuesday.

Of course, what they are resisting is contraceptives and the morning-after pill which doesn't cause abortions.

Plus, you are a business not a church.

So suck it.

"Whoever believed of that 'for the people'" shit...

That Lincoln talked about? Not the modern Republican Party that is for sure:

With no health insurance and not enough money for a doctor, Laura Johnson is long accustomed to treating her ailments with a self-written prescription: home remedies, prayer and denial...

After she collapsed last year and landed in in a local emergency room, doctors diagnosed her with congestive heart failure, high blood pressure and hypothyroid. They ordered her not to work. She arranged a Social Security disability benefit, and she enrolled in Medicaid, the government-furnished insurance program for the poor. She used her Medicaid card to secure needed prescription medications. Her ailments stabilized. But this year, the state determined that the $819 a month she draws in disability payments exceed the allowable limit. By the federal government's reckoning, her $9,800 annual income made her officially poor. But under the standards set by Louisiana, she was too well off to receive Medicaid. T

his is how Johnson, 57, finds herself back amid the roughly 49 million Americans who lack health insurance.

All because Louisiana's asshole Governor -- like so many Republicans -- cannot go along with any measure that is associated with Bar-lack Obama.

So Bobby Jindal's message to you Laura Johnson is...die!

Lovely people, huh?

Twitter, not exactly helping the arts

Ugh.

Yelpers unleashed!

Via Feministe:

Remember that dentist who fired his female assistant because he couldn’t control his own boner? And the Iowa courts that said it wasn’t discrimination and she has no recourse? Looks like Yelpers are taking matters into their own hands.

Obviously things get delightfully juvenile immediately.

Staycation

Oh, what a surprise:

After a day of getting hammered for skipping town in the face of looming tax hikes, House Republicans are coming back to town Sunday at 6:30 PM. But:

Speaker John Boehner’s message to House Republicans is no different privately, than what he’s saying publicly.

“We are waiting on the Senate,” the Ohio Republicans told lawmakers on a call restricted to the 241 lawmakers in the House Republican Conference.

(pic via Mike Nitro at flickr.com)

The fruits of bipartisanship

Not a lot of Democrats disagree with this policy -- certainly not the President who approves of it -- and obviously no Republican ever met a bomb they didn't approve of (it's the people they can't stand):

...the number of American airstrikes in Yemen, largely carried out by unmanned drones, has surged over the past year, as much as tripling in frequency in comparison with 2011.

And in between our nations mourning over victims of mass shootings...

A botched drone strike in the central town of Rada left 12 civilians dead this fall, inflaming widespread apprehensions about the strikes. “They’re having a huge effect in how people see the U.S.,” said Intisar al Qadhi, a political activist who’s the daughter of a prominent tribal leader from the province of Mareb, the site of numerous drone strikes. “When we think about America, we see an image of a plane, dropping bombs on our people.”

A large number of American politicians just got a chubby.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Giving a new meaning to the term "Leader"

From front of Huffington Post.

Not really a fan of either

But how is David Gregory under investigation but Dick Armey is not?

He's quite the hypocrite

Self-proclaimed teetotaler has strange definition of teatotaling:

 U.S. Sen. Michael Crapo, a nominally sober and "squeaky clean" Mormon busted for a DUI on Sunday, is apparently no shrinking violet when it comes to hitting the sauce. According to a police report unearthed by the Washington Post, the Republican senator from Idaho told his arresting officer he'd "consumed several shots of vodka" before setting off in his car and making a left turn on a red light. Crapo "said he drank the vodka hours earlier, and hadn’t had anything to drink since," but he still blew a blood alcohol level of 0.11.

It's not exactly the biggest scandal ever -- this makes him about the oh...millionth politician to have a DUI (may be conservative in guessing there) -- but the fact he claims to not drink adds a bit to it.

Follow up -- battle of the on-line Petitions

Yesterday morning I wrote of the most important story ever...in the mind of no one...the effort of gun nuts to deport British ex-patriot and generally loathsome person Piers Morgan back to the United Kingdom.

But the Brits are not going to just sit there and take this Yankee rebellion...this time.

A group of them have gotten together and put together a petition to call "John Bullshit!" on the efforts to send Piers Morgan back to the UK.

The petition is worded less passionately than the one calling for the Briton's deportation, reading: "We want to keep Piers Morgan in the USA. There are two very good reasons for this. Firstly, the first amendment. Second and the more important point. No one in the UK wants him back. Actually there is a third. It will be hilarious to see how loads of angry Americans react."

So in summary, it is a matter of principle and this once, Piers Morgan is right.

But second, and most importantly, Piers Morgan is not in Great Britain and THAT'S the way they like it...in Great Britain.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

A Putsch of a not-all-that-different Color

They.Are.Insane.

The day after Labor Day, just as campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.

Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted employees were back. The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations.

Stephenson, the founder of the for-profit Cancer Treatment Centers of America and a director on the FreedomWorks board, agreed to commit $400,000 per year over 20 years in exchange for Armey’s agreement to leave the group.

Of course, all these assholes are total Gun nuts...and the price of weilding a weapon IN THE FUCKING WORKPLACE if you are a high-ranking Republican is $8 million dollars.  BTW, as the story points out this was only a couple weeks after a shooting at the Family Research Council offices -- a group that worked closely with Freedom Works.

So a guy was then allowed to just stroll in packing heat.

Good security.

But by all means, these folks should totally be allowed to govern. ...of course, if only another Freedom Works idiot was armed with a gun Dick Armey could never have held them for $8 million in ransom money that was obtained days after the incident.

Yeah, it makes that much sense.

Naturally

Half of the text of the Second Amendment uber alles:

The gun that police believe William Spengler Jr. used to kill two firefighters and severely injure two others is the same type of weapon used in the Newtown, Conn., school massacre 10 days earlier.

...

 
But the Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle has a history in high-profile incidents of gun violence in the U.S.

It's not "gun violence" it's "Shots of Freedom at 30 rounds a minute".

Now they've crossed the line

There are times when doing the right thing is costly and makes one uncomfortable...queasy even.

A petition to deport CNN host Piers Morgan over his heated comments on gun control has reached more than 62,000 signatures in just 4 days, far exceeding the threshold required for a White House response. A petition must get 25,000 signatures in 30 days in order to elicit a response.

Look I'd like to see Piers Morgan leave my resident hemisphere as much as the next person so he can engage in all manner of unethical journalistic conduct against individuals or write ill-conceived rants about the management of Arsenal F.C. without me knowing of it. I really do hate coming to his defense when he's right.

 So, gun nuts, stop making me do that.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Voyage of the damned

Well it appears this years National Review cruise was just as morally bankrupt and full of revealing malaprops as ever:

But Ms. O’Sullivan again took umbrage. As everyone went silent, she recalled a conference she attended in Australia in which a liberal nun (who “didn’t even have the decency to wear a habit”) criticized America for its “inner-city racism.”

Offended, Ms. O’Sullivan recounted what she wished she’d said to this nun: “Pardon me, madam, but I have been in your country of Australia for ten days and the only Aborigines I’ve seen have been drunk on the street, and at least if we were in my country they would be serving the drinks at this conference!”

Ms. O’Sullivan then warned against watering down the purity of the conservative agenda to placate minorities or, as she put it, rather succinctly, “the bastardization of the product.”

Caution -- Story contains picture of shirtless Ralph Reed.

I can identify with the beginning of this video

By the way if you go to YouTube to see this video in a larger format I suggest not reading the comments.

Of course, that's pretty much the suggestion at all times.

Sorry Santa, but you were breaking and entering

Can you imagine how many times an actual being with the power to enter your home one night a year would have been gunned down by various Americans over the years?

They'd murder him like Wayne LaPierre murders the truth...constantly and at 30 clips a minute.

On Sunday morning, Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, told the world that armed guards stopped school shootings in Israel. Israel begs to differ. ...

But according to Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, it's not. More specifically, the two situations are "fundamentally different," and Israel's actually tightened its gun control laws in recent years.

Well that just matches LaPierre's deceit about "violent games and movies" being to blame for mass shootings...given the fact that every other western nation has these same games...but not the guns...and not the number of mass shootings.

Funny that. And not because it is humorous.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

And to think former Senator Larry Craig had called to wish him...

"Bottoms up!"

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) was arrested on Sunday morning in Alexandria, Virginia for driving under the influence.

According to Del Ray, VA Patch, Crapo was pulled over after an officer saw the senator run a red light. Police spokesman Craig T. Fifer said that Crapo failed "several field sobriety tests," reports CBS News. He was taken into custody "without incident."

And Republicans proclaim God just wanted a cocktail:

Oh more awesome news on the global climate:

According to a new paper released by Nature Geoscience, the average annual temperature at the Byrd research center in central West Antarctica has increased by 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1958, which is not only twice as much as previous estimates but also three times the average change worldwide, making the area "one of the fastest-warming regions on earth."

But our guns will save us....

We are sick, part infinity

The paranoia and bad taste of the gun nut knows no bounds.

Brownells, the company that calls itself the world's largest arms supplier, reports it sold three-and-a-half years' worth of AR-15 ammunition magazine in just three days. The company apologized online for delays in shipping new orders.

Still crazy and lying

After all these years -- of course, it is their nature:

House Republicans argue that voters handed their members a mandate as well, granting the party control of the House for another two years and with it the right to stick to their own views, even when they clash strongly with the president’s.

From Rutherford B. Hayes to George W. Bush to the present GOP House, Republicans -- like seemingly everything -- have a strange definition of mandate...a 180 degree from reality one:

More than a month after the election, the Democrats’ popular vote lead expanded significantly. Based on current tallies, Democrats now lead Republicans 59,343,447 to 58,178,393 in total votes cast for their House candidates — meaning that the American people preferred Democrats over Republicans by nearly a full percentage point of the total vote. Yet, despite clearly losing the popular vote, Republicans will control nearly 54 percent of the seats in the House in the 113th Congress.

This disparity between the will of the American people and the actual outcome of the election did not happen by accident — it is largely the product of massive gerrymandering by Republican state officials.

Clearly he learned a valuable lesson from dad

Oh how surprising:

The NRA argues that it  is evil people and not money hungry corporations that are causing the bloodshed in American streets.  While they seem to have grown comfortable overlooking dead school children in order to protect profits, one question they are not comfortable answering is this:  What influenced the son of NRA head David Keene, who fired into the car of another motorist in 2002?

The New Yorker previously reported on how Keene’s served jail time for his misuse of a firearm.

 In 2002, Keene’s son David Michael Keene was driving on the George Washington Memorial Parkway when, in a road-rage incident, he fired a handgun at another motorist. He was sentenced to ten years in prison for “using, brandishing, and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence.” I asked Keene if this private tragedy had left him uncertain about what the N.R.A. had wrought. He said no: “You break the law, you pay the price.”

I remember

When the NY Post was the most reactionary and vile headline writers ever -- the kind of paper that canonized Bernard Goetz.

Oh what 10 days and the NRA hath wrought.

Bitter with the sweet

A little over three years ago, the Iowa Supreme Court broke down the barriers on same-sex marriage, yesterday it made a mockery of gender discrimination.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled today that employers can fire employees towards whom they have an "irresistible attraction," irrespective of the latter's workplace conduct.

The 7-0 decision, handed down by the all-male court, came about as a result of a lawsuit filed by married dental assistant Melissa Nelson, 32, against her boss of ten years, Dr. James Knight, D.D.S., alleging gender discrimination.

She claimed Knight fired her at the behest of his wife, who became jealous of their out-of-office relationship, which included the exchange of personal, yet innocuous texts. Knight readily admits that he fired Nelson, whom he said was the best dental assistant he'd ever had, after consulting with his pastor, because he found her tight-fitting clothes distracting and he felt his marriage was in jeopardy.

According to court documents, Knight — described by his lawyer as "a very religious and moral individual" — once told Nelson the bulge in his pants was an indication that her clothes were too revealing. He also informed Nelson's husband that he had to fire Nelson out of fear that he might try and sleep with her.

Yet somehow that bonar and fear of his own moral weakness to want to try to seduce his female subordinate causing discharge was NOT motivated by gender. Uh...yeah, right.

It should be noted that for a variety of reasons this was not a sex harassment claim, just a straight up gender claim, making the liability theories a bit more difficult (but the facts demanded it, the plaintiff claimed she did not feel pressured to sleep with the defendant nor did she believe there to be a hostile work environment).

But still, there's no doubt the Defendant's "boner law" is pretty clear evidence that gender played a role.

I fully expect defendant's in Iowa and elsewhere will now try to use their wives...and boners...as cat's paws in both hiring and firing decisions (to be fair the "spouse made me do it" has been used successfully before, just not so embarrassingly and often not successfully because it is, well so often clearly lame), I think that will ultimately not work so well...but it will be a pain in the ass for a while.

As usual

Mr. Pierce sums up the whole NRA diatribe succinctly:

The National Rifle Association today held a press conference today at which it was determined that there would be no questions asked or answered, but the organization made it quite clear that they would be open to media questions next week, between Christmas and New Year's. Then they trotted out Wayne LaPierre, who had bats flying out of both ears.

Much like what happened in their pants when they bought them

Holy Crap!

The presser (no questions) of LaPierre had the sheer nuttery turned way past 11.

 The only thing that would have added to the flabbergasted tone-deafness would be if David Vitter's wife was up there in a leopard-skin dress with an AK-15 over her shoulder.

Al Qaeda videos have a more rational message.

Thank goodness for Capitalism!

Following our foot of "not news" yesterday there's nothing quite like getting up the next day to the parking spot you shoveled out yesterday to find needs to be shoveled out again...warm up your car a half hour early after a bad night's sleep because your "shoveling muscles" are out of shape.  Oh and after a blizzard passes by it is ALWAYS super cold.

Then you take the dog out while the car's warming up and you have to convince her repeatedly that now would be a good time to relieve herself out of as many orifices as possible because you won't be back for several hours...THEN having accomplished her primary outdoor task because she's old and has snow caught in her paws she hobbles along until you carry her the last 20 yards to warmth and the biscuit well-earned...mostly by you.

Then you get in your warmed up, but still ice and snow laden car, and head off into the frozen landscape of the not very well cleared roads...in a very Lake Ladoga 1941-42ish drive through the hellscape with a bunch of other crazed actors that went through the same routine.

But at least I made it to work and can let my car defrost underneath my office building.

And every person living in the northeast and midwest knows what I'm writing about.

No wonder you want to retire somewhere else.

Money well spent...

Good plan all around:

One of the less scintillating milestones of the 2012 election was marked by the General Services Administration, when Mitt Romney became the first candidate to take advantage of the Presidential Transition Act of 2010...

... The GSA says final costs are still being tabulated, but the initial estimated cost for Romney’s pre-transition phase is around $8.9 million.

Could have used that money for car elevators.

Rife with almost facts!

Fox & Friends interviewed Santa Claus yesterday.

That's right...Santa Claus.

(Nobody let Brian Kilmeade read further...oh that's right, he can't read)

Up next other fictional characters like Bigfoot and moderate Republicans.

* BTW, here is what Fox & Friends' Santa does in the off season...seriously.  Again, nobody tell Kilmeade as he is on Team Jacob.

Tears of an Orange Clown

Good job Mr. Tangerine Man, just peachy (if only I could get in a nectarine reference...):

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) failed to muscle a controversial fiscal cliff fallback through the House Thursday night, suddenly pulling the bill after spending almost week on a plan that Democrats called a waste of time.

Which...of course...it was.


Somewhere the Spirit of Sam Rayburn is pointing and laughing his ass off.

Less an ideology than something that should be in the DSM-V

Ladies and Gentlemen, the FoxNews demographic:

Randolph Linn, 52, accepted a plea deal in which he pled guilty to all charges in connection to setting a fire in the prayer room at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo on Sept. 30. Under the deal, Linn is expected to serve 20 years in prison instead of 40... “

And I was more sad when Judge [Jack] Zouhary asked him that, ‘Do you know any Muslims or do you know what Islam is?’” one mosque member who attended the hearing recalled to WNWO. “And he said, ‘No, I only know what I hear on Fox News and what I hear on radio.’”

Mission Accomplished Roger Ailes, I'm sure you're proud.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Nasty blizzard

Here in America's methland.

But don't worry, it's not news.

Just a blood sacrifice to reading the last half of an Amendment

Clearly no problem at all:

Mass killers target Americans once every two weeks on average, in attacks that range from robberies to horrific public shooting sprees like the massacre Friday of 27 people in Newtown, Conn., a USA TODAY examination found.

Two thirds of them with guns, running a distant second is arson.

Springsteen is Right Again

Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world

Indeed, and what is it worth without making a buck out of it?

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, said yesterday that it would continue to sell guns, including rifles like the one used at Newtown, where 26 people, most of them children, were killed on Dec. 14. By contrast, Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. (DKS) suspended sales of similar guns at its more than 500 stores.

Obviously, this has to be done because "Freedom" demands the Walton family have not just most, but all of the money.

Searches of five kinds of semi-automatic rifles on Wal- Mart’s website showed them to be out of stock at stores in five states, including Pennsylvania, Kansas and Alabama.

Enjoy your freedom on pain of death.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Boy I was worried for a minute that

Bjork died.

Worthy of Song

Hey, I remember these people:

Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, a husband-and-wife team of hawkish military analysts, put their jobs at influential Washington think tanks on hold for almost a year to work for Gen. David H. Petraeus when he was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Provided desks, e-mail accounts and top-level security clearances in Kabul, they pored through classified intelligence reports, participated in senior-level strategy sessions and probed the assessments of field officers in order to advise Petraeus about how to fight the war differently.

Their compensation from the U.S. government for their efforts, which often involved 18-hour workdays, seven days a week and dangerous battlefield visits?

Zero dollars.

And undoubtedly worth every penny, yet still overpaid.

There's a Python Skit in there somewhere.

And, of course, a song.

But of course

The home of Ernest T. Bass, ESQ -- the place that has alternated between trying to ban "Sharia Law" while burning down mosques -- the home of the Scopes Trial -- is the place with this BRILLIANT idea:

Tennessee has emerged this week as a center of the “the answer is more guns in schools” sentiment following the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting. A member of the Republican-controlled legislature plans during its upcoming session to introduce a bill that would allow the state to pay for secretly armed teachers in classrooms so, the sponsor told TPM, potential shooters don’t know who has a gun and who doesn’t.

He's the Cy Sperling of Sex

In a bit of word reversal it appears that Dominique Strauss-Kahn was not only a client, but also the "President" of a prostitution ring.

French judges decided Wednesday not to drop pimping charges against former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, his lawyers said. They quickly vowed to appeal. ... Strauss-Kahn was hit in March with preliminary charges of "aggravated procurement in an organized gang" in an investigation into a hotel prostitution ring in nearby Lille that was said to involve prominent city figures and police.

The Big Dump

Oh hey, look the NRA has emerged to make a cryptic statement:

The nation's largest gun owners' organization has issued its first remarks since last week's elementary school shooting, saying it is "heartbroken" by the "horrific and senseless murders" and prepared to offer "meaningful contributions" to prevent a repeat. It says it plans a press conference on Friday.

Oh, I'm sure that as a news dump on the last Friday before Christmas it will be real constructive. Feel free to make your predictions below, but I imagine it will go something like this:

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) became the latest anti-gun control figure to embrace the notion that the best way to protect against future tragedies like Newtown, Connecticut, is to put more guns in public schools.

More guns...what could possibly go wrong?

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Truly blessed by intellectual titans

Is the conservative pundicracy -- your cunning plan Megan McArdle?

...if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. Would it work? Would people do it? I have no idea

Yes, teaching children the "CANNON FODDER" strategy...good plan. Gets 'em ready for the next war McArdle's folks dream up. From the comments:

Fair and Balanced of course...

Well, surprise -- surprise -- surprise:

According to sources, David Clark, the executive producer in charge of Fox’s weekend coverage, gave producers instructions not to talk about gun-control policy on air. "This network is not going there,” Clark wrote one producer on Saturday night, according to a source with knowledge of the exchange.

Inouye

Daniel Inouye died yesterday after 50 years in the United States Senate.  Never exactly the most loquacious politician he was well-regarded and powerful within the Senate.  But no story will ever demonstrate why Inouye was a Democrat and a voice for Civil Rights more than this:

He grew up planning to become a doctor until 1942, when as a teenager barely out of high school, he joined what would become a revered Army regiment of Japanese Americans.

On an Italian battlefield two years later, he destroyed three enemy machine gun nests even as bullets tore through his stomach and legs. A grenade nearly ripped off his right arm, and it was later amputated in an Army hospital. 

Back in the United States, the young lieutenant was wearing his empty right sleeve pinned to his officer’s uniform when he stepped into a San Francisco barbershop for a haircut. “We don’t serve Japs here,” the barber told him.

Memories of such encounters remained vivid to Sen. Inouye, who in his political career spoke eloquently in support of civil rights and social welfare programs.

A place the NRA would love

Sounds like the kind of government they'd love:

An independent MP has called for a crackdown on firearms in Greece amid allegations that a growing number of politicians are carrying weapons. Reports of pistol-carrying deputies entering parliament have added to the febrile mood in a 300-member chamber in which hardcore Marxists sit with fascists, eurocommunists, rightwing populists, conservatives, socialists and an array of independent dissidents. The MP, Nikos Nikolopoulos, told the Guardian he was "deeply worried" by the dramatic rise in requests for weapons licenses by parliamentarians. "I have real concerns that MPs are entering the house with weapons and because of that I asked how, in our temple of democracy, it was possible for deputies to carry guns?"

Who knew austerity would go so well with gunplay...other than everyone ever?

God bless the United States of Derp (a continuing series...or disasters)

I'm sure it will now be no problem at all to discuss serious policy matters with all those teapartiers and libertarian cranks now that the "fever" has broken. Why just look at yesterday as the Electoral College members gathered in their State's respective capitols to vote:

... three Romney electors in Arizona tried one more time to convince everyone that Obama wasn't born in the United States:

Elector Don Ascoli said the fact Obama got more popular votes is irrelevant to the truth. "The majority of the people had no dream that Bill Clinton did what he did until a young lady had a blue dress and proved he did," Ascoli said. "And he had to come out and apologize to the world because he lied to you and me."

Thereby proving...uh...something, I guess.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

The United States of Herp and Derp

Behold the wisdom of Michael Goldfarb, so dumb even conservatives mock him:

The World the NRA has wrought

The depths of the tragedy continue:
 

A brave six-year-old became the sole survivor of her first grade class at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. because she played dead as shooter Adam Lanza went on his rampage.

According to a pastor close to her family, the unnamed girl lay among the bodies of her 15 classmates until she thought it was safe to leave.

Pastor Jim Solomon told ABC News: "She ran out of the school building covered from head to toe with blood and the first thing she said to her mom was, 'Mommy, I'm OK but all my friends are dead."

A nation where stories straight out of the nightmare of someone living through Baba Yar become a regular occurrence.

Good job those who's manhood is defined by the number of clips you can fire.

Assholes.

We are sick

One of the lead stories locally on our news is that the day of the Newtown shooting and the short-time after set a new record in gun sales in one day.

There is a sickness in this country.

Things that make you hope the Mayans are on to something

The racist reaction of some Twits to Obama's speech being shown on NBC and moving the football game temporarily to widely available cable channels. Ugh!

Of course not

Their job is to take their NRA donations and shut the fuck up:

Oh, and how about we stop referring to them as "pro-gun rights"? What they are is "pro-gun fetishists".

The Han Solo fantasy

Of the Gun fetishist goes down -- "Oh if only so and so was armed this could have been prevented"

Well Adam Lanza's mother appears to have been a bit of a gun paranoid -- she was armed to the teeth.
And her son killed her...undoubtedly before she thought about shooting first.

No movie would have been so horrible

In its cruelly absurd violence than what Adam Lanza did.

The intense violence lasted about 10 minutes. Lanza fired at least three, 30-round magazines with deadly accuracy. Two of the people he shot survived. All of the victims were shot multiple times. "I did seven (autopsies) myself with three to 11 wounds apiece," Chief State Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver III said Saturday. "Only two were shot at close range. I believe everybody was hit (by bullets) more than once."

It is like a nightmare fantasy of the most stereotypical kind of violence that gun-control advocates would veto because it is too awful to be believed. Except it actually happened.

Give it 2 Emmys and a Peabody

Colbert and the men of Downton Abbey's Breaking Bad Parody wins all the internets:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Forget the rest of the stupidity

Of somone like Huckabee blaming lack of prayer leading to mass murder at schools:

We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools.

Why would anyone worship or revere Mike Huckabee's version of God?

A God that if nothing else is one gigantic evil asshole?

What damage can be done

Obviously both are tragedies but the irony of these two events happening the same day and the comparison of the damage done is quite clear.

Twenty-two primary school children were wounded in a knife attack Friday in central China, authorities said.

The attack took place at the entrance to the Chenpeng Village Primary School in Henan province, according to the public information department of Guangshan county, the area where the school is located. An adult was also wounded, it said.

Several of the children are in critical condition, the state-run website Chinanews.com said, citing local authorities.

This is horrible, of course, but one cannot help but not that while the carnage is great, it is also greatly less than the guy with a semi-automatic can do in a similar situation.

(From here)

Beyond sickening

I say this with bitter anger as well as sadness because you know this shortened made up statement is also depressingly accurate:

"This tragedy may have been prevented if those kindergarteners had been armed"
- Only Slightly fictional Wayne LaPierre

Apparently another 30 people, including 18 children must die to in the service of the fetishization of what the Second Amendment actually says.

And -- as always -- we are told we cannot discuss the elephant in the room.

Free-fucking-dom!

"Hey, lemme look all moderate for a minute"

While actually making things worse.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, called for oral contraceptives to be made available over the counter in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal published Thursday evening.

Sounds sort of rational right?

It also means you'll have to pay the full amount for birth control -- your insurance no longer has to provide it to you.

So actually -- it's a big ol' backdoored fuck you.

Well, this doesn't actually explain a lot

As it just seems depressingly predictable. 

Michael McGough in today’s LA Times reminds us that virulently anti-gay Republican Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has a son, Paul, who’s a priest, and works for an organization that pretends it can “pray away the gay.”

First, one son works for the Bush Camp in 2000 during the legal fight over the election and it's no problem for Scalia and now this.

Does he have another child that works for a lobbying group that advocates seal clubbing?

Virginia Foxx on the look out for "who dealt it" terrorism

*Note* Actual non-parody picture 

Apparently -- and not surprisingly -- Republican Crazy Person and gerrymandered into irreality -- Virginia Foxx has a very bizarre fetish.

ITK last week brought you one tipster’s claims of Foxx laying the verbal smackdown on a female staffer for taking a ride on a members-only elevator. The congresswoman’s office said the story — which involved Foxx questioning the staffer’s literacy vis-à-vis the “members-only” sign — was an “exaggeration” by “disrespectful junior staffers” who will go to great lengths “just to read about themselves in the paper.” Now more elevator horror stories are coming in.

I just pray we don't find out there's an Aerosmith song in there somewhere.

There's also no off switch on "crazy"

Matt Taibbi, who has been right about many things and at least entertaining on the rest, responded to Jim DeMint's resignation with this:

The Tea Party is about purity, and DeMint doesn't want to sully himself with the congress's probably-inevitable decision to raise taxes to avoid this budget collapse. So his highly-symbolic resignation is his wing of the party's Picking-Up-The-Ball-And-Going-Home moment. The message of the DeMint move is simple: We tried to work within the system, but the system turned out to be dirty, so we are leaving the system.

That, of course, would be a-w-e-s-o-m-e. Like Kos, I also think it will not happen. Delusional people don't suddenly because reasonable like any good cult they just believe more than ever. Maybe, just maybe, Jim DeMint is not crazy -- but rather just an opportunist who sees a chance of a seven-figure salary where he doesn't have to suck up to rich douchebags anymore -- because now he'll be the rich douchebag being sucked up to. The rest of Teabaggers will remain crazy, or at least vote that way until their slot opens -- to be replaced by the next aspirant. Unless there's a Red Adair for puke funnels, they'll still be more of them flowing out for a while. [cross-posted at Firedoglake]

But their Congressman and Beltway Pundits do not give

A microscopic particle of a shit.

Fifty-nine percent of Republicans want GOP leaders in the House and Senate to compromise to reach a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Wednesday. In April, just 38 percent backed such a compromise.

It is the 1,000th of 1 percent that pay the bills for them -- and the Koch Brothers demand the rest of you .... suffer.

The Republican Solution is as always

Their solution to everything.

Boehner's counter-proposal is the same as the last one in which the special prescription for all ills (other than bombing a brown person in another hemisphere) can be summarized in one word.

MAGIC!

So, as a South Carolinian

You're gonna lose this one too, after years of needless conflict?

Lindsey Graham Compares Marriage Equality Debate To The Civil War

Lame Fucks

The Defeated Michigan Republicans truly want to fulfill all their fantasies...the ones that got them kicked out of office in their dying days (which is a rather morbid notion considering how many lives will end because of them).

Maybe he could fight it out with Farrakhan?

Herman Cain seems rather obsessed with the number 9 -- much like FarraKHAAAAAN once seemed obsessed with number 19. Maybe they could compromise on 14?

I want to be a footnote

There have been a handful of renowned Speakers of the House for good or ill. Henry Clay, Tom Reed, Joe Cannon, Champ Clark, Sam Rayburn and yes, Nancy Pelosi. And I'm sure it was with no shortage of pleasure that Pelosi was able to comment on the perpetually tearful orange-man who holds the position now:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) scolded Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in remarks to the press Wednesday for refusing to extend middle income tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. Her message? Being speaker is hard, but figure it out for the good of the country. “It’s tough. But you have to do it,” she told reporters in the Capitol on Wednesday. “Figure it out.”

I'm sure that will spur him to do nothing more than tear up as usual. After all his latest "clever plan" was certainly neither of those terms. A couple generations from now the Orange Man is determined to be a well-remembered as Denny Hastert is right now. I know, who? [cross-posted at Firedoglake] (pic via mikenitro94 at flickr.com)

Too much good news

To deal with:

Arrested Development showrunner Mitch Hurwitz filmed too much for the show's Netflix revival, so now we probably have to deal with the crappy reality of twelve to fifteen new episodes rather than a nice clean ten.

And this can only mean...

Where's the entertainment?

Do something in 140 characters of less...you'd think your pipeline to the Almighty would give you better material, at least a killer "knock-knock joke"...something about not seeing lamb's blood on the door frame or something.

I have one question, why does your doodled Coat of Arms looks like a censored penis drawing (with a French Tickler no less) and how has Gawker missed that? Is it considered a Miracle -- or just an insight into an underlying condition?

You can thank the Christian Right

In reality of course:

"When you start looking at our older students, we see less improvement over time," said Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which coordinated the U.S. portion of the international exam. 

Even where U.S. student scores have improved, many other nations have improved much faster, leaving American students far behind many of their peers — especially in Asia and Europe.

With an eye toward global competitiveness, U.S. education officials are sounding the alarm over what they describe as a recurring theme when American students are put to the test. Lamenting what he described as "sober cautionary notes," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said it was unacceptable that eighth-grade achievement in math and science are stagnant, with U.S. students far less likely than many Asian counterparts to reach advanced levels in science.

Maybe if our teachers were a bit better paid and could teach things like you know evolutionary science as y'know a science and all.

And hey, maybe if we let schools in poor areas have more money that might help too.

— Some U.S. states that were measured separately were clear standouts, performing on par with or better than some top-performing Asian countries. Eighth-graders in Massachusetts and Minnesota score far better in math and science than the U.S. average. But in California and Alabama, eighth-graders fell short of the national average. 

— Racial and class disparities are all too real. In eighth grade, Americans in the schools with the highest poverty — those with 75 percent or more of students on free or reduced-price lunch — performed below both the U.S. average and the lower international average. Students at schools with fewer poor kids performed better. In fourth-grade reading, all ethnic groups outperformed the international average, but white and Asian students did better than their black and Hispanic classmates.

The Legacy

As Florida's Republican governor and his co-horts dream of new ways to keep minorities from voting, the State's history on the subject of racial injustice has provided a morbid reminder:

Anthropologists have found evidence of 98 deaths and more graves than previously identified at a now-closed state reform school in the Panhandle, according to a report released Monday. An interim report released by the University of South Florida in Tampa says the researchers found at least 50 gravesites at the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, about 60 miles west of Tallahassee.

It's the kind of nightmare you'd think would be the lead news throughout the country, but so far not all that much. Ritualistic beating, isolation, and clearly worse abuse of young black kids over a period of more than a half century form World War One into the early 1970s.

The anthropologists, led by Associate Professor Erin Kimmerle, used historical documents to verify the deaths of two adult staff members and 96 children — ranging in age from 6 to 18 — from 1914 through 1973. “The cause and manner of death for the majority of cases are unknown,” the researchers wrote. In those cases where causes could be documented the most common were infectious disease, fires, physical trauma and drowning. Other mortality patterns showed trends of deaths occurring after escapes and within three months of arriving at the school.

The institution was a reformatory for black children, almost all of them sent there on minor offenses -- and given the nature of Jim Crow justice, for which this school is the eternal symbol, how many of those offenses were these kids even guilty of?

You know what might have prevented something like this in the past? Allowing African-Americans to vote in large numbers.

And Rick Scott and the Republicans want to make sure that isn't allowed to get out of hand.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Oh and speaking of the last post

For example, this:

Speaking at Princeton University, Scalia was asked by a gay student why he equates laws banning sodomy with those barring bestiality and murder.

"I don't think it's necessary, but I think it's effective," Scalia said, adding that legislative bodies can ban what they believe to be immoral.

...

Some in the audience who had come to hear Scalia speak about his book applauded but more of those who attended the lecture clapped at freshman Duncan Hosie's question.

"It's a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the `reduction to the absurd,'" Scalia told Hosie of San Francisco during the question-and-answer period. "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?"

Scalia said he is not equating sodomy with murder but drawing a parallel between the bans on both.

Yes, and here's the thing you'd think a sentient human being would understand -- when YOU make arguments claimed to be reductio ad absurdum (look at all those law school loans paying off!) YOU are the one who gets to pick the comparison, no one else.  So if it is specious and offensive it is also on YOU.

And equating being gay to murder...that's offensive...and YOU are responsible for it.

How can you deny this?

As someone who had a family member come to my little ol' State from halfway across the world to marry the love of their life in a ceremony that would have been illegal a couple years before, these pictures from Seattle beg the question, how big an asshole do you have to be to deny the right of same sex couples to marry now?

The answer, of course, is a gigantic one.

(via Atrios)

Sure they were the really accurate in the 2012 Election

But I think Public Policy Polling (PPP) may be getting a little off track with its polling of late -- of course, I'm writing about it so...mission accomplished, I guess.

When asked if there was a War on Christmas, the majority of respondents believe there was 47/40.

Well, that will make Bill O'Reilly happy -- or angry about bullshit -- which of course is the thing that makes him happy. Of course, I have my concerns about those actually polled:

A majority of voters (52/45) said they believe in Santa Claus.

Um, yeah...about that, have you met these people?

 [cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Wargle Bargle

The three non-wisemen ladies and gentlemen -- Bill O'Reilly, Bernard McGuirk (the other half, and key contributor to Imus "Nappy Headed Ho's" fiasco, and Greg "Dennis Miller with less talent" Gutfield discuss who really is at war on Christmas:

MCGUIRK: The war on Christmas is very, very real, and if you ask me, in addition to some grouchy misanthropic heathen atheists it has to do — at the root of it — with two things — abortion and the gay rights agenda, because Christianity is against those things. It’s subtle but that’s why it’s so pronounced in recent years.

O’REILLY: Hundred percent agree. I absolutely agree 100 percent that the diminishment of Christianity is the target and Christmas is the vehicle because the secularists know the opposition to their agenda (legalized drugs is in that as well) comes primarily from the Judeo-Christian traditionalist people.

Really hitting the Myrrh this year boys.

Yeah...hard to believe their becoming less relevant every day isn't it?

But that is David Gregory's

Method:

Of course it's a Ponzi Scheme

Dick Morris really is the archetype of the age-old question, "Who is the bigger fool, the fool or the fool who follows him?" (that may have started with Obi Wan, but even so that was a long long time ago or so the scrolling credits tell me):

According to FEC data released December 6, Morris' Super PAC for America paid conservative news outlet Newsmax Media roughly $1.7 million for "fundraising" in October and November. A significant portion of the super PAC's money likely went to renting Morris' own email list, which is operated by Newsmax Media.

A Media Matters review found that in the month before the election, Morris sent at least 21 emails to his mailing list featuring fundraising pitches that were "paid for by Super PAC for America." Super PAC also "paid for" at least 25 emails to Newsmax.com's main email list during the same period.

How much money went in Morris' pockets?

A lot obviously.

High value considering Morris would sell what he has of a soul for much much less.

In a decade they'll act like it was all their doing...and their idea

It is truly amazing that with the groundwork laid down the push for marriage-equality began in earnest less than a decade ago -- and here we are after Califonia's false start and Iowa's Supreme Court ruling within three years the whole edifice of resistance is crumbling fast.

Washington Post columnist George Will, who appeared alongside Matalin, also dismissed the potency of the issue for Republicans. “There is something like an emerging consensus,” he said. “Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It’s old people.”

Within thirty years of the passage of Title VII and the Voting Rights Act, there were Republicans talking as if they, and they alone, passed those bills -- while ignoring the Dixiecrats had long-since found a home in the GOP. I imagine within a couple years, the GOP will try to play the same game with same-sex marriage. Besides, they've already found their new target. Single parents:

Mary Matalin: 30 years from now, real people understand the consequences of so many babies being born out of wedlock to the economy and to the morality of the country.

One step forward, two steps back.

 [cross-posted at Firedoglake]

About the same number of people who approve of that chancre

On their privates.

Among the 1,000 individuals polled nationwide throughout September and October, just 9 percent approved of Congress’ current job performance. The margin of error for the public opinion survey conducted by YouGov/Polimetrix was 3.5 percent. That means Congress’ approval rating could be as high as 12.5 percent or as low as 5.5 percent.

Well at least the GOP got re-districting to be as fucked up as they are.

Weird

Mitt and Ann Romney did what you'd expect every defeated Presidential candidate to do...

They showed up at a boxing match (those still happen?)

Mitt was the guest of the guy who organized it and was a special fan of Filipino boxer (and social conservative politician) Manny Pacquiao with this greeting:

Romney also visited with Pacquiao in his dressing room before the fight, wishing him well in the bout.

"Hello Manny. I ran for president. I lost," Romney told the fighter, according to Pacquiao publicist Fred Sternburg.

And with Mitt's special greeting, by the sixth round, so did Manny Pacquiao.

Oh, the moment the knockout occurred...

I think he made about the same face last month when Ohio was called.

Not to act all smarter than their base

But, y'know, Science and all that:

Birmingham, Alabama (PRWEB) December 04, 2012 – The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is the international standard of assessing intelligence. Researchers at The Intelligence Institute, a conservative non-profit group, tested 5,000 people using a series of tests that measure everything from cognitive aptitude to common sense and found that people who identified themselves as Fox News viewers and ‘conservative’ had, on average, significantly lower intelligent quotients. Fox Viewers represented 2,650 members of the test group.

I don't know about this study (sounds dubious), but at least it is a study, as opposed to a paranoid delusion, which in and of itself sounds at least 20 IQ points higher.

It's almost as if they are paid to say bullshit

If only there was some kind of asshole who would just ambush people and be incredibly obnoxious enough to confront someone over petty bullshit and dipshittery?

One week after the 2012 election, Fox News correspondent Jesse Watters told Bill O'Reilly that Obama voters were "zombies" who supported the president "as long as there was Obamacare, gay marriage and abortion on demand." Per the FEC filing above, Watters, who resides in Long Island, N.Y., contributed $500 to Obama Victory Fund 2012 in late September. You'll note "News Corp.," which owns Fox News, is listed under "name of employer."

The first political party to make into the DSM-V

Crazier and crazier:

The Republicans’ anti-tax Tea Party wing, which failed in its goal to defeat President Barack Obama and the Senate Democratic majority, is rising to leadership positions in policy and activist groups that have guided the party’s direction for years. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who helped insurgent candidates oust incumbent Republicans in primaries, announced yesterday that he will lead the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, a group that has served as an incubator for the party’s policy and legislative ideas for decades.

If the Party was more pro-choice y'know these incubators wouldn't be such a problem.

I'd say Mitch McConnell really took one on the Chin

From his own fists after his hackneyed need to fillibuster himself over the debt limit.


But, Mitch McConnell can never take a punch on something that does not exist.

Yeah, clearly

The only thing funnier than Dick Morris always being wrong about predictions, is his blatantly wrong explanations of why he was so wrong.

We lost because whites stayed home! Particularly among the elderly, the voter turnout was disappointing with seniors casting only 16% of the vote, much less than had been anticipated. (Seniors were the only age group that Obama lost by a significant margin — 15 points).

Why didn’t whites vote and why didn’t we all spot it sooner?

Impact of Sandy.

Yeah, Dick, if only the whites in New York and New Jersey had turned out (oh, they did?) Romney would have won there.

Just like Republicans have not done the 1984 and 1988 respectively.

You bet, Jackass.

Too much bonding

I do think this may be one of the more off-putting statements I have read of late that did not involve a FoxNews pundit or Jerry Sandusky.   Ladies and gentlemen, mother and daughter porn team specializing in 3-ways...what's so special about it daughter?

"I enjoy the sex and I enjoy being with my mom," says Monica, who dropped out school in ninth grade and got her mom started in the porn biz before following suit.

AYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

How are the Lohans or Kardasians not involved in this? 

This Planet's dangerous, we should probably leave

As long as we take the dogs with us, the rest of the planets residents will probably be quite pleased.

A strong earthquake struck Friday off the coast of northeastern Japan in the same region that was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami last year. Tokyo high-rises swayed for several minutes, one city reported a small tsunami and at least two people were reported injured.

What can Austerity do for you -- human saganaki, OPA!

Oh by all means let's have more of this over here:

From holding 80th place in the 176 countries on Transparency International's corruption perceptions index in 2011, Greece's global ranking, this year, fell to 94, the global watchdog announced on Wednesday. In terms of perceived levels of public corruption, Greece was on a par with Moldova and Mongolia. In the 27-strong EU, there was no other state that fared worse.

Even more corrupt, but why?

In a country not only mired in a fifth straight year of recession but enduring a third year of unprecedented austerity, where one in three now lives below the poverty line and a quarter of the population is unemployed, corruption is a means to an end. It is, say analysts, the flipside of austerity in an economy in freefall. "To survive in such a hostile situation, you have to bend the rules," said political commentator Giorgios Kyrtsos. "There is no other way when things are so hard – you are forced to resort to corruption to deal with the state mechanism."

Austerity has created a nation no longer on the road to ruin, but taking up residence there. The only solution forced upon the pople, of course, as Atrios has repeatedly stated, is more austerity. [cross-posted at Firedoglake]