Top Republican was also in Hawaii during the crotchbombing

Apparently the head of the Republican party was also vacationing in Hawaii while the nefarious crotch bomber was out and about his business.

Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a Honolulu hospital “in serious condition” Wednesday afternoon after complaining of chest pains, several local news sources in Hawaii are reporting.

ABC affiliate KITV reports that paramedics took the arch-conservative radio host to Queen’s Medical Center just after 2:30 p.m. local time Wednesday after Limbaugh complained of chest pains at the resort where he was spending his holidays.

Sorry, I’m not up to speed on whether Rush made any special on-air comments about the crotch bombing while on vacation. More likely his lack of access to a microphone resulted in an embolism brought about by too many unuttered lies blocking his colon.

The Republicans have a long history of playing the national security card.

[T]he GOP charges after the Yalta conference, Nixon and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the accusations that Democrats “lost” China, Joe McCarthy — historians note that Republicans have been much more willing than their Democratic counterparts to play the national security card to score political points, especially when out of power.

And just to tie this all into the healthcare debate and Wall Street bailout, if Rush is too fucked up to go back to work, which insurance company will be left holding the bag on his massive salary, and will they go under as a result?

[Glenn Greenwald on O's Hawaiian vacation]

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A Ramsey County judge has ruled Gov. Pawlenty’s budget cutting to be unConstitutional and a restraining order has been issued.

“The authority of the Governor to unallot is an authority intended to save the state in times of a previously unforeseen budget crisis,” wrote Gearin. “It is not meant to be used as a weapon by the executive branch to break a stalemate in budget negotiations with the Legislature or to rewrite the appropriations bill.”

This will screw up Minnesota’s budget procedure, but that’s not surprising given Pawlenty’s unilateralism. He refused to participate in the legislative process and instead played critic after the fact.

The best thing for Minnesota? A deficit.

Now is not the time to pinch pennies, not when so many Minnesotans are hurting. Unplowed streets are a mandate for additional accidents and car repairs in general.

So far the Strib’s online poll shows support for the judge.

Expect this to turn into a giant mess as this matter gets appealed to judges appointed by Pawlenty. If nothing else, the state supreme court has a majority of Pawlenty cronies on the bench, and they’ll reverse this — and every other lawsuit meant to help average Minnesotans — just as quickly as they can ratchet this case through the courts.

[more links at Bring Me The News and more analysis from David Lillehaug and Eric Black]

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The PiPress lets Edward Lotterman, an actual liberal, have some op-ed space today, and the result deserves national links in.

Congressional Republicans have opposed the Obama administration’s health care bill because it will increase the federal government’s role in U.S. health care and increase government outlays by tens of billions of dollars per year.

But in 2003, most of these same Republicans voted for establishing a Medicare drug benefit despite the fact that it would increase the federal government’s role in health care and increase federal outlays by tens of billions of dollars per year.

Slowly but surely, the media seems to be picking sides again, and beginning to realize that the upside of giving free space to Republican bloviators is quickly becoming bad marketing strategy. Readers don’t want to know why we’re not getting change. Readers want change, and more change.

And I wouldn’t mind reading more from Edward Lotterman. I’d love to hear what he has to say about Goldman Sachs….

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Nick Kristoff on microsavings, and how they’re rocking the Third World.

Kristoff also explains one of the major reasons why the poor remain poor: with no banks to save money in, they spend their money on “a combination of alcohol, cigarettes, prostitution, soft drinks and extravagant festivals.”

Or pretty much everything they see advertised.

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The media simply cannot stop lying about the stock market.

Whores. Flogging the overpriced in a desperate attempt to shovel the last of the lies onto the middle class.

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Is Fox News about to get yanked from Time Warner Cable’s lineup?

It won’t save my parents. They have a dish.

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The lying liars may have an audience, but increasingly their fan base seems less enthusiastic.

Also from Digby, Joe Klein comes close to pulling his head out of his ass, but then admits he’s hooked on the smell of butt blossoms.

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Wolcott on doughy pantsload.

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eTc:

The iSlate rumor mill just keeps chugging along

Another rejected nominee Obama needs to renominate

Booman says love it or leave it (Booman can go fuck himself)

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon is no longer interested in shaping American opinion regarding sports

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Loads of tunes tonight at the other blog. Drinking by yourself is totally underrated and not going out into New Year’s Eve traffic is the secret to a long life.

Think about cabbing it tonight.

A monstrous weenie

The Daily Beast on monsters and weenies, and guess who qualified on both counts?

Call me an optimist, but more and more it seems like some of the media is beginning to turn not just on the overbearing Republicans, but on their arrogant corporatist Democratic enablers, as well.

Let’s hope this is a trend. Let’s also hope that teabaggers ripping on GOoPers for hijacking their movement is another trend.

The involvement of the Republican lobbying firm of Russo, Marsh, and Associates with the group known as the Tea Party Express has been apparent for some time, but Talking Points Memo backed up those suspicions on Tuesday with hard numbers from FEC filings. The filings show that between July and November of this year, the PAC behind the Tea Party Express spent almost two-thirds of its $1.33 million budget on payments to Russo, Marsh or people connected with it….

Additional analysis of the FEC reports by Mother Jones has turned up a case of the PAC spending $1600 on dinner for six at a fancy Sacramento restaurant.

All the bloviation in the world isn’t going to get a Bircher/Birther/Christianist to accept that $266.66 per person is an acceptable meal per diem.

There’s absolutely no reason for genuine, dyed-in-the-bull radical rightwing assholes to feel at home in the corporatized, whatever-the-rich-want, Dixified party of Southern-fried Republican values and wouldn’t a $200 bottle of Chablis go nicely with that prime rib?

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Does anyone think that the Bush-Cheney lunatics would have worked with Russians to stop an asteroid from smashing into our planet in 2036?

No, they would have 1) blamed the Russians, the LGBT community, Muslims, and everyone else not currently giving them money for this catastrophe, 2) invested a trillion dollars into a Star Wars boondoggle that would essentially cover the asteroid with sprinkles just before it hit earth, 3) would have immediately have blamed everyone else on the planet after the asteroid hit.

Seriously, after eight years of Bush-Cheney, it’s amazing any of us are left standing.

UPDATE: Ouch. Turns out this story doesn’t have legs. But my points still stand. Republicans would subordinate the survival of the planet to partisan politics without batting an eye. They’ve proven my point too many times for reasonable people to think otherwise.

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Oddly enough, most experts agree that not having Obama-Biden administration officials on the talk shows yakking about how the Republicans are to blame for the weenie roast in Detroit has actually made the investigation go more smoothly.

It’s good not having a cheerleader president anymore, but more to the point, Bush didn’t comment about the shoe bomber until six days after the fact.

Republican is rapidly becoming a synonym for hypocrite.

More from Maha and further clarification by Josh Marshall of how petulant the Republicans are being right now.

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If Jonathan’s right, 2010 could be the year the suits find themselves in a docket.

I’m not holding my breath.

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Democracy in action, and yes, the Democrats voting aye are in fact bigger monsters than the Republicans.

People who vote for Republicans want to have monsters running our country. People who voted for Blue Dogs had something else in mind.

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More and more people are coming around to the old socialist saw about how billionaires are the robber barons of today.

I guess you can’t pick everyone’s pocket and still expect to win a popularity contest.

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Kudos to Digby. I flagged Ted Nugent’s anti-Obama remarks, but totally missed that the Nuge had done to Obama EXACTLY what the Dixie Chicks did to Bush: criticize him while standing on foreign soil.

Cat scratch patriots, indeed.

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More ridicule than usual from TBogg for doughy pantsload.

Actual quotes are, like, so unfair.

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More about Yemen from someone who has actually been there.

We do not want to go to war with Yemen, and only an ignorant moron would say otherwise.

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TPM is counting down to their tenth anniversary.

Really, this is starting to get boring. Blogging, for the most part, started in 1999 and the early blogs got going in 2000 and 2001, with almost all the major players in place by 2003.

Just pointing out that there will be a lot of tenth anniversaries coming up.

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Etc:

Top MN political quotes of the year

Garrison Keillor’s New Year’s column

Ph.Dude

Now that we know that Harry can force votes, lets have some

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I clicked on this Brand X link thinking it was going to tell me the best time to buy Apple products to save money.

Nope. It’s a guide to waiting for cutting edge.

The media only wants you to save money  if the savings lets you buy more stuff.

I’m just glad that, because I waited, I was able to buy a 2GB iPod Nano for only $55.

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Apparently fakebrodkorb bugs Michael Brodkorb quite a bit.

Let’s see if we can get Charlieq a couple hundred followers by 2011.

Tweeters retweet!

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David Levine, R.I.P.

Grousing (with links)

Given the sorry state of both local newspapers, it’s hard to know if there is any kind of agenda at work when the PiPress tells us the I-35 bridge collapse lawsuit’s been bumped back a month, but the Strib says nothing.

The PiPress story is from AP, and it also discloses the heinous fact that Progressive Contractors Inc. has settled and made payments, but the judge has sealed those records.

HOW CAN ANY RECORDS IN A PUBLIC CASE LIKE THIS BE SEALED?

What possible public good is being served? Whose political bacon is being saved?

My long wish list for Congress has always included stripping the courts of their self-anointed right to seal court records. There may be a case for sealing a minor’s records, but not a corporation’s other than the rare bit of evidence that really does give away trade secrets.

Judge Deborah Hedlund is, of course, unaccountable. Judges don’t hold press conferences and judges don’t have to explain themselves. Hedlund is a sixty something blonde who was appointed to the bench by a Republican governor (Al Quie) and yes, it is entirely within her right to seal anything, the public be damned.

The public has absolutely no right to this information even though our taxes pay for this whole shebang from bridge fail to tax write-offs for survivor settlements.

It would be an easy bill to write. All you have to do is tell corporations they can’t write off any expenses related to a sealed court decision. No lawyer fees, no payments. Like the luxury tax in pro sports, corporations should have to pay twice for keeping secrets and then stockholders should have the right to demand why they chose to pay twice.

For the love of mike, isn’t it time we entered into an era of accountability?

Tim Pawlenty is no Sarah Palin, but he certainly does seem to get away with a lot. (click that link for the latest in Bristol v Levi scandalmonging, more from TPMMuckraker and Immoral Minority has still more — scroll down far enough and you’ll even learn about how the Governor left the kids in a running car in winter for 45 minutes while she checked out a party)

For a party that purports to hate lawyers and torts, the Republicans sure do seem to know their way around a courtroom.

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In other local legal news, the sale of WCAL (classical radio) station to MPR (who keep The Current parked there) will be allowed to stand.

Another victory for the Klingdom, another blow against culture that matters.

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It’s looking like there will be (cross your fingers) only nineteen [19] homicides in Minneapolis this year.

Don’t worry. Republicans will find some key statistic to twist lest senior citizens think it’s safe to leave their homes at night.

All scare, all the time and yes, I’m still smoking mad about how Fox News rules my parents’ world and has turned a sleepy Iowa town into a hotbed of fear and loathing as the surviving members of the Greatest Generation have been propagandized into seeing a gay Muslim negro behind every tree.

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Alan Stanford, like a slimy UK garden slug, is leaving a trail. Unsurprisingly, along with all the Republicans, some bad Dems have ooze on their fingers.

Let’s get rid of ALL corrupt politicians. (Gregory Meeks aside, cleaning up government would hurt them more than us, and would actually make us a better party.)

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etC:

Steve Outing’s final E&P column

Chart showing how salmonella kicks terrorism’s ass fatalities-wise

Scozzafava’d in Central Valley

Hatch confesses

Funny how people don’t notice where their money goes when someone’s sucking on their balls

Inside the mind of a predatory entrepreneur (redistributing money from workers toyour own pockets is not wealth creation)

Student bitches about B grade but sounds like he should have gotten a horsewhipping to go with the F he earned (and doesn’t this sound like a young Republican to you?)

Remembering what the initial problem was with candidate Al (and doesn’t this obligate him to introduce and fight for a real campaign reform bill?)

Just because the American union movement is down, doesn’t mean American corporations shouldn’t give them an extra kick in the balls [fuck Target, they've changed, and for the worse — still better than Wal-Mart, but not by much]

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The Strib echoes what I’ve written about the Hmong being repatriated to Laos. Obviously this means the Republicans will now have to find a reason to oppose bringing 4,000 CIA army refugees and their families to America.

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Healthcare reform with even less abortion will not, for some inconceivable reason, be a vote that NARAL will track.

NARAL: taking liberal money for 42 years so that Republican board members can fund suburban Republican candidates who will vote pro-Choice only so long as their vote doesn’t make a difference.

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Sam W. Lundy, R.I.P.

Since investment bankers never seem to die on the job, could someone please explain to me again why we pay the big money to the parasites, but not to the Americans who do the dirty work of keeping this country running?

More of the same (now with more invective!)

Give McClatchy credit. While other national news services were burying Jim DeMint’s hold on Erroll Southers to become head of the TSA, McClatchy is covering the GOoPer obstructionist politics that have visibly weakened our nation.

But absent any mediawide attention, Republicans continue to behave badly.

Meanwhile, Florida Republican Rep. John Mica said in a statement that the TSA had grown lost and bloated in bureaucracy and called for a review.

Mica also said Congress “must change the process by which TSA administrators serve. There has been no TSA administrator for nearly a year and the next one will be the fifth in eight years. Running a security agency with a revolving door is a recipe for failure.”

TSA is rudderless thanks to people who think that transforming yourself into a legislative buttplug is somehow patriotic. Democrats have been blocked from appointing their first TSA administrator, yet Floridian blowhard Mica wants Congress to step in because Bush couldn’t keep anyone in the job (they kept leaving to cash in with a private sector gig).

Another emerging GOoPer talking point is that Obama waited 243 days before nominating Southers, but forgets to mention that that’s because of the backlog of nominees who’ve been held up in the Senate. Why rush to nominate someone to stand at the back of a very long line?

There is no defense for what the Republicans are doing, so expect them to just start yammering more loudly while their accomplices in the corporate media continue to bury the real news on page 18-B. The Daily Beast slyly tells the real story:

Note how the lead story comes from a real newspaper, while the RNC talking point is being flogged by Politico (Drudge Lite). And almost no one is talking about how the Republicans have repeated voted against TSA funding measures over the last year.

Meanwhile, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is laying in a hospital bed trying to figure out how his scorched nuts have advanced his cause while others are wondering why the Bush administration released the Detroit plotters in 2007 to the custody of a Saudi art therapy program.

[more on Bush era counter-terrorism efforts]

[questions the media's not asking but should be]

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The 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals continues to be the only high court in the land that respects precedent or the Constitution. They’ve just ruled that tasers clearly constitute excessive force when police encounter non-violent suspects.

It’s being called a landmark decision.

Not shooting traffic violators full of electricity is now considered a breakthrough in American justice.

Thomas Jefferson wept.

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Another McClatchy story worth noting, this one their coverage of the Bristol Palin-Levi Johnston custody case. Nothing much to add but the judge unsealing the court records is bound to have consequences.

Like maybe we’ll finally find out what Tripp’s real birthday is. And maybe Levi’s attorney can ask Bristol under oath how many children she has.

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Zionists keep pressing to have Jonathan Pollard released from American prison where he’s serving a life sentence for treason, yet they keep persecuting Mordechai Vanunu, the low level nuclear plant technician who leaked to the UK press proof that Israel was the world’s sixth largest nuclear power.

Vanunu served an 18-year sentence, and is still forbidden to talk to foreigners.

Leaking proof of what everyone already knows to the press is not spying. Spying is when you give top secret information to foreign powers, like Pollard did.

Israel still refuses to acknowledge they have nuclear weapons, weapons they developed in concert with South Africa back in the ’60s.  Back when the population of Gaza wasn’t most refugees and the descendants of refugees. Back when Israel could still claim to have a soul.

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Tim Russert isn’t befouling the set of Meet the Press anymore, but the show is permanently tainted by General Electric’s politics. Care to guess who holds the record for most MTP appearances in 2009?

Try Newt fucking Gingrich, the disgraced former Speaker of the House who hasn’t held public office for eleven years, and who has no formal position in the Republican party.

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Reading an otherwise dull and uninteresting piece on intelligence, I just learned that brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand will increase your will and focus.

So I just tried brushing my teeth left-handed. I am now 100% focused on the spots where I bruised my gums.

Who says junk science doesn’t work?

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Latest document showing Iran nuclear progress is being called a forgery by U.S. intelligence.

I guess the whiteout over Saddam’s name was a giveaway.

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Latest Orly Taitz sighting may help teabaggers with their spelling skills but be warned that eventually she will break your heart.

In other news, Ted Nugent says Obama = Mao, and the Nugester just wants to “throw up.”

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Guess who’s first on Mother Jones’ list of Capitol Hill’s Most Unhinged Republicans. Even Michele Bachmann can’t top folks like Louie Gohmert and Steve King.

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Dow 4000, a much longer than usual Clusterfuck Nation post.

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Al Giordano’s been blogging ten years now.

There are worse people you could give your money to.

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Howie the Whore made a list. Reality didn’t intrude on it in the slightest. Juan Cole also made a list, and packed more truth into his Top Ten Middle East Crises 2009 than Howie could pull out of an entire decade.

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In other media news, APSE just honored the top newspaper sports web sites. The Strib so highly values their sports coverage, they recently put their Vikings’ coverage behind a paywall.

So how did the Strib rank for sports coverage?

Not in the Top 10. Not in the Honorable Mention list either.

And none of the winners found it necessary to bleed their readers for extra revenue beyond what the advertisers paid.

But maybe APSE just hates whiners, and after last night’s OT loss to the Bears, the local sports writers are whining up a storm.

Over at Romenesko, Alan Mutter says more succinctly what I’ve been saying all along about the death of newspapers:

“One of the problems is newspapers fired so many journalists and turned them loose to start so many blogs,” says Alan Mutter. “They should have executed them. They wouldn’t have had competition. But they foolishly let them out alive.”

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Dennis Brutus, R.I.P.

O’s TSA head blocked by DeMint

Some perspective from the NYTimes this morning:

The only way you can say Detroit was Obama’s fault is if you believe that Bush-Cheney failed completely to safeguard our air traffic, and that Obama should be held responsible for not fixing the mess they left behind.

Despite the fact that the Obama administration’s nominee to head the very poorly run Transportation Security Agency, former FBI agent/counterterrorism expert Erroll Southers, still hasn’t gotten a confirmation vote thanks to a hold put on his nomination by Jim DeMint.

Why is DeMint’s hold on Southers not front page news in the wake of the would be Detroit bomber? Especially given that DeMint placed the hold because “he wants additional testimony to clarify Southers’s stand on unionizing the TSA.”

There you have it. Obama’s TSA is still being run by Bush-Cheney holdovers because Jim DeMint’s worried about a possible union recruiting drive at TSA.

Worst fucking opposition party ever. They should all wear Mao jackets and grow Hitler mustaches. If I was as slimy as them, I’d have headlined this item: Jim DeMint refuses to OK black man as TSA head; is racism to blame for the Detroit near bombing?

And that would still be less misleading than DeMint’s hold on Southers over the possible unionization of TSA, an agency currently crippled by the primitive religious beliefs of countless key personnel who promote based on which church you go to, and yes, I’ve got notes in client resume files that make exactly that case.

TSA is the worst federal agency ever, and the Republicans don’t want it fixed. They need terrorism to happen because without it all they have are gays, women and immigrants to blame everything on, and those groups just aren’t scary enough anymore.

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Bob Herbert on the ruinous tax about to be imposed on “Cadillac” health plan payers.

Yes, you can hold Obama responsible for this, and you should. But what Herbert and everyone else misses is that this isn’t about punishing the policy holders, it’s about punishing corporations that take care of their employees.

The Cadillac tax will end all incentive anyone ever had for wanting better benefits, and that’s exactly what the health insurance industry wants. By the time they get done a la carting and denying, health insurance will simply be another layer of expense between consumers and pay-as-you-go, massive deductible-driven healthcare.

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China executed a British heroin smuggler despite UK protests.

Really, it’s not hard at all to see why the Republicans loving being in bed with the Chinese. Beijing and Birmingham have always been on the same wavelength when it comes to law’n'order.

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Would Thailand be deporting Hmong to Laos if Secretary of State Clinton had offered to take them instead?

Are our DFL elected leaders talking with the federal government in urgent tones, or casual emails? Senate Republicans can’t block our taking in more refugees so wtf is going on?

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I really don’t think I could ever vote for anyone who uses the word “visionary” to describe a budget strategy.

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AP:

“I do not feel protected against Sarah Palin in a closed proceeding,” Johnston said in an affidavit. “I hope that if it is open she will stay out of it. Bristol’s attorney is her attorney.”

I don’t know if Levi can win, but I do know that an open court hearing to Sarah Palin would be like sunshine to a vampire.

The local judge will protect her secrets. Maybe.

Who knows? Or more to the point, who would ever find out? The Strib is still refusing to run negative stories about the Rouge machine and I expect the national press to steer clear (cowards, every last one of them).

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For those who obsess over drinking while driving cases, there’s one in Lakeville where thank god there are witnesses for a change, and an open and shut case is now revolving around “did she signal a right turn and get into the right turn lane before blowing through the intersection?”

While I’m sure a sizable majority of accidents involving drunk drivers are the fault of the impaired motorist, I’m also sure thousands of people just over the limit who did nothing wrong have been hung out to dry by draconian laws that take the justice out of our courtrooms and replace it with a one breathalyzer fits all drivers so hang ‘em mentality.

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The NYTimes joins the iSlate rumor frenzy.

Which means we now get treated to the Wall Street POV:

Another interesting tidbit that helps back up the idea of a 10-inch screen comes from the Taiwanese publication Digitimes, which reported on Monday that Apple was trying to strengthen the glass of such a screen and was forced to delay the product’s introduction until the first quarter of next year. The report cited unnamed sources “from Apple’s component suppliers.”

It comes out when it’s ready. Apple hasn’t announced anything about this product, but Wall Street is already judging Apple’s stock by whether or not this product gets rushed to market Microsoft style (fix the bugs after you’ve sold a million units).

Wall Street consistently punishes manufacturers who develop and sell products responsibly. They’d rather see a stock yo-yo on rumors than wait for an actual product to be debuted.

They really are the worst people in the world, and we keep encouraging them in that regard.

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There are, unbelievably, Illinois Republicans more batshit insane than Alan Keyes.

Meet Andy Martin, the guy running radio ads claiming that IL GOP Senate frontrunner Mark Kirk is gay.

In the radio ad, which aired Monday on WGN-AM and WBBM-AM, Martin attributes a “solid rumor that Kirk is a homosexual” to conservative Republican businessman Jack Roeser. Martin’s ad also claims that Raymond True, the chairman of the conservative Republican Assembly of Lake County organization, says Kirk has surrounded himself with homosexuals. The ad says Kirk should address the rumors.

And maybe the Illinois Republican party should ask itself what’s so terrible about having a gay senator?

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How broke is Illinois? The state that (wisely imho) cut off Joseph Smith’s head in a lynching with quality control issues, is now promoting Nauvoo as an LDS tourist destination.

That tourism article, btw, lies about Smith’s death saying he was shot dead. No, he was shot, shot some more, and then a member of the lynch mob attempted (whether he succeeded is disputed) to cut Smith’s head off.

I like to think Smith was still alive when they tried to cut his head off, but then again I’m just sort of a pollyanna when it comes to wishing for happy endings.

So long as Mitt Romney keeps running for president, I’ll keep writing about Joseph Smith’s undignified demise.

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GOoPer talking points still drive the gossip media, and the Obama Christmas tree is now being attacked because wingnuts suspect that an ornament with Reagan on it is some kind of Iran-Contra slap.

The voices in their heads just keep getting louder, and extra tinfoil in their hats doesn’t seem to be helping. Really, the only cure is to have their heads sawed off.

No, lower

I was picking up on this weird vibe but just thinking no, the Xmas stuff is better than I’m used to, that’s all.

Forgot the Vikings are playing in Chicago on Monday Night Football. An hour before kickoff traffic started getting a little manic but in general traffic’s been moving like people were in a hurry to get somewhere.

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All I can say is that Jeff Sessions must have the most diehard Republican constituency of anyone in Congress.

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RahmBO.

Sorry, wrong link and when no one tells me until the next day, it’s too late to find the old one.

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BTD on killing filibusters.

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Iran

Honduras

Molly Ivins

Iran

Honduras

Top 5 lies

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Since I doubt you’d click a link labeled Robert Cruickshank on the ’90s, here’s an excerpt to whet your interest:

If you want to defeat the right, we must defeat corporatism. This is a truth I thought we’d all learned during the decade now ending, but apparently we did not.

The right-wing in the United States is still a fringe movement when you look at its overall numbers. Teabaggers are a noisy but tiny group not worth the concern. Even after 30+ years of right-wing dominance of our politics, their ideas remain fundamentally unpopular.

So why do they dominate politics? Because they made an alliance with the corporations.

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Here’s Ann Laurie’s spin on pretty much what I’ve been carping about regarding wingnuts and media flipping out over a guy who burned his gonads trying to blow up a plane.

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Mick on the politics of Dixie, and still more on that from Brendan Nyhan who has charts and should be taken seriously. In fact he’s got an interesting corollary to my Dixie-is-to-blame-for-everything theory. He points out that they were less obstructionist when segregation was the law. But good winners aren’t necessarily good losers, and that’s where my fingerpointing comes in.

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Frankenfood and genetic patents.

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A last resort trick that can often keep you from getting evicted when you go into foreclosure: make them show you the original mortgage documents!

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More history lessons than you’re used to getting from me, but I’ve been running into some good ones lately. If you can’t immediately remember who Eugene Hasenfus was, you need to click for a quick refresher.

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Just checked an email address I don’t use much and found it filled with this link: Details released in Polk deputy’s arrest.

A Polk County sheriff’s deputy was arrested after allegedly showing a Glock handgun and threatening to kill his wife on Christmas, according to an Altoona police report.

I don’t stay in touch with many folks in Des Moines, but apparently they all took note of this domestic terrorism story. This deputy sheriff is the most notorious narcotics cop in Des Moines. Narcotics is a bit misleading because mostly he’s a lazy asshole who busts pot smokers and tries to configure the bust so as to generate a felony.

Smoking (or growing) pot is not a felony, but it seems like waving a Glock at your wife should be more than just an aggravated misdemeanor.

A nation wets its pants

Ratcheting up the fear, one bedwetting scare article/editorial at a time.

I don’t think the terror fears that are climbing have much to do with people who actually fly, just with people who sit around and watch cable news.

How did we get to where the equivalent of taking a bus has gotten to be harder than getting into a nuclear facility, while getting in and out of banks (where the money is) remains quite easy?

Nothing about transportation security makes any sense, and none of it is making it any safer (or more dangerous) to fly.

Terrorists are criminals. This is a police matter and military solutions should not apply. It’s not a war, it’s a crime wave, and it’s a crime wave set in motion by our crimes and the crimes of our longest standing allies. If middle easterners all benefited from oil revenues, there would be little Islamic fundamentalism, and terrorism would all but vanish. John Bull and Pepe LePew fucked up the middle east until only American oil companies would touch it. Unfortunately, American oil companies = American government.

Terrorism is simply the byproduct of all of the above. That, or you must believe that certain religions are hardwired to be evil, and that really doesn’t make any sense.

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Krugman votes for “the big zero.”

So let’s bid a not at all fond farewell to the Big Zero — the decade in which we achieved nothing and learned nothing. Will the next decade be better? Stay tuned. Oh, and happy New Year.

Increasingly, I suspect we’ll get something after the fact like the Gilded Age or the Age of Folly or maybe simply the Age of Privileged Wealth.

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I suppose this is something else the O team won’t get around to fixing.

If it doesn’t involve a bankster making more money, I don’t think they’re really paying much attention.

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Leave it to the WaPost to regret the passing of easy to get (but very hard to pay off) student loans at exorbitant interest rates with deals not subject to bankruptcy laws.

In case you missed it, I had a link yesterday to a story that made a good case the only college grads getting decent compensation are those actively working to loot our system and destroy our way of life.

Teachers, doctors? Fuck ‘em. Too many doctors and the rich wouldn’t necessarily be getting better healthcare from a rationed system that privileges money over health. Too many teachers and the rural poor might accidentally get an education. Etc.

It’s all been about Dixifying Reagan’s America into one big slum surrounding a shining gated city on a hill.

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They’re using trucks to transport Hmong back to Laos from Thailand, but really, shouldn’t they be packing them onto box cars?

Bush-CheneyCo encouraged Thailand to move away from the light. Is the O team doing anything to bring them back around?

Seriously, I am going to start blaming everything on Obama. You don’t run on change and then not change anything.

At least Ben Ali died not knowing what a fraud his hero was turning into.

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Rationalizing putting the healthcare tax burden on the all too few middle class winners, and not the upper income losers who drove our economy into a ditch.

Even David fucking Brooks is coming around to single payer.

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State of the art soup kitchens.

Meeting a growing need in a time of diminishing leadership.

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More American history of the sort you didn’t learn in school.

From 1790 to 1952, only “white people” were eligible to become naturalized U.S. citizens. That fact alone explains why for most of our history, immigrants and their descendants fought to be considered white.

Gregory Rodriguez on the stuff Fox News never tells you.

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Subminimum wage: In Iowa, it’s not just for teens.

Kids, tards — what’s the diff? The point is that someone has to be at the bottom of the heap, and the folks at the bottom aren’t entitled to a living wage, not ever.

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The decision to bomb Iran has moved past the deciding stage and is now at the “how big a fucking bomb do we use” stage.

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Remember how much you used to hate Bill Kristol?

Don’t lose that, he’s gotten worse since you last heard from his sorry ass.

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I read the article. It was sort of like watching a productive stool judging contest.

Otoh, they did survey a broad cross-section of stools.

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TMZ has “the picture that could have changed everything.”

Yep, JFK on a boat with nekkid women.

Because a picture of Kay Somersby blowing Ike wouldn’t have rocked anyone’s boat.

Does it ever occur to these gossip gits that America has always hated their straight-laced presidents? Coolidge, Truman, Carter anyone?

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iSlate?

You know I want one.

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Enjoy your Monday. Chances are good we’ll all live to make it to the New Year.

Somehow.

Stuff that happened while I was gone

My late Christmas wasn’t like this one. It was worse. And better. And contrary to Phoenix Woman’s report, Tim Pawlenty’s Minnesota’s highways were better than Chet Culver’s Iowa roads. (Then again, Republicans respect rural roads much more than they do city streets.)

Which pretty much defines any time spent with multiple relatives over several hours. Lucky is the family that hasn’t been impacted by Fox News’ bloviation. PaulaT is lucky her dad is coming around even if he is still a knucklehead.

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Greenwald on Yemen.

When it’s a place you know almost nothing about, no one piles on the facts like Glenn.

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Every now and then you look to find something and all you can find is the same article over and over again in all kinds of small to medium size never heard of them publications and newspapers.

Astroturfed bullshit.

I caught some being slipped into one of David Brauer’s posts and all I can say is thank god for Pandagon doing the hard work of coming up with the answers for me, even if I did get the credit in the comment thread.

My point being that it’s getting fakier and fakier and that’s not even including the fact that the guy who inserted the astroturfed info may have been sincere. That’s the point of astroturf, to build the appearance of legitimacy. Like Fox News does.

Bastards.

I worry that my parents will live out their years angry and paranoid thanks to those lying, wedge-driving, hate-mongering so-called American patriots.

An example: Eric Boehlert picks up on how Andrew Breitbart is flogging the White House Christmas tree’s Andy Warhol’s Mao ornament. Boehlert tags Breitbart for the cynical smear but doesn’t catch the win-win that went down with that story. Breitbart is selling to people who, upon hearing Andy Warhol’s name, would most likely get even madder. Makes no difference that this ornament is actually an insult to China, when you are determined to get mad, you see what you want to see.

This is how they play politics down South. Dixie has permeated the party of Drudge while Rush and Sean and Glenn and Sarah keep ‘em stoked.

They lost their culture war and now they want to burn down the country that rejected them. We could use some serious leadership right now, but I can’t think of any Democrat with the standing to lead us right now.

Yeah, I’m that fed up with Obama.

I’ll take Big Tent Democrat a step further: if Obama doesn’t renominate Dawn Johnsen, I’m writing Obama off entirely. We are in the majority. If he cannot get his people through the Senate, he’s not competent to lead us.

bmaz:

The nomination of Dawn Johnsen to be the head of the Office of Legal Counsel at DOJ, a critical post, is now truly dead. If Ms. Johnsen is to serve, she will have to be renominated by Barack Obama and start over. She never got the up or down vote promised as soon as the Senate had done healthcare, she never got an ounce of support from the Administration that nominated her, and a year of her life was taken in what certainly appears to be a cowardly and demeaning political ploy.

There is a bit more than meets the eye to unpack here. Harry Reid held over several nominations for the return to session in January, but Dawn Johnsen was not one of them. The implication is that he could only do so by a “unanimous consent” approval by the Senate and that, golly gosh, he just could not get it. That does indeed appear to be the case from the Senate Rules on Nominations. Rule XXXI(6) provides:

Nominations neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are made shall not be acted upon at any succeeding session without being again made to the Senate by the President; and if the Senate shall adjourn or take a recess for more than thirty days, all nominations pending and not finally acted upon at the time of taking such adjournment or recess shall be returned by the Secretary to the President, and shall not again be considered unless they shall again be made to the Senate by the President.

Even assuming Harry Reid had no alternative but to return the nomination, the better question is how did it get to this point, and why has the White House and Senate been so disingenuous about it? The only rational conclusion at this point is that killing Johnsen’s nomination is precisely what the Obama White House desired. The White House intentionally left to rot, and then outright killed, their own nominee.

The evidence of this is pretty damning. Dawn Johnsen’s nomination had languished, twisting in the wind, for 280 days as of the time her nomination was killed by Harry Reid, far longer than any other Obama nominee. The only notable recent support for Johnsen from the White House came in a statement by White House Counsel Greg Craig on October 11, 2009, a weak statement saying only that the White House “would not withdraw” her nomination. Craig was subsequently fired and, hilariously, attempted to be scapegoated by Rahm Emanuel for – wait for it – not getting nominations like Johnsen’s confirmed.

A typical Rahm Emanuel backhanded opaque play; blame someone (Craig) interested in governmental transparency for not getting another official who favors openness and transparency (Johnsen) confirmed, and all the while Rahm and Obama are choking off openness and transparency. Use the Johnsen nomination as a bone to the liberals and simultaneously use it as cover to betray them with the opposite of what Dawn Johnsen stands for. A perfect political scam on the liberal base who was so thrilled with the nomination of a honest rule of law advocate for the Constitution like Dawn Johnsen. Liberals should have known better, but that is just not who Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel are.

I thought Obama picking insiders was a show of strength. Now I’m starting to wonder if Rahm isn’t Cheneying Obama.

The right cannot be allowed to kill our nominees. They crippled Clinton’s second term by holding up nominees and judges galore. Never again.

Renominate Dawn Johnsen. This is a fight the left can win because the more you get people to look at what happened, the weaker Obama looks. However well he’s playing Fox’s non-story about the lone asshole who burned his dick off.

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Actually, that vein throbs when I want to wring someone’s scrawny neck.

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How fucked up is copyright law?

Apparently, Rolling Stone magazine decided it wanted to try selling t-shirts of some of its covers…. Obviously, the magazine and its publisher Wenner Media own the copyright on their own covers, so there shouldn’t be any problem, right? Not so fast. Since the covers usually include musicians, and those musicians have vast merchandising businesses themselves, some of the companies who handle the merchandising for some top artists have sued, claiming that they have exclusive licensing deals to sell products with those musicians.

Making it to the cover of The Rolling Stone meaning, apparently, that you henceforth own the cover rights thenk-u-vermuch. [more]

And how fucked up is healthcare? Vic Chesnutt may have committed suicide over unpaid medical bills.

It’s enough to make you turn to the church for moral guidance.

Or not. Speaking of which, William Loren Katz has a history lesson worth sharing with your friends: the true story of how the Seminole nation kicked Zachory Taylor’s ass, and how historians have covered up a half century of slave rebellion and Indian independence.

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Devilstower has a very good post on people who died in 2009. I did not know that Patrick McGoohan wrote and directed The Prisoner.

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Clip and save this Meteor Blades post for the next time the stadium boosters come knocking.

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Locally, Ed Kohler and Minnesota Democrats Exposed have been mixing it up. Among other things it appears MDE was knocked off Google after being hacked in some way that Ed explains better than I can.

All by way of providing context for comments #5 & 6 currently up at MDE:

I would hope it would be obvious to Luke Hellier that if he doesn’t take down or edit those comments, he’s pretty much endorsing them.

For those who’ve never met Ed Kohler, he is in seriously good shape as well as being one of the hairiest guys I’ve ever met. Ed’s the kind of guy who can grow a full beard in less than a day. If you talk to him, you can actually see it grow. Chile is just throwing out ugly homophobic insults without knowing anything about Ed as a person.

In the previous post another commenter called Kohler “Mr. Ed.”

Ugly.

Never in my wildest cranial digressions did I ever think I’d live to see MDE establish a new standard for low.

If Hellier doesn’t pull those comments he would, of course, be breaking Michael Brodkorb’s record for low. If Hellier is cool with chile, I think Michael Brodkorb has some splainin’ to do, and yes, I would really really enjoy seeing video of a news reporter asking Mr. Republican Party of Minnesota Deputy-Chairman Brodkorb about his old blog.

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Score one for Matt Taibbi. He’s the only reporter I know of who was a bit leery of Alan Grayson. Just because you love what someone says doesn’t mean you know that person.

Techdirt:

In Grayson’s case, one of his critics is a woman named Angie Langley, who set up a website called MyCongressmanIsNuts.com, which is a parody of Grayson’s own CongressmanWithGuts.com (not linking to either, as I don’t wish to link to any political sites). Again, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Now, it turns out that Langley is not actually a constituent in Grayson’s district, but lives nearby. That is a bit misleading, but hardly a major issue.

Until, that is, Grayson turned it into one by sending a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder (pdf) asking for an investigation of Langley and the eventual jailing of her for five years over falsely representing herself as a constituent:

These matters were brought to Ms. Langley’s personal attention through complaint to the FEC weeks ago, but she and the Committee continue to solicit contributions fraudulently, and have stubbornly refused to return the contributions that they already have, received. Therefore, Ms. Langley and the Committee should be fined, and Ms. Langley imprisoned for five years.

Again, there is an issue with falsely soliciting political contributions, but the thing is, she wasn’t getting much attention for her campaign, and the issue of where she lives is really quite minor. There are always people who oppose elected officials. But sending this letter and requesting five years in jail for Langley suddenly made this a national story — and guess who that’s helping? It’s certainly not Grayson.

Like I said, the guy says stuff you like to hear and he votes alright. That doesn’t make him a good person.

Just someone you hold your nose and vote for.

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Iran.

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It’s OK to hate predatory near monopolists.

Really, it is.

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Liar.

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Something to throw in the face of your local Wall Street/free market bullshitter.

Economics can be used for more than just excusifying.

Short stories too.

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Sometimes the most interesting stories are the ones that don’t say anything, and don’t say anything a lot.

The Sheriff of Dodge County is up to . . . something.

The article doesn’t say what but it sure reads like the reporter could have said more than her editor allowed.

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Counting down to the next election.

Fuck New Year’s, fuck parties, fuck people.

I suspect the decade after the decade we couldn’t come up with a name for is going to be a good one for sitting at home and drinking with the lights turned down.

Fucking Obama.

Fucking everyone.

Fucking good night.

X-mocks links

Amusing:

Susie’s Letter from Santa, by Mark Twain

God Jul from Tild

Tay Zonday does You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch

Lloyd Grove on Al Franken

“When I knew Al at the show,” the former colleague recalls, “there was always an immense cloud of pungent smoke coming from his office.”

A Terry Gilliam Christmas (and yes, Tideland would be the perfect movie to watch with your family today!)

Yuletide reading

Christmas parrots

An Xmas crossword puzzle

Christmas Eve in the drunk tank (Pogues video)

Jingle Bells (Frank Sinatra video)

Non-Christmas jeer from Stephen Colbert (via Digby)

Mele Kalikimaka!

Chamber of Commerce wins Scrooge of the Year award

From TBogg, the trailer for a new John Woo-Tony Leung Art Fu epic

The Year in Orly Taitz

Merry Swampmas (Santa pix from around the world)

Bob Collins’ feel good Xmas links

Santaphalopod

After finishing that list I looked over at iTunes and saw that my Xmas listening thus far has encompassed music from Omar Rodriguez Lopez and Mars Volta, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Vampire Weekend, Alèmayèhu Eshèté, Dorian Concept, Oasis, Erkykah Badu, Leonard Cohen, Bessie Smith, Benga, Hortense Ellis, etc….

Your snow globe may, when shaken, feature music from other bands. [Traditional videos on display over at Maha's, traditionally grumpy reminiscing over at Jonathan's]

Less amusing:

18 dead from Midwestern blizzard

Rogue Columnist on Tuesday’s 9-truck, 13-car pile up

Mission Accomplished

Dawn Johnsen still locked out at Labor

Day 3,001

Jeralyn on GitmoMax

O Little Town of Kettleman

That’s it for me. Movies, music and lots of bottled and combusted cheer will see me through the day until I’m properly eggnogged and antidisambulatoried.

And the little sumpthin’ extra in my morning tea didn’t hurt neither.

Pope falls down, gets back up

Pope Benedict XVI tumbled to the marble floor of St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday night after a woman tackled him on his way to preside over Christmas Eve Mass.

Benedict lost his gold-trimmed miter and staff when the woman grabbed the front of his robe and pulled him to the floor. He was not harmed, quickly recovered and was able to go ahead with the Mass.

A Vatican spokesperson denied that the woman had gotten her hands on the Pope’s mozzetta, insisting the Pope had not been wearing one. Pictures suggest otherwise, and it appears she may have also fondled his subcinctorium.

Aides were able to pop the dents out of the papal mitre (the zucchetto was intact), but the immaculately brushed velvet collar on the Pope’s greca remained mussed, his pallium was twisted, and the fringes on the papal fascia were impermissably tangled.

Rumors persist that the papal nether-tiara (the Tiara of Pope Leo XIII, the “Fisherman’s ring tiara”) was dented, but that the encrusted jewels were still intact. A papal reproductive integrity count will be taken later by Vatican historians to ensure that none of il Papa’s sperma were emancipated. Vatican representatives refused to comment on whether the traditional Christmas spina di estremità had been dislodged as had been reported by witnesses who detected a distinct odor of bowel in the air after the attack.

spina di estremità

I’m glad the snowstorm hit so I’d be home today and able to report on this very grave situation. I’m sure your prayers today, as well as mine, will include the Holy Father.