Shoot, whine, reload

Frank Rich on the SOTU:

[O]ur union is not strong. It is paralyzed. Many Americans were more eagerly anticipating Steve Jobs’s address in San Francisco on Wednesday morning than the president’s that night because they have far more confidence in Apple than Washington to produce concrete change. One year into Obama’s term we still don’t know whether he has what it takes to get American governance functioning again. But we do know that no speech can do the job. The president must act. Only body blows to the legislative branch can move the country forward.

Body blows? I like the sound of that.

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Former President of the University of Tennessee says Obama not an ideologue, then smears him as a pointy-headed perfesser.

Funny how contempt for intellect works out so well for people whose base is controlled by know-nothing radio, TV and blog pundits.

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Yoo and Bybee have been cleared by Obama’s DOJ.

I guess we’ll just have to deal with them wingnut style, i.e., walk into their church some Sunday morning and blow their brains out in front of their friends, family and God Hisself. Then later, after our shooters have been convicted, we can whine about how unfair the judicial system is.

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I’m sure they had good intentions, but stealing babies is not cool.

Still, if you really believed your God was THE God, you’d almost have to steal babies because not to would be to condemn them to eternal damnation. Innocent babies, eternal damnation: you make the call.

Ditto your atheist neighbor’s kids, and all the heathen kids at your kid’s daycare center.

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Coming home to roost:

Pat Tillman

California investigator murdered in Mexico (wtf is this about?)

The Wellstoning of Mike Connell

Mama Tebow didn’t have access to legal abortion?

Liberal Fascism still getting reviewed, panned

The suckers are wising up

Another prophetic toon from Ted Rall

Lambert on the give and take (and why that won’t ever happen again)

Real conservatives leaving GOoP, going indie

Marijuana not going away (clean air, however, is)

Fired U.S. Attorneys reunion

Literally killing us

Beck being Beck

As well as the usual O’Keefe:

Word finally getting out that O’Keefe never wore the pimp suit in an ACORN office

Rachel Maddow on how O’Keefe’s big mouth has already convicted him

More background on the plotters and their (thus far) shadowy minder

Turley’s take

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“I think I can put food on the table.”

OK if you’re a former DLC chair, but when Latrell Sprewell said something remarkably similar, he was all but laughed out of the NBA.

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New research claims 99% of bittorrents are of copyrighted material.

Take with many many grains of salt. A non-RIAA band owns the copyright on all their material, but will most likely encourage uploading to bittorrent sites. In fact, most indie bands upload their own music, not waiting for fans to do it for them. In fact since copyright automatically is assigned to all created content, it would be impossible for bittorrent users to distribute content that is not copyrighted (legally torrents may only distribute content on which copyright has lapsed [as of last year that would be anything created before 1642] or if the copyright holder gives permission).

Secondly, I use four bittorrent sites. One of them expressedly forbids uploading any content if the artist objects. Essentially that means no RIAA or MPAA content.

I don’t doubt that a majority of bittorrents are of material the artists/labels/studios would rather not have shared but 99%? No fucking way.

But even if bittorrent users are all evil (and not just me), this cartoon still makes a lot of sense:

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CBS: Yes to the anti-choice folks, no to GLBTs.

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iBank.

Just do it. Cut the bastards out of the loop entirely.

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I’m not a gun guy or a vet, so this Ranger Against War post was news to me.

RAW is baffled by the jesus scopes controversy, the size of the order for one, the need for scopes even more so.

Apparently, unless you’re using a sniper rifle, a trained marksman shouldn’t need a scope for anything within 450 yards, and the Army’s rifles aren’t accurate beyond that. Grunts have no use for scopes, especially given that they’re not supposed to shoot first in Afghanistan, and who’s going to shoot at us from beyond 450 yards? [RAW explains that you use mortars or artillery for foes further away than 450 yards.]

Sounds like the real scandal isn’t the Bible verses, it’s the contract itself.

Surprise, surprise.

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Etc:

I didn’t know we just rammed sanctions on Iran through Congress, did you?

Alan Dershowitz, war crime enabler — not just a douchebag anymore

You wouldn’t think there’d be any profit in scamming the jobless, but you underestimate the willingness of con men to emulate Wall Street by taking some schmucks last dime

Lies the liars tell about credit card debt

Mick on banksters

If feminist orgs weren’t the captives of their own memberships, this strategy just might work (and it would work if feminist orgs were outwardly focused instead of obsessed with their own internal politics which are exacerbated by those who abuse the consensus process)

The re-emergence of haggling is not, imho, a good thing (I like Norwegian rules: you set a price that lets you make a profit, and if it’s too high, no one buys from you)

Smart dust (one day you’re going to wake up and you won’t recognize the world you’re living in)

More on the recording industry’s track record of suppressing innovation and promoting crap (who knows, maybe Holly was Wellstoned by Decca)

Sarah Palin expounding once again on shit she knows nothing about: feminism

Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe (never had a threesome with Sarah Palin)

Missouri denies survivors benefits to trooper’s “widower”

Blowing factoids out their ass

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Microsoft sex-drugs party? Much as I’d love to believe it one owner owns a pharmaceutical company, another appears to have a bio-tech background, and googles for the third owner keep pulling up folks who served in the Israeli armed forces.

Sex and drug parties have little place in business outside of the recording and movie industries, but stories like this one are all too familiar to those corpos who’ve crossed paths with religious liars who insist on demonizing their former business partners.

Sorry, this is one anti-MS story I don’t buy.

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Biggest lie I saw today:

You’re forgiven if you read this to mean that UHG occasionally demands its customers provide more tests and specialists instead of UHG’s real speciality: revising the rules so as to obstruct access to more treatments and specialists.

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Rip, I guess we knew ye.

Apparently the real Torn is closer to the characters he portrays than you might have thought.

78 years old? Looks good for an old souse.

Bearing false witness: the Katherine Kersten story

Katherine Kersten’s finally experienced a complete break from reality. Here is her version of the year-long healthcare insurance reform battle. These are all direct quotes:

Republicans…were pushed out of the process.

Democrats accused [Republicans] of being in the pocket of special interests….

the folks on Main Street didn’t buy the Democratic line

tactic of ignoring and ridiculing Republican ideas

Is it any wonder that every “solution” that follows this biliously false set up is simply a stalking horse to increase the profits of private insurers even further? Kersten’s solutions:

Allow people to buy health insurance across state lines

Give small businesses, the self-employed and others the power to pool their resources to offer health care at lower prices

Provide health insurance coverage for those who don’t have it

Increase access and affordability for those with preexisting conditions

Enact medical malpractice reform

Her first solution was discussed but didn’t go anywhere because Republicans and Blue Dogs only wanted to open up markets without putting any conditions on the rapacious insurers.

Her second point? I’m self-employed. If I really had to have insurance, I could join the National Writers Union and buy it through them. (They in turn would see their rates go up or, more likely, their insurer would reject me.) I simply do not know of any federal or state encumbrance to pooling resources. All impediments to getting insurance are constructed by insurance companies who are terrified of insuring anyone who doesn’t live on bran and jog five miles a day while being descended from a family renown for their longevity.

Three and four were at the heart of every bill the Republicans peed on.

Enact medical malpractice reform (thereafter followed the usual cut and paste screed on tort reform). But Kersten does have a good point here. The vast majority of malpractice suits target only five percent of our doctors. Let’s take away their licenses so the lawyers don’t have bad doctors to sue anymore.

Stunningly, Kersten gets paid for this: another dishonest argument on behalf of the party that can’t say yes to anything except maybe another heaping helping of slanders, lies and distortions. We all know who killed reform and it wasn’t our side (altho our side certainly enabled their No-istry).

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Texas doesn’t just force their children to read outrageous propaganda in lieu of actual textbooks, they also protect their children from anyone who ever dared criticize our corporate overlords.

Seriously.

Do these people do anything that’s not driven by their fears and hatred?

Even I am not afraid of a 65-year-old nun (despite the fact that she ultimately reports to Pope Natzinger). Nick Coleman reports that it all eventually worked out. Eventually.

But there is no hope Sr. Scully will ever get to use real (non-Stalinized) textbooks. Texas has seen to that.

So-called conservatives. Who knew that lying and censorship were so integral to the agenda of the righteous right?

We tolerate the presence of a propaganda channel that deliberately exacerbates societal discord and which by design drives wedges between Americans. Radio Rwanda Blabfest and their TV affiliate Fox News broadcast 24/7 in this country, and sooner or later they’re going to convince their Hutu followers to wage war against the Tutu “minority” that swept the Kenyan into office.

As with pre-Reich Germany, Foxicans lie openly and dare anyone to disagree with them (which isn’t that easy because after Saturday they’ll never share the stage with a Democrat and an open mic again — except, of course, within the confines of a Sunday morning blatherfest with a corporate media whore to moderate). They also like to gather in groups and wave scary things at the rest of us.

Will people pay attention when windows get broken? Or do we have to wait until they try to burn down the Capitol and start rounding up homosexuals?

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Money. When the banks won’t lend it, others will.

Once upon a time we had laws to protect us from those others. Now we have NYTimes reporters romanticizing outfits that do payday loans for small businesses. (The ones that survived the death of Main Street.)

Odd thing yesterday. Had lunch with my folks in southern Minnesota and we agreed that shopping malls were bad for communities. My point was that money you spend at Wal-Mart leaves the community. My mother’s point, which surprised me, was that my hometown has a vibrant downtown because the locals have never patronized the one and only mall on the edge of town.

My hometown is genuinely conservative, and real conservatives don’t forsake their lifelong business partners because some chain at the mall has better prices. These small town Iowans are still peeved that one of the local banks got bought out by a regional player. Even my parents ended up switching from the Republican (chain) bank to the Democratic (locally owned) bank.

Local is conservative. Chain is corporate. Corporate ≠ conservative, not when your local population has a good school and an educated populace.

But when the schools suck and people are ignorant, my but how the rules change.

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The Roseville Library is about to get almost twice as big, again.

I used to check out CDs back in the day before bittorrent changed my life. It’s already a very large library with a two-story Dunn Bros. coffee shop attached to it.

So is this to make room for new books and media? Not hardly.

When completed, the library will occupy 73,000 square feet — 30,000 square feet more than the old space — and be topped by a second floor. It will also meet Gold LEED certification requirements for environmentally friendly and energy-efficient building design.

The greening of the building added $780,600 to the price and a month to the construction timetable, allowing the heating and air conditioning systems to run in the empty building to detoxify it.

A grand-opening celebration is scheduled for July 10, library director Susan Nemitz said.

“I think the thing that most excites me is standing in the children’s space,” she said, “because it’s large and beautiful already.”

The space eventually will look out on a garden with outdoor reading spaces, Nemitz said, thanks in large part to the Friends of the Ramsey County Libraries. The group stepped in last year to raise money for amenities that were cut when Ramsey County commissioners trimmed some features.

Access to computers will improve, too, with 120 work-stations compared with 30 prior to construction.

Let’s call this what it is: stealth human services. Roseville is using their library system to create public meeting space, quality daycare, internet access and what sounds like a mini park.

All of which is fine by me. Community-provided meeting spaces enable citizen empowerment. Quality daycare means better adjusted kids growing up to be well-adjusted taxpayers. Internet access democratizes a society increasingly stratified by bandwidth access. A mini park makes life better, and gives kids and adults a place to go where they are able to walk and think without being exposed to toxic experiments in branding and other forms of corporate self-aggrandizement.

Now let’s build some libraries like that in St. Paul and Minneapolis proper. Or do only ‘burban kids get gold-plated bookmobiles?

This is why we have government in the first place: to provide us with the things we need to have better lives. This is what progressives do to make all our lives better.

Cue the pickets this summer objecting to the library having a copy of Ann Frank’s notorious diary, the one with the V-word in it.

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I watched Lovely Bones last night. A must see for modern teens, and not a bad flick for adults.

They don’t come right out and say it, but it’s pretty obvious the serial killer down the street is a Republican. And Susan Sarandon makes for a great 21st Century chain-smoking, bottle-hitting grandma who would have voted for the Democrat if only she’d remembered to vote.

And no, no clue why every topic inspired me to write a sermon today. Links later but right now I have to run out to the warehouse as I have a new list.

lemongrass

mangoes

rice

chili paste

galanga

Your list may vary.

Breaking!

Via David Dayen (who swiped it from Taegan Goddard [who I'm also not linking to]), a brilliant anatomy of a news story.

Share this one with your friends as it really does explain what you’re watching when you think you’re watching the news.

In wake of 9/11, NYC easily disrupted

The rumors were flying both ways but the Times is pretty emphatic that it’s time to start spreading the news: the Feds are turning tail and are moving the 9/11 plotters trial out of New York City.

Which forevermore should be known as Bedwetters National Park, formerly a courageous band of entrepreneurial Americans living in what was once known as the greatest city on earth. Now? Reduced to ignominy thanks to too many citizens spending too much time not sleeping while listening to the fearmongering hysterics at Fox News and talk radio who think they’re king of the hill (top of the list, head of the heap).

In what conceivable way is this not caving into the craven ideologues who drive our national discourse?

Gail Collins gets it:

“There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive,” said Bloomberg.

And the Justice Department is backing down. The trial will happen somewhere else. People in Lower Manhattan will breathe a sigh of relief.

But this feels very wrong.

The Bloomberg rebellion fits right into the sour, us-first mood that’s settled over the country. It’s part of the same impulse that caused Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska to decree that a historic overhaul of the country’s messed-up health care system was not going to happen unless his home state got a special exemption from sharing the costs.

Or the Not-in-My-Backyard uprising that followed President Obama’s attempt to move the Guantánamo prisoners into American maximum-security lockups. No matter how remote the prison, local politicians said that the danger was too great to bear. Both of Montana’s Democratic senators immediately decreed that their entire state was a no-go zone.

Or the Republican race to the other side of the room any time the Obama administration proposes anything. Rudy Giuliani, who watched “in awe of our system” when terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted in a civilian court in Virginia, instantly attacked the plans for the Manhattan trial. Giuliani kept finding everything Obama did worse and worse until he finally flipped completely over the edge and claimed that there had been no terrorist attacks in the United States during the Bush administration.

It’s all part of a cult of selfishness that decrees it’s fine to throw your body in front of any initiative, no matter how important, if resistance looks more profitable.

Oh, but Obama totally owned the GOP Congressional retreat yesterday. Totally. So much so Fox cut away from the action because he was actually looking presidential. Republicans are bummed, but they only have their koolaid drinking ways to blame. [See Steve Benen on the megaphone effect.]

Maha sums up the damage:

I doubt very much if the extremist ideologues who make up the “House GOP” actually understand that a stack of paper containing bullet points that repeat the words “common-sense” and “affordable” a lot are not the same thing as a real policy proposal. The House GOP actually has a website called “GOP Solutions” that amounts to prettily presented air. Here’s the health care reform page, for example. It’s all unsubstantiated claims.

Obama’s pretty good at taking out sitting targets. Maybe someday he’ll learn how to walk the talk. He’s sure not likely to ever get this kind of forum again. Ever.

Tristero has an appropriate take and Lee Judge reminds us of where we started from:

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I would bet any amount of money that Jim Geraghty couldn’t successfully define the difference between Trotskyism and Bolshevism if his life depended on it.

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Everything I got on O’Keefe & Co.:

Justin Elliott with a good bio of O’Keefe

Breitbart is manically attacking the media for reporting this case exactly like Republican news sites and blogs did

The Christian Science Monitor on slash and burn faux journalism

More on Dai’s dickheaded Penis Monologues

O’Keefe’s lame second thoughts

Disinformation’s long tail

PZ finally owns up to the UM-Morris connection

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Factchecking Politifact.

I have the exact same concerns. Because the flow of distortion is coming overwhelmingly from the right (and Rahm), factchecking orgs seem compelled to give the Republicans much more than an even break, and in that regard they fail horribly.

Truth is truth, and you can’t balance out the truth when it’s only under attack from one side.

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Loons, goons and granfalloon wannabes:

Wasilla Bible Church fire (doing smores indoors?)

You betcha!

Roger Ailes to be on ABC this Sunday morning

Tiller killer convicted (jury only needed 15 minutes)

Another roll call hate America vote

40%

Suffer bitches

One step ahead of the investigators

FECES

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Mark this one on your calendars. I agree with Opinuendo that we should invest in a new baseball park in St. Paul.

Not an inconsistent position. The ball park would serve as a regional baseball field in addition to being the new home of the St. Paul Saints, an A League team that’s loads of fun to watch and that isn’t otherwise living off the public tit.

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Some deep thoughts.

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iPad (personal).

iPad (meta).

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Etc.:

Greenwald on Iraq (remember Iraq?)

Killing the filibuster (a how to)

We’re still stop-lossing, and we’re still wrong wrong wrong to be doing so

Building their apartness, one bigoted court ruling at a time

Philosopher kings

Letting furriners use our courts to weaken America

Bankster admits to some of the truth

Rarely is the true nature of Wall Street so candidly discussed

Good Lambert on Air America’s passing

Harper’s editor shreds Jack Shafer’s drive-by sniping

Excellent long read on marijuana

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Bob Herbert had lunch with Howard Zinn recently. We did lose a national treasure. History’s verdict is already in: David “revisionist pseudo historian” Horowitz slandered Zinn’s memory on NPR the other night. Horowitz flatters himself to think his opinion matters, and NPR insults all of us by pretending the former Black Panther adds value to the discussion.

As Herbert notes, “That he was considered radical says way more about this society than it does about him.”

A Tiny Revolution has more.

Give NYC some rubber sheets and get that trial started!

This is an abomination:

The White House ordered the Justice Department Thursday night to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.

The dramatic turnabout came hours after Mayor Bloomberg said he would “prefer that they did it elsewhere” and then spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The NY Daily News says this news pleases Chuck Schumer.

I thought New Yorkers were tough, but thanks to Fox News they now wet the bed on cue. There’s a poll in the sidebar. Let ‘em know what you think. (So far it’s running 20 to 1 in favor of rubber sheets.)

More from David Dayen. Jeralyn says the DOJ has made no commitment to move the trial, but if scaredy-pants New Yorkers don’t want it, Denver’s up to the job.

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When you see the graph of profits in the U.S. from 1970 to the present, it’s hard not to think of a lion taking down a wildebeest.

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Your daily dose of O’Keefe & Co.:

Landrieu’s response, office swept for bugs

Digby

Stunt driver (as in news media that drives exculpatory excusifying)

Politico resorts to O’Keefism

Leadership Institute criticizes O’Keefe (who was staying in Nola with one of their former employees!)

Schuster v Breitbart

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A very good post from Sara Robinson on the extreme right, their actual numbers and their fellow travelers.

Fear driven politics does not make for a stronger nation.

Fear is the mind killer.

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Krugman.

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Fox Nation: all the nasty swipes we care to publish.

Drudge Nation: we shovel, you believe.

CNN Nation: we hire the dregs Fox Nation refused to hire.

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Saving Justice Alito.

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Apparently Australia’s rightwing is even more looney tunes than ours:

The proposed Australian Government clampdown on smut just got a whole lot broader, as news emerged of a ban on small breasts and female ejaculation in adult material….

Breasts came under the spotlight a year ago, as Senators Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett commenced a campaign against publicly available porn. Rounding up magazines from corner shops and filling stations, Senator Joyce claimed that publications featuring small-breasted women were encouraging paedophilia.

And electing dickless nutjobs like Barnaby Joyce discourages reproduction altogether.

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Etc.:

I don’t think it’s possible to hold a protest at an undisclosed location, but I’m sure that if I had more money (lots more money) it would all make sense to me

The very first iGrow store opens in Oakland and elsewhere in Cali marijuana petitions are being filed (can Spring be far behind?)

Turning Sally Quinn into the Marie Antoinette of the teabagger generation might be fun

Pepper spray canisters that look like fire extinguishers?

Diary of Ann Frank pulled from school shelves because wingnut parent couldn’t deal with the word vagina

Taibbi v Brooks

Roeder judge takes voluntary manslaughter and second degree murder off the table

Seven years for walking through the wrong door?

Polling data establishes that the media have failed to explain Senate voting procedures to average Americans

Mick’s Friday Palin rant

Citizens United decision falls apart under scrutiny

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A big shout out to Tire One on University Avenue just west of Snelling. I took my car in to beg for some air (you cannot find a working air machine anywhere in the Cities) and they grabbed an air tank, took it out to my car and put air in all four tires.

No charge.

These guys have always been good to me and I recommend them if you live in the Midway area.

Nothing makes me feel more secure in January in Minnesota than knowing I have enough air in my tires.

AKlo cool with Bernanke

What does Amy Klobuchar have in common with Max Baucus, Saxby Chambliss, Lindsey Graham, Orinn Hatch, Mike Johanns, Joe Lieberman, Mitch McConnell, and Richard Shelby?

They and 61 other U.S. Senators think Ben fucking Bernanke is the best gol’darn Fed Chairman ever.

We coulda had Stiglitz.

Minnesota Democrats had a free pass in 2006. Mark Kennedy was such an obvious bozo that we could have run anyone and won.

We ran Amy Klobuchar (who won), and we lost.

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Another you lie moment, this one coming afterwards and not to Obama’s face, because that’s how Jim Inhofe rolls.

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More candidates announce: Orly Taitz for CA Sec of State or A.G. (she’s waiting for guidance from her astrologer), and in Maryland’s CD8, Murray Hill Inc. has announced its plans to be the first corporation to run for office.

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More on our merry pranksters/phumbers:

From the FBI account

Basel confirmed as a Minnesotan

O’Keefe ordered to live with parents

John Hood pulls the plug on his sympathy for O’Keefe

Hot Air on what they were up to

That last one is doubly troubling. Allahpundit notes that the scam was to kill their phones then wait to see if anyone ever said, “Oh my, how will our constituents contact us?” A pretty high bar since the average person would just be saying, “wtf is wrong with the fucking phone?!”

But the real burn here is that even if a staffer said such a thing, what proof is there that O’Keefe would have ever aired them doing so? A man who selectively edits video to the point of shutting off the sound and summarizing for you what others say doesn’t sound like a guy who would play fair.

This is ratfucking, not journalism. And these little shits were professionally trained to be ratfuckers.

I think we need to start asking GOoPer candidates what their position on ratfucking is.

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16,000 arrests yielding 949 firearms, 6,805 actual criminal charges, 9,339 deportations, and 202 actual gang leaders.

That’s Jeralyn’s breakdown of how effective our anti-gang busts are.

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Bachmann’s out.

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Zelaya’s supporters see him off at the airport.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, Chávez seems to be unraveling.

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From an anonymous tip right to the page, mis-sourced, with a stealth correction on top of it?

Yep, Politico is apparently passing on rumors from MN wingnuts without bothering to factcheck them, and yes, this story ran at Minnesota Democrats Exposed but, and this is choice, Luke Hellier actually factchecked it, something Politico failed to do.

Minnesota Democrats Exposed factchecks better than Politico? And the PiPress runs Politico stories?

Sad, really sad.

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This is the link you were looking for.

This one? Not so much.

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Via Maha, a story that will disgust you, and it’s not even about Davos.

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Tarryl Clark is OK, but I really like Dr. Maureen Reed. She’s no liberal, but she is my idea of what a moderate should be like. Some issues we need to keep our distance from, at least if you want to have a prayer of winning in some parts of the state.

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Since I didn’t watch the SOTU, I didn’t see the response either. Cute trick, putting people behind McDonnell so they could have some applause.

But putting a uniformed Army sergeant behind McDonnell? That’s explicitly against Army regs.

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I’d heard there was a Vikings fan who refuses to trim his beard until the Vikes win a Super Bowl. I didn’t think much about it until I saw a picture of the guy’s beard.

I’m pretty good at describing things, but I have no words for that beard.

I gotta think this guy is not married, or in any kind of serious relationship.

Given that, he might want to consider opting for the grossest piercing ever.

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More on the iPad.

Video. (From Denny, another iPad video)

BoingBoing.

Another good thing about the iPad. It’s going to build a market for monitors that pivot, making secretaries everywhere very happy.

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Howard Zinn, Howard Zinn, Howard Zinn.

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UPDATE: From Koski, it appears that some beyond evil power company is cutting off customers on the Pine Ridge Lakota Indian Reservation despite temps well below zero.

If this is true, the owners of Lacreek Electric Company should be held fully accountable for any loss of life or health consequences.

O’Keefe, cont.

A few more links:

Salt Lake GOoPers sheepishly cancel O’Keefe

emptywheel

James who?

O’Keefe’s special psychic ability to make his own predictions come true

Misogyna Monologues

Pelican Institute

Pelican Institute

The Leadership Institute (aka the By Any Means Necessary Institute)

Schmelzer

Josh Marshall

Wolcott

DarkSyde

Beck

Breitbart

Scroll down for Freeper responses

Steve King, literally dumber than a box of Freepers

Bios

Campus crusaders for conservatism

Ratfuckers

Proving yourself innocent?

Breitbart discovers “facts”

Inconvenient facts

“There’s much more to this story”? Let’s hope so (I’ll let you know when Hannity holds the fundraiser)

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From Kos:

Kevin Looper, who is running the campaign to ratify the ballot measures, said that “when we started doing focus groups, it was amazing to hear voters demanding to know where the banks were on these measures. Because they wanted to be on the opposite side.”

Cue the beltway frauds with their anti-bank rhetoric that almost always masks more giveaways.

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Geithner ripped on cross-examination.

More.

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Infamy.

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Business as usual.

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Whoores:

It’s easy to be trusted by your viewers when you spend all your time lying about the other networks

Conflict of interest? But aren’t we all on Israel’s side?

Tasini finally makes it into the NYTimes!

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Harkin voting against Bernanke at least once (hopefully twice).

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Not why I blog, but interesting nonetheless.

But Norwegianists everywhere do agree on some things.

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Voodoo priest complains about Scientologists.

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Charles II’s second to last and last posts on Honduras.

It’s over. Another democracy crib death courtesy of Wall Street and the Central Republican Agency.

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Aussie arrested for possessing Simpsons porn, specifically pictures I’ve linked to from this site.

I don’t care if a cartoon shows Ronald Reagan’s corpse raping Jon Benet Ramsay, a cartoon cannot be illegal (altho showing a cartoon like that to a child is illegal and showing it to a coworker can get you fired/sued).

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mcjoan says Oregon cancels out Massachusetts.

I agree, but really I think the whole problem is that the teabaggers are righteously angry, but at all the wrong people.

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Excellent long read on book piracy, but it fails to describe the book torrent scene I’m involved in.

Granted, the torrent sites I frequent focus on music, but the books are mostly medical textbooks, computer manuals, and role-playing game guides. I’ve seen a few bibliographies uploaded, but mostly nothing from the NYTimes fiction bestseller list.

For that stuff I go to the library.

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Mark Dayton supports casinos in the metro area?

He really is not anywhere near as bright as you would think.

Legalized gambling is legalized predation.

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Not in support of the dumbest terrorist ever, but Jeralyn has some good excerpts about life in a Supermax, America’s answer to tiger cages.

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When King and Bachmann get together, brace yourself for the stupid.

And I wish one of their supporters would explain to me the difference between their Declaration of Health Care Independence, and right to die legislation.

I guess dying from lack of healthcare is only OK when your insurance provider insists on it.

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Birkey on Kersten’s latest bile-ateralism.

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The iPad.

It is everything I wanted it to be and as more or less as you want. Pricing options? $499 sounds good to me because 16GB is a lot of media content. I suppose that if I was a world traveler I’d want 64GB so I could load up on movies for the long flights, but I’m home-based and just want something that will let me read/view while sitting in my easy chair. Without a hot notebook in my lap.

The critics really don’t get this one. Ten inches is fucking perfect. You have no idea how much time I spend at my computer sitting in a drafters chair instead of a recliner because I can’t pull a lazyboy up to the desk.

This meets a huge need for the digerati.

Huge. Apple has just rescued the entire publishing industry from comics to serious journals.

Not soon, but by next Christmas I will have one of these.

SOTU: Same Old Tired Uninspired tripe

I didn’t watch the State of the Union speech last night. The Wolves were only down 19 against the Cavs early in the 4th quarter, and I decided to keep watching the game rather than put myself at risk of becoming truly depressed. (If our economy was only down 19 points to the Cavs in the 4th quarter I’d be ecstatic.)

Listened to MPR this morning while driving a friend to the airport. Eric Paulsen was on and for five minutes he packed sand up Cathy Wurzer’s butt. He never actually lied, but he was more misleading than a pots and pans salesman. Spending is up 66% under Obama?!!! Gosh, that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Bush-Bernanke’s trillion dollar bailout, could it?

Paulsen is a weasel, and reminds me of Tim “Gov. BridgeFail” Pawlenty whenever I hear him speak. He’s also representative of what “good” Republicans sound like when they’re trying to pull more wool over your eyes.

NPR factchecked Obama’s numbers, and they came up better than I would have thought. The bailout actually seems to have worked. If, that is, 10% unemployment and economic forecasts from hell rock your weltanschauung and if screwing low-wage workers floats your dinghy.

I don’t blame Obama for the shape we’re in, but I do blame him for refusing to institute critically necessary reforms. Starting with the public execution of about half a dozen Wall Street CEOs immediately followed by another half dozen executions and then a few spectacular airport shootouts as the remaining bastards make a run for their private jets.

No, for me, the most interesting thing about last night is the cool 360° picture of Congress the NYTimes took. I love 360° pictures a lot more than I love watching pundit sapiens commenting on the aisle jockeying to shake the President’s hand as he comes and goes.

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Last night’s you lie moment.

C&L has video.

Glenn Greenwald has quite a few things to say, and since Greenwald supported the Citizens United decision, his remarks about Alito’s immaturity are especially compelling.

More SOTU lip reading.

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Wasserman: GOoPers rooting for America to FAIL.

Red Eye Crew: Fuck Obama.

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The Times has already gone fuzzy on James , expressing bafflement in lieu of outrage over O’Keefe’s outrageously felonious behavior.

Mr. O’Keefe has long espoused a form of journalism that draws attention to itself. He has made prank calls to Planned Parenthood clinics and pulled off a Taxpayer’s Clearinghouse stunt — taxpayers were given large fake checks, only to be told the money was for the bank bailout — that would not be out of place in a movie by Michael Moore, the liberal gadfly.

In an interview with a Web site run by the Leadership Institute, which recruits and trains conservative leaders and helped Mr. O’Keefe and Mr. Basel start their campus newspapers, they espoused a mix of traditional investigation — “Follow the money trail” — and more provocative techniques, like recording professors’ lectures and printing the transcripts in the newspaper.

Cue yet another recitation of the media-approved version of the ACORN sting (barely). Arrest a conservative and the media whores will drag in Michael Moore’s name every fucking time.

Media. Whores. And whore should be pronounced with a very long “o.”

Who did they quote? O’Keefe’s attorney, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, and NRO’s John Hood, spanning the wide spectrum of American political opinion to include a hack attorney, an insane Mormon talk show host, an insane Filipino-American propagandist, and an establishment WASPy wingnut. [Hood, btw, said of Obama's SOTU: "The president looks like a jerk tonight." more] The only Democrat mentioned is Michael Moore, and not in a flattering way.

Whores. Who work for the media.

Even the WaPost dug up some pre-bugging tweets about O’Keefe’s next big sting and rare is the Republicans scandal the WaPost can be out-whored on. And the right-leaning L.A. Times brings up Watergate in the first graf of their editorial on the boy blunder, and closes on this scolding note:

It isn’t clear what the men were after or why they targeted Landrieu, who is one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. But the fact that they tried to access the office’s telephone closet, where the wiring for the system is located, suggests that they may have wanted to tap Landrieu’s phone network.

O’Keefe was in legal trouble before now. When he and fellow conservative activist Hannah Giles posed as a pimp and a prostitute and secretly videotaped conversations with ACORN employees last summer, they may have been violating laws in several states, including California, that forbid surreptitious recordings. That didn’t excuse the behavior they uncovered at ACORN, nor the organization’s subsequent efforts to deflect blame and avoid taking responsibility for its internal problems. But it did mark the ascent of a new brand of online journalism employing methods that are at best unethical and at worst illegal.

In an era of citizen bloggers and media fragmentation, old-fashioned standards of ethics and objectivity are breaking down. The right and left alike — but especially conservatives — celebrate that turn of events; resentment over a perceived bias by the “mainstream media” has sent them flocking to partisan news outlets and turning the likes of O’Keefe into folk heroes. Yet his latest stunt less resembles legitimate investigative journalism than the kind of illicit political dirty-tricks campaign that brought down Nixon. O’Keefe’s fellow ideologues will no doubt continue to defend him, but embracing such methods won’t improve his credibility, or theirs.

More:

Jonathan Turley (video)

More on the tweets and O’Keefe gloating (and a truly bizarre explanation that O’Keefe was just trying to shut down Landrieu’s phones . . . which would still have to be a felony, not a prank)

2 out of 4 phumbers had CIA ties

Eric Boehlert

Phone tampering just as illegal as phone bugging

Aprés tampering: Klobuchar cooks gumbo for Landrieu

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Etc.:

Joe Galloway is retiring, and journalism will be noticeably the poorer for it

The tea party in Nashville is turning into a big dud, just like their speakers

Gaza

For a 93-year-old, Zsa Zsa’s not looking bad

Trumka on the latest bonuses

Franken’s vote is still up for grabs Bernanke-wise (Klobuchar is, of course, doing what she’s told to do but the big question is whether or not the Bernanke memos leaked to Darryl Issa will be in time to derail the bankster’s favorite regulator)

Wingnuts are still tweeting Teddy Kennedy driving “jokes”

Great shaggy vinyl story at CP

McDonald’s loses court fight over single slice of cheese

Wellpoint’s profits up 727% (amazingly, some of their customers are still alive, but probably not for long)

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Howard Zinn, R.I.P.

I’m a bit surprised to discover the wingnut blogs aren’t trash talking Zinn. Yet.

But jackals will always come for the lion after the lion has died.

That’s the way of the jackal.

5 zillion more links stashed, more later.

And the truth will get you 10 years

The Strib lets Amy Klobuchar and John Kline expound on what the President should say in his State of the Union speech tonight. Klobuchar goes with ninth-grade science fairs, 2000-man drumming routines, lofty goals and generic fixes. Kline wants the American people to come first and believes that the President should eschew go-it-alone strategies, which I take to mean that Obama should start sending Kline’s fellow GOoPers to Gitmo to loosen them up a bit before any future bipartisanship occurs altho that might be a bit crowded as he specifically wants to see Obama keep the terrorists in Cuba. That, btw, was the only specific in either “free advice for Obama” op-ed.

Unlike Klobuchar’s unicorns and daisies, Kline sees pundits, sharp tones, and a new direction, and he knows he is not alone in believing that the one true path to jobs creation is to cut taxes on businesses and further loosen regulations. Because that worked so well for Haiti, I guess.

Two opportunities wasted by two center-leaning hacks who couldn’t muster up actual solutions to specific problems if you subpoenaed them. Sweeping generalities have no place in a conversation with two lawmakers. Amy, John: you can actually draft and make laws. Why don’t you? I’m not aware of either of your names on any legislation that speaks to the problems you want Obama to address. Our economy will not be fixed by better designed swimming pool drains, and our nation is not made safer by giving away the treasury to the military-industrial complex.

Most of the gasbag pundits are also offering advice to Obama today. Given that context, Klobuchar and Kline don’t do so bad. Maybe they should reconsider their career paths….

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What do you think will be tonight’s big distraction?

My bet is on someone smuggling an inflatable beach ball into Congress and then lofting it back and forth among the members during the slow parts of the speech.

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A timely reminder from the NYTimes about why we’re in the mess we’re in.

“The investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain,” said John C. Bogle, the founder and former chairman of the Vanguard Group, the mutual fund giant. “The financial industry gets paid before their clients, and we get paid whether times are good or bad.”

Institutional investors are alarmed by what they characterize as excessive rewards for bank employees. While banks are increasing salaries and bonuses for many employees, many have yet to restore dividends that were cut during the financial crisis.

“It’s not a fair shake,” said John A. Hill, chairman of the trustees at Putnam Funds, another big mutual fund company. “I think the shareholders who paid for building that franchise should be getting a bigger share of the franchise’s profits.”

And, oddly enough, when the corporation in question actually manufactures goods or provides needed services, the shareholders do get all the profits with none set aside for wages.

There is no consistency here other than the insistence that those on top always win, and that their share can come in any form so long as it’s at the expense of workers or customers.

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Unsurprisingly, people who make their livings on camera exploiting the misery of others don’t like the cameras turned on themselves on those rare occasions when they are held accountable.

Nancy Grace has never been a well person, and Court TV ruthlessly exploited Grace’s pathological need for vengeance by turning her loose on all manner of victims, some of whom she victimized further. Melinda Duckett’s two-year-old boy went missing in 2006, and after Grace harassed the mother on air, Duckett committed suicide. The cameras Grace wants turned off are the ones that will be at her deposition.

Turn the cameras on, and lets get that footage pirated and on the internet ASAP.

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A new scandal over the DFL database. This time it appears that a right-leaning union got hold of it and used it to do a mailing to DFL caucus goers in which they trash talked gubernatorial candidate R.T. Rybak.

Politically, no one plays dirtier than cops or firefighters. It’s always amazed me that the clinically paranoid right never seems to fear a politicized police force, even though cops have helped to steal more free elections than the commies ever dreamt of.

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Oregon voters decide to stick it to the rich.

Assuming they aren’t all consumed by some mega-disaster (volcanoes erupting, earthquakes, New York bankers shutting off the state’s access to funding), this could be the start of a delightful trend.

There is something profoundly anti-Darwinian about the right’s insistence that the burdens be borne by the young and small while the rich and established are permitted to evade their obligations.

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The L.A. Times found time to contact James O’Keefe’s dad.

O’Keefe’s father, James O’Keefe Jr., said in a telephone interview that he wasn’t sure what his son was doing at Landrieu’s office.

“He was maybe trying to do a prank to get some information, but that’s about it,” he said. “He wouldn’t break the law. He would know better than that.”

The 55-year-old engineer in Westwood, N.J., called his son “an upstanding young man who is maybe stretching the limits a little bit.”

“He wants to hound the truth, and he’s using different tactics to get out the truth,” the elder O’Keefe said.

Apparently no one else had anything good to say about the vile little wiretapping, pimp-shizzling shit who has now been abandoned by even Michelle Malkin even as Andrew Breitbart feverishly tries to distance himself from his #1 employee.

City Pages on O’Keefe’s underling, Joseph Basel, contains one precious quote:

Leaving the jail with Basel and Dai, O’Keefe said only, “Veritas,” the Latin word for truth.

To which I say Vandicus.

More.

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Etc.:

Cartoonists rooting for the iTablet to change things, and for them (and artists and photographers in general) it should (a larger color screen means design will again be critical to capturing eyeballs)

WaPost polls readers on whether Favre should retire (because the Vikings really care what racist Redskins fans think about these things)

66,000 gays in the military have successfully not told anyone (making you wonder where that number came from)

86 “sex-violence cases” involving Chicagoland nursing home residents, but only one arrest?!

Fire retardants inhibit pregancy? (There must be a joke or two in there somewhere)

Remind me again about how the Communists turned Russia into one big toxic waste dump

How fucking stupid is McCain challenger J.D. Hayworth? Obama “should come forward with his birth certificate” stupid

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More later but I’m thinking I’ll pass on the SOTU speech. Until Obama comes up with some new lines, I think I’ve heard enough of the old ones.

Ratt Fuckkers in the 21st Century!!!

Turns out the fourth plumber telephone repairman was a native of Mankato.

While O’Keefe is well-known, Flanagan, Basel and Dai are not. Flanagan worked last year as a paid intern for Rep. Mary Fallin (R-Okla.).

Dai, who is from Alexandria, is a Chinese immigrant and was president of the Conservative Student Union at George Washington University while studying there in 2005, student records show.

Basel, a Mankato, Minn., native, and O’Keefe became friends as fellow founders of conservative newspapers at their respective colleges, O’Keefe at Rutgers and Basel at the University of Minnesota-Morris.

In a joint interview given to CampusReform.org two weeks ago, O’Keefe and Basel were quoted about their frustration with the liberal bent of college media. O’Keefe urged young conservatives to think and act boldly to avoid complacency.

“The more bold you are, the more opportunities will be open to you,” O’Keefe said. “The less bold you are, the less opportunities in life will be open to you.”

Sounds like O’Keefe really is a pimp, complete with a stable of young conservative followers.

More at the Washington Post.

And from Digby.

Not to mention No Mister Nice Blog.

Fox News yearns for context, as does Gawker:

Flanagan is the son of William Flanagan, the acting U.S. Attorney for the western district of Louisiana. Which makes it rather awkward that he was arrested in, and is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for, the eastern district of Louisiana. The elder Flanagan ascended to the gig just one week ago after his Bush-appointed boss left office; none other than Sen. Mary Landrieu has submitted recommendations for his replacement to the White House.

Back to Basel:

A Joseph Basel is listed as one of 15 University of Minnesota-Morris College Republicans who attended Barack Obama’s inauguration last year with the help of Sen. Mark Dayton, and there’s a Joseph Basel on Facebook who attends the University of Minnesota-Morris and is friends with Stan Dai and James O’Keefe.

I do so desperately hope that there is some compelling reason why it will be necessary for the courts to review all the ACORN footage. I think your average hyper-ambitious U.S. Attorney should have no trouble turning this into the prosecution of a criminal conspiracy to manufacture scandals, even where there are none.

Otoh, it beggars the imagination to think that it would be possible to wiretap a U.S. Senator from Louisiana and not gather proof of corruption.

I wonder if you’d learn anything interesting by putting a tap on Mitch McConnell’s phones?

And please God — I’m really serious this time — could there please be a tie in to Sarah Palin?