Moloch Matters

The iPad iPod [#$@! iBranding!] was charging so I listened to some NPR money show this morning while running errands. Sound Money or Moloch Matters — one of those shows, I can’t tell them apart.

Two women were busy lying about the estate tax and yes they did tell the enormous lie about farmers being impacted by the estate tax. FUCKING LIARS! Farmers and small businesses are exempt to the tune of $3 million. How big a farm is $3 million worth?

One Iowa farm just sold for the unheard of price of just over $8,000 an acre. That’s still a 375-acre farm, or more than half a square mile. In Iowa, that’s a good-sized spread and it’s uncommon to find a farmer who owns that much land outright. Most spend their lives paying down their debt so as to leave as little debt as possible to the next generation. Farmers need some protection, but from the greedy speculators who drive up land prices, not from inheritance laws.

And no, I don’t think NPR should get Helen Thomas’ seat at White House press conferences. Not until they get back into the business of reporting news instead of mangling it and spoonfeeding it to us. They only cover the Zionist side of the Middle East, and the Wall Street side of finance. They are perfectly dreadful stewards of the public airwaves.

More about money:

Bob Herbert on fucking over your employees

Andrea Brandolini notices that the countries with the most regressive attitudes about wealth all speak English as their first language

No prison time for execs who lied about $40 billion in debt

Dave Johnson on borrowing to invest

China begins laying track for Beijing-Shanghai high speed railway (somehow I think this will do more for their economy than our corpos are doing by sitting on their cash reserves)

Reagan Republican says Obama should recess appoint Elizabeth Warren

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Big Tent Democrat, Digby and others are linking to this Atrio post, but I thought this subsequent one on women and children was pretty special too.

Some days the clarity of vision thing kicks into overdrive. Most days it doesn’t.

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Sweet. Katherine Kersten’s Christianist op-ed on missionaries in Morocco last week (published late on a Saturday afternoon) has earned a blistering rebuttal from the Moroccan Ambassador.

To claim, as Kersten’s column does, that our country is harassing Christians is particularly upsetting in its disregard for the reality in Morocco today. Every year, millions of Christians visit our country, and tens of thousands live there. All are welcome and are free to practice their faith in our local churches, with no problems.

Freedom of worship is guaranteed by Morocco’s Constitution, and extended equally to Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Morocco has a long history of religious tolerance based on an understanding that freedom to practice one’s religion also means respecting others’ rights not to abandon theirs. To maintain this balance, Moroccan law clearly prohibits proselytizing by any religious group, including Muslims.

That’s a good law. You have no more right to shove your religion in my face than I have to make you look at my porn collection. People are entitled to their own space, an ideological comfort zone, if you will. Missionaries have always been on the sick and twisted end of proselytizing. Look, here’s some medicine and food but first . . . a word from our sponsor!

As usual, when a country says fuck that shit, the Kerstens and Robertsons take offense. They refuse to acknowledge that the missionaries are the offending parties. You play by the local rules or you don’t go there. Period. There are lots of nude beaches in the world but tourists from those places don’t go to San Diego or Coney Island and take off all their clothes. They respect our customs more than we respect theirs.

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The lying liars:

Breitbart admits his clip was out of context

Again, why Breitbart isn’t a journalist or anything like one

Tea party comix (no one on the left draws that badly except this guy, and he’s dead, R.I.P.)

Fred the fucking liar Barnes

Israel: starting wars they expect us to finish for them

Fuck Diane Feinstein, and not in any way she might enjoy (the only time these establishment freaks ever mention kids is when they’re using them to take away the rights of adults) (Digby with another reason to hate Feinstein)

The Mexican drug cartel raid on Laredo that never ever happened

Milbank on Beck (Media Matters on Milbank on Beck) (Beck excusifying himself) (more from Neiwert)

No one likes the ADL’s squishy logic on the Ground Zero mosque [more from Rachel Slajda]

Palin tells Wyoming GOoPers who to vote for

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The truthful truthsayers:

Hamsher on legalization

More from Hamsher on legalization

Michael Anthony Green freed after 27 years for a rape he didn’t do

Tim Rutten on the hysterical right

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Gryphen’s got a week’s worth of Doonesbury’s Sarah Palin doll strips.

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MN:

Wolcott on TBogg on the politics of Pawlentyism

Apparently WTF also stands for Where’s The Funding? (who knew?)

MnGOoPers just can’t stop playing games with numbers

MnSpeak/Secrets of the City for sale (Brauer couches this just right, all you’re really buying is some templates — the rest of the assets are all virtual)

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Tom Vilsack wasn’t just a jerk for firing Shirley Sherrod. It appears Vilsack may be the Gov. BridgeFail of Iowa, although in his case former Gov. FloodgateFail would be more accurate.

And in other news from the Midwest, FUCK NEBRASKANS for electing and re-electing this douchebag.

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Etc.:

Bushies against Rick Perry (it’s a Karl Rove thing)

Copyright assholes steal web code from another copyright website (not that software code should be copyrightable or patentable)

Penguin Books turns 75 (yesterday)

Juan Cole on book burners

Hailstones of the Gods

Using science to scam the experts

Wind-powered cart goes faster than the wind

WINston has a Buckethead video for anyone who loves to see a guitar get shredded (part of the Axis of Laswell)

Ellen talks with Gladys from Austin

Miss Iowa throws out first pitch at Nationals game

Bits

New mast going up later today. Minnesota’s new moved up primary is only eleven days away and it’s definitely yard sign season.

America hating Republicans vs. shit-in-the-grass Dems

Billionaires on trial? Billionaire perverts who buy miscarriages of justice getting reinvestigated? I think Obama’s just figured out how to get the left fired up and ready to get out the vote!

I think the centrists who run our government truly fail to appreciate how despised the monied classes are. As well they should be. Take Sumner Redstone, frinstance.

[F]riends and former associates said Redstone is delighted to be at the center of a story that links him to a far younger woman because he believes it reinforces his reputation as a ladies’ man. “He thinks he’s Paul Newman,” said one former colleague. “He thinks women are just fatally attracted to him.”

Yes, I’m sure all my lady readers swooned when they saw that picture. I know that on a deeply personal level, I find Sumner to be a man’s man. Which is to say a dick’s dick, an asshole’s asshole, a moneygrubber nonpareil who has never once in his long life connected his money to the frequency with which he gets laid.

Then again, if you’re not in denial, how can you continue to fuck over others for money long after you’ve piled up more money than God?

Redstone’s a pimp whose only customer is himself. Sam and Charles Wyly are outright thieves with political agendas, no different than the bastards who funded Hitler.

Any effort at all to enforce our financial laws and regulations will result in more indictments, and I cannot think of a surer way for Obama to reclaim our hearts unless it would be to [gasp!] enforce our environmental laws.

Fuck the rich. It’s not our fault they’re so sexy. I’m sure they’ll make their new cellmates very, very happy.

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More spankings:

Dahlia Lithwick: Fredo shouldn’t misinterpret a handslap for exoneration

Michele Bachmann to give away the thousands she got from Bobby Thompson, the felonious fundraiser who ripped off donations to veterans to fund Republican campaigns

MoveOn.org is fed up over Social Security lies, and the AFL-CIO et al has their back (Social Security is not going broke, but a huge number of fucking lying liars want you to believe that so they can slash benefits and steal the part of your pension you were really counting on)(and by not going broke I mean NOT EVEN FUCKING CLOSE NO WAY NO HOW)

Ethics probes v criminal activity, or how John Ensign stays off the front page (and why Charlie Rangel is every bit as scummy)

Objective Fox News analyst Fred Barnes outed for being on the GOoP’s payroll

Ten questions Sarah Palin can’t/won’t answer, but it’s OK, our gutless media would never ask them anyway

Jonathan Turley on what we could expect from a Sherrod lawsuit against serial liar and Republican provocateur Andrew Breitbart (meanwhile, Alterman goes off on the media’s refusal to revisit the fraudulent ACORN smears)

PBS spanks itself for mocking Sarah Palin (only Al Gore is to be mocked, and maybe Obama and the Clintons but LEAVE SARAH PALIN ALOOOOONE!)

Chris Matthews just gets douchier and douchier

TBogg on Tim Pawlenty like Rick Santorum on a dog in heat (more from Brendan Nyhan on our ‘tarded guv)

Roy Edroso again tackles the thorny subject of why are Republicans so utterly fucking clueless about race? (it’s the nigger thing again. I call my friends child-molesting preverts but that doesn’t mean they won’t kick your fucking ass into the ground if you call them that. Friends relate differently than strangers do. If Republicans had any friends, they’d understand this.)

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The only problem with Blue Dogs helping to get rid of Harry Reid is that Chuck fucking Schumer would get Reid’s job and we’d be fellating Wall Street more deeply than ever.

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If the GOP cuts down the economy but the media doesn’t report on it, will the bears shit on the Democrats this fall?

Because that seems to be what’s happening. Scarecrow has an unemployment graph that speaks directly to how shitty our times are for some (because at any given moment, the pie is finite, and the few taking more leaves the rest with less because that pie isn’t going to magically grow itself if half the country is out of work/under-employed).

More from Mick. More from Steven Pearlstein.

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Sara Robinson checks in with part two of An Inquiry Into Conspiracy Theories.

I’m agreeing with her less now. Are conspiracy theories usually whacked? Yes, but history has shown us that the final verdict will usually read like a byzantine conspiracy theory. It’s not that we’re not getting fucked, it’s just that when you’re tied up face down, it’s hard to know just who exactly is fucking you. That doesn’t mean you haven’t successfully ascertained that someone’s dick is in fact up your ass.

If you’re young and pretty, it could be Sumner Redstone’s. But if you’re old and show it, chances are it’s just some Texas billionaire wearing a high-tech French tickler that enables him to fuck tens of thousands of people in the ass simultaneously. And, like the Egyptian priests who went in through the nose to remove the Pharoahs’ organs before mummifying them, the billionaires have special forceps that extend up your rectum, out your mouth and into your back pocket from which they extract your savings so they can be piled higher and deeper in some offshore location known only to those who are already too rich.

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Another plea to make it harder to filibuster.

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They tried to blame drugs for the high military sucicide rate the other day. Not illegal drugs, but the opiates prescribed by Army doctors.

Now they’re blaming the leadership.

They will never blame the wars, and the suicides will never slow until we stop using the same troops to fight the same unwinnable wars year after year after year.

It’s time to stop-loss Bush-Cheney. Recall them and ship them to Iraq and Afghanistan then don’t let them come home again until every single one of the troops is pulled out.

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Looks like the Michigan tea party is a Democratic front. Just like the bogus outfit in Iowa that tried to mess with the Republican primary there.

That’s not how you win back the hearts and minds of Americans, but, oddly enough, that’s exactly what you’d do if a scumbag Chi-town shit in the grass like Rahm Emanuel was running the party.

Is Rahm in charge? And if so, where’s zombie Lee Harvey Oswald when you really need him?

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Sorry to be the skunk at the garden party, but National Zionist Radio doesn’t deserve Helen Thomas’s seat any more than Fox News does, and fuck anyone who thinks otherwise.

On the subject of Israel, NPR is every bit as much a propaganda mill as Rupert’s flacks. Every fucking bit as much. Give that seat to Amy Goodman or some other alt-media person who might speak truth to Joe Gibbs now and then.

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Etc.:

Anne Rice rejects Christianity for all the obvious reasons (mainly because Christians these days are profoundly unChristian in their beliefs and ‘tudes)

Is the new cheaper Kindle the real publisher killer? (Autoegocrat says no, don’t get a Kindle, but I don’t think he’s checked out the new cheapo model with the brighter screen)

Palin’s new book’s cover

Kathy Griffin is big in Des Moines (that should tell you something about what Des Moines is really like)

Extremist rabbis telling Jews they’re not Jewish enough to get married in Israel

Is archeology anti-Semitic?

No link but this morning the lying liars at the Strib pretended to believe a NYTimes story saying the Gulf oil spill is all done but that’s just a fucking lie

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And finally, a video of Al Franken at Netroots Nation.

Loverly

The fucking rich:

David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Sam Pizzigati

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Congress refunding the Afghanistan clusterfuck was disappointing, but Juan Cole points out the silver lining:

[T]he interesting thing about the vote is the 103 Democratic Party ´no´ votes, triple the number who voted against a similar bill in summer 2009. Even David Obey, the chairman of the committee that crafted the legislation, voted against it. War exhaustion is setting in with Democrats, who have big domestic priorities, and the Wikileaks will take their toll.

Frankly, war exhaustion had run its course by the time Obama got elected. I’m not sure the left has any more big protests left in us (or the gas money to get to DC).

Related:

Hans Blix: Iraq War was illegal

NYT: we already knew that (because we’ve been busy not reporting on it)

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I knew I was going to write about this but Maha beat me to it. Click the latter link for the polite version.

Time magazine is so fearful we might pull out of Afghanistan before all the pipelines are built that they’re running a scare cover this week.

Time claims they even consulted child psychologists to make sure their exploitative cover wouldn’t fuck up young’uns’ heads. As if their heads won’t be fucked up by being bred and raised to fight in a multi-generational war we’ll never win so they too can get drafted so they too can look the other way while future Talibanists mutilate future Aishas.

We were in charge of Afghanistan when this happened. Maybe if we weren’t there it wouldn’t have ever happened.

I like Atrios’ take, btw. And Digby has more on his second point.

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I didn’t run the clip of Jon Stewart’s back from vacation take on Shirley Sherrod (Sherrod, btw, is the correct spelling, but bloggers — even Digby — have been misspelling her name). I didn’t because I thought it was a weak bit of satire and sure enough the increasingly isolated Andrew Breitbart has seized upon Stewart’s schtick (out of context, of course) as redemptive reinforcement for his racist lies. Seriously. County Fair has more.

Even Fox News is now backing off their bogus assertion that they did nothing to advance this story.

The usual rightwing establishment bastards:

Muslim bashing

More Muslim bashing

NY Post fucks up transplant story (but it served its purpose so no heads will roll)

Tim “my brains got left behind” LaHaye

It’s easy to always be right when you consistently leave out inconvenient facts

Neiwert follows up on the murderous Shawna Forde & friends

Tripping over your own dick, courts edition

Dicks from Alaska not necessarily related to Sarah Palin

Pat “beat up a Jew for Christ” Buchanan

Rand fucking Paul

More fucking Rand Paul

Christian Adams latest dickwaddery

As well as more on Jeffrey Lord from Digby. Even Jonah “doughy pantsload” Goldberg thinks Goldberg’s an ass for beating the “it wasn’t lynching” meme to death.

Mediaite says Sherrod is suing Breitbart, btw. I hope Mediate is right because she has every right to and should.

Elsewhere Mark Halperin continues to harvest plaudits in the wake of his admission that the rightwing media has become a serious problem.  An object lesson for other journalists seeking to redeem themselves after eight years of shamelessly whoring for Bush-Cheney (something Halperin’s/ABC’s The Note did daily).

I didn’t link to stories saying Chuck Todd had ripped on Journolist, but now he’s backing off the criticism and claiming Politco edited his words.

It seems the media whores are suddenly feeling the need to cross their legs more often.

Steve Benen, btw, agrees with me that E.J. Dionne has turned a corner.

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How bad is the new Palin book? Well, aside from being pulled by the publisher, this bad:

At one point, within the space of three paragraphs, Palin is compared favorably to Taylor Swift, the apostle Paul, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver—in that order.

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When the right is in power, they burn videotapes, delete their emails and shred their memos.

When the right is out of power, they expect civil servants to spend their afternoons documenting what they did in the morning.

It really is like fighting with children. Surly, nasty, hard drinking, chain-smoking, animal-torturing children. Who hate other children.

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Jack Shafer has some timely advice for whistleblowers: let the truth trickle out instead of drowning us with a huge data dump.

Because the truth is something we can’t handle, having gotten so little of it from the media for so long.

The trickle approach also, of course, makes it easier to kill the story when the first installment pisses off those who must be obeyed.

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Etc.:

Vlad Putin’s hog

Another installment of Those Darned Loopholes (like we’ll ever find out how this one got accidentally included….)

And another episode of Those Darned Goddamned Fucking Whores and its spinoff: Those Darned Motherfucking Treasury Raping Republicans

The Pond: the WWII spy agency you never heard of until now because the CIA won that turf war in 1955

Seriously, why don’t we just kill all the sex offenders before the pantswetters end up controlling where everyone gets to live? (Answer: because if we did, the pantswetters would start coming after the rest of us, also known as pulling a Niemöller)

Most people would, given the chance, eradicate all mosquitoes, which would probably not be a good idea

3-D pizza menus

469 surreptitious photos over two months certainly spells privacy-invading prevert to me

Levi Johnston’s ex-gf is preggers (and maybe his ex- now on-again gf is too)

The only thing you can find at garage sales are crap and lawsuits

Jackpotting at the Black Hat Conference

Chicago judge yanked off case (this story will undoubtedly come up again when more is known)

Pitchfork proves you can have good taste in music yet still be a dick

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Locally one of two legislative seats held by Hmong is about to go black. The only question is, which black candidate? Jeremiah Ellis is a DFL favorite and their endorsed candidate, but others say that Rena Moran could have won the endorsement had she not told the DFL she was running regardless.

DFL activists really, really, really don’t like it when you pee on their self-importance parade.

I’m sure they’d both make excellent legislators, but given my views on the DFL endorsement process, I’d encourage my Frogtown readers to turn out for Moran.

The last thing the legislature needs is another endorsement-swilling DFLer occupying a seat that should go to an inner city person who puts people ahead of party politics. I’ve seen Ellis speak but being a good DFLer is NOT a plus in my book.

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Matt Entenza thinks having Susan “fuck Koua Fong Lee” Gaertner’s support is a good thing.

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A quick postscript for Ed Kohler. They delivered phone books to my building the other day. Because I buzzed the delivery guy into the building, I was able to tell him not to leave a book outside my door. The other five apartments on my floor still have their books sitting outside their door some 48 hours later.

No one who isn’t eligible for AARP gives a shit about phone books. They’re a nuisance, not a reference; a corporate byproduct that gives our landfills more fiber.

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Got a Kindle? Talk to me about it. I didn’t think I wanted one, but if it’s going to be this cheap….

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Ben Keith , R.I.P.

Neil Young’s playing in town tonight and I’m sure he’ll make some mention of this side man’s passing.

Shits

More. More of the same disgusting, assbiting shit you always get from me because that’s what’s out there. Disgusting, assbiting shit. And the shitheaded shits who shit out the disgusting, assbiting shit.

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I really don’t know what’s going on here. Either E.J. Dionne Jr. just rediscovered his testicle this week, or the Post is hedging their bets and encouraging him to speak out more. Either way he’s right, in American politics, stupidity is the name of the game.

And this, from page 2, is worth framing and hanging on your wall:

When our republic was created, the population ratio between the largest and smallest state was 13 to 1. Now, it’s 68 to 1. Because of the abuse of the filibuster, 41 senators representing less than 11 percent of the nation’s population can, in principle, block action supported by 59 senators representing more than 89 percent of our population.

No, this is not a nation of teabaggers. Unless you’re talking about the U.S. Senate, a deliberative body created to make sure no wealth ever trickles down.

Even third tier bloggers get it. Kip at Long Story Short Pier nailed the David H. Brooks story in real time, and the DOJ is just finally catching up to the truth that was on display when American troops were wearing shitty armor and dying daily.

Blame the Senate for that as well. They don’t even get it after the fact. Bloggers are even more lethal when armed with hindsight but hindsight just raises the Senate’s hackles.

There are worse old men and women in this world, but they usually live in compounds in in remote parts of third world countries. The kind of place these five assholes should move to.

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57 border crossers dead and that’s just the July numbers.

The southwestern heat wave is killing border crossers at a record pace, but they just keep coming. And Sheriff Joe just keeps kicking them out of Maricopa County.

NAFTA fucked up North America beyond all recognition.

Fucking Clinton.

Fucking NAFTA. Giving business what they want never works out for anyone but the rich.

More:

David Moberg on the capitalist elites

The death of the American middle class

Jay Bookman (via Steve Benen)

Robert Borosage

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Want to know which states are the fattest? Check to see which ones have the fewest fine dining establishments.

At least that’s the L.A. Times’ theory. I’d say just look at the poverty figures and you’ll end up with the same list. But, no matter how you approach it, the rich and privileged will just sniff and blame the fatties.

They always do.

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See also:

Leonard Pitts Jr.

The Commission on Civil Rights

Stephen Colbert

Jeffrey Lord

And more on Journolist from Will Bunch.

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Other dumb shit they said/did:

Glenn Beck out of “ideas”?

Election fraud in Bell? (Avedon Carol with more on election fraud)

The Goldline chart

How the U.S. Coast Guard made BP spill the oil

Zombie Rev. Wright sightings (over 6,000 in just a month and a half)

Blaming Obama for the $8.7 billion that went missing from 2003-2007

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MN:

Bachmann’s pro-rape vote

Trashing Mr. Lois Quam

Who voted for more $$ to Afghanistan?

Charlieq on Emmer/MN Forward

Lambert on the Target boycott

Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who arrested people for possession of urine, won’t be prosecuted for violating a privacy statute

Eric Black writes about Tentherism in a post where you cannot see the forest due to his obsession with the trees (it’s just a peg to hang their revolution on, focus on the revolution, not the peg and maybe there will be fewer 500-word comments next time)

Thirteenthers

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Etc.:

When your own children oppose your candidacy

James Bond vehicle museum (in downstate IL, of course!)

Feds promise to stick their prosecutorial dicks only half way into crackheads’ asses

Bottling our rivers, the better with which to load up our landfills

Not so scary fall election prediction

Scary picture

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Lorenzen Wright, R.I.P.

Politics in Minnesota, R.I.P.

Piled higher and deeper

In the future, there will be no jobs, no income, no nothing. Just the rich and their support team and the rest of us can just go fuck ourselves.

Harold Meyerson:

Why invest in new plants, offices and workers, particularly here at home? Spooked by the 2008 crash, corporations want to keep more money under the mattress. More important, they’re sitting pretty as profits rise.

Is this model sustainable? It’s hard to say — a double-dip recession could plunge their profits yet again. But from the American worker’s perspective, the model, no less than a new downturn, is an unqualified disaster. It portends the kind of long-term, structural unemployment that we haven’t seen since the 1930s. It locks into place a generation of reduced incomes.

This dystopian America already stares us in the face. Fully 46 percent of the unemployed have been without work for six months or more — the highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began measuring such things in 1947. Two years ago, just 18 percent of the unemployed were jobless for more than six months. America’s private-sector job machine — the marvel of the world since 1940 — has clanged to a halt, and there’s no place for it in corporations’ new business model.

The restoration of American prosperity, then, isn’t likely to be driven by our corporate sector. Across-the-board business tax cuts make no sense when business is already sitting on oceans of cash. Targeted tax cuts and credits for strategic investment and hiring within the United States, on the other hand, make excellent sense. The Obama administration has proposed expanding the tax credit for the manufacture of green technology here at home, and congressional Democrats will soon unveil legislation creating further incentives for domestic manufacturing.

More:

Dave Johnson asks if technology is creating unemployment

Americans say no to extending tax cuts for the rich by 2-1

Life among the unemployed

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Robert Parry on how Bush botched the Afghan War

Tim Rutten on Wikileaks

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The same people who lied to us about Al Gore, promoted the Iraq War and refused to report on torture now say that without newspapers, Andrew Breitbart will run the news.

He doesn’t already?

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Jeffrey Lord continues to humiliate himself over Bobby Hall’s 1943 lynching. Journalism.org has the complete Breitbartgate chronology, but the Jeffrey Lord aftermath is something altogether special.

So far he’s been rejected by his own colleagues, experts find him clueless, and I don’t think anyone wants to be his friend anymore. Possibly the only thing Lord has going for him is that he’s still smarter than Rand Paul.

In other manufactured hissy fits:

Think Crazy

the upcoming Boy Scouts’ 100th anniversary jamboree

don’t you dare videotape a cop doing his job

Not to mention shameless behavior in general:

Bring dogs!

Why did you get me so drunk?

David Brooks

Danziger Bridge case, cont.

Just read the comments

How Congress works

Some puerile Muslim bashing from Katherine Kersten that isn’t worth your time

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Etc.:

Dave Weigel ends up at Slate

Not surprising: black people don’t watch Fox News

Honduras

Miss Me Yet? billboard sprouts a ‘stache

Palin FAIL escalates

Hollywood is not run by Jews?

Burying the truth for another 20 years (with no let up in the atrocities….) (David Cameron calls Gaza a prison camp)

A cure for the common filibuster

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Jack Tatum, R.I.P.

He used to hit other players so hard he paralyzed Darryl Stingley in 1978.

In his 1980 book, Tatum wrote: “When the reality of Stingley’s injury hit me with its full impact, I was shattered. To think that my tackle broke another man’s neck and killed his future.”

In 1996, Tatum and Stingley were supposed to meet for a television appearance, but Stingley called it off after being told it was to publicize a book written by Tatum. Stingley died in 2007 at the age of 55….

“I was paid to hit, the harder the better,” he wrote in [his] final book. He added: “I understand why Darryl is considered the victim. But I’ll never understand why some people look at me as the villain.”

Not a sport I care to watch anymore.

Blacktop BridgeFail: the unbearable cheapness of Pawlentyism

Minnesota leads the nation in declining revenue.

Gov. BridgeFail is abandoning the state he failed, but not nearly soon enough.

They’ve been tearing up and resurfacing I-94 the last few weekends but last night was the first time I drove on the resurfaced interstate. They fucking blacktopped it. BridgeFail’s MnDOT went with the cheapest, shittiest, short-term solution available.

He’s been short-sheeting Minnesota since he got elected, cannibalizing our resources to help him skank through on insufficient revenues brought in by taxes that, for the richest Minnesotans, are way too low.

A blacktopped interstate. What’s next? Turning city streets into gravel roads?

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Military disputes its own leaked reports

$100k belt buckles

Former KGB officer says David Kelly was murdered by MI6

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Hating America/other Americans first:

Tom Tancredo’s Top 12 Moments of Nativism, Racism and Fear-Mondering

Digby on Republican hypocrisy

Tony the tort-slinger (the exact same fucking lying liars who want to take away your right to sue just can’t stop suing others over absolutely nothing at all) [more from Spotty]

NewBlackPanthersNewBlackPanthersNewBlackPanthers

More on the amazing white Biko Boy

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Some Iowa news. While traveling for the 4th I missed seeing that Chuck Grassley opponent Roxanne Conlin is being sued by some settlement-chasing former legal colleagues seeking to cash in on Conlin’s success. There’s nothing to the case other than a longshot hope the suit will get tied to some troublemaking Republican, but it speaks directly to how shitty Iowa politics have become.

Krusty, the Swiftee of Iowa, just unloaded some sexist bilge on Conlin that offended even Digby. Frankly, I don’t think Digby gets even half this story.

Caveat: I worked as office manager on Conlin’s ’82 gubernatorial primary campaign. If Roxanne has had “work done,” it was done long before that, and for reasons that are utterly incomprehensible to me as I’ve seen pictures of her from high school and yes, those are most assuredly her breasts to the very best of my knowledge. Given the state of breast implants in the ’60s, I think it’s safe to say that if Conlin had implants, they would have had to have been replaced at least 3-4 times by now. Not very likely.

Digby: “Conlin was absolutely right when she said that women have to be very tough.”

How tough? I drove Conlin to labor events. I was her escort but not her bodyguard. The fact is, had anyone been stupid enough to get in her face, I would have stepped back to watch.

Roxanne Conlin did the first Playboy Club protest with Gloria Steinem.

Roxanne Conlin  was a U.S. Attorney in the wild and crazy ’70s.

Roxanne Conlin withstood one of the dirtiest newspaper mudslinging campaigns in modern history in the early ’80s when the Des Moines Register tried and found her guilty of tax evasion for being married to Iowa’s most successful real estate tax shelter consultant (no legal charges were ever filed or even considered). The same DM Register that routinely mocked her hairstyles, disparaged her ethics and trash talked her ideals yet Conlin still got more votes than any woman in the history of Iowa politics (but still lost to Terry Branstad who went on to become Iowa’s longest-serving governor thanks to the unending support he received from the Register).

Roxanne Conlin successfully sued Microsoft for $195 million.

Roxanne Conlin has never needed a bodyguard or protection. She is her own pitbull and I have no doubt that Krusty will, before this campaign is over, deeply regret having pawed her reputation.

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Etc.:

The science of mind-melding

Prop 19 zooms out to 52-36 YES

Heartland President Jeff Nock: Asshole of the week

Bits

Right doubles down on arrogance, more lies to come

Start with two posts from Greg Sargent (one, two), both with the basic premise that no, both sides don’t launch bogus stories like Breitbart’s video attack on Shirley Sherrod. Add reactions to Sargent’s post from Jamison Foser and Kos. Throw in more folks pointing out that the right lies but the left mostly doesn’t. Folks like Roy Edroso.

Age a bit and then revisit Glenn Beck (who in fact did rip on Shirley Sherrod but on the radio not the TV so spin is the name of the game here). Our cake is almost ready but wait — we don’t have sprinkles! Ken Silverstein adds a few words about class. FAIR’s Peter Hart mixes in this morning’s E.J. Dionne column. Still more from Scott Rosenberg. Still more from Jonathan Schwarz.

Jed Lewison on former Reagan political director Jeffrey Lord’s incomprehensible screed at The American Spectator in which Lord says Sherrod’s relative wasn’t lynched, just beaten to death by the sheriff and two deputies on the courthouse steps. Literally. Beaten. To. Death.

A story so viciously vile that two other American Spectator writers immediately trashed Lord. Steve Benen started digging and came up with an even more complete version of what happened back in 1943. Paul Krugman essentially throws his hands up and wonders wtf?

Then CNN’s Kyra Phillips and John Roberts folded time and space (and common sense) and made this all be about anonymous bloggers. Rush Limbaugh, as usual, made it be about everyone except Rush Limbaugh.

And back to Greg Sargent who reveals that GOoPer Senators are seeking hearings into the DOJ and the New Black Panther Party:

But what some folks may not remember is that Senate Republicans already quizzed Justice officials on this very case several months ago, in a public hearing on Capitol Hill. So why do we need more hearings?

I just read through a transcript of a hearing that the Senate Judiciary Committee held on April 20th, concerning oversight of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. During the hearing, Senator Jeff Sessions extensively quizzed Tom Perez, the head of that division, about the New Black Panther case.

Sessions alleged that the Justice Department had erected a “steel barrier” against efforts to probe this matter. In response, Perez pointed out that his department had already provided “over 4,000 pages of documents” to investigators. He also noted that two career people who made the decision to narrow the case against the New Black Panthers — the decision that has riled the right — have already briefed Republicans on the decision.

So what more is there to ask about? Well, Republicans say they would focus much of the new hearings on the claims of former Justice Department lawyer J. Christian Adams, who told investigators he believed the case had been narrowed because his colleagues wanted to protect minorities. But even some conservatives have dismissed this claim as not credible.

It never fucking stops. Once you’ve dealt with all their bullshit accusations, they just loop back to the beginning and start all over.

Would that this was all, but no, the party of lies has been very, very busy:

Polish-American IL GOoPer compares self to Steven Biko

Beck proudly acknowledges being the inspiration for Byron Williams, the Oakland wannabe mass murderer

Officially opposing anything good happening before November

More Republican plans

Radical Florida church to burn Korans on 9/11

And that’s not even mentioning Sarah Palin. [Palin Babygate, Immoral Minority]

Or the other scandals du jour:

Scott Horton with some fascinating backstory on why Mukasey tapped Nora Dannehy, who then strangled the USA investigation by examining only the narrowest of charges related to the initial Iglesias complaint

Spencer Ackerman on the WikiLeaks war docs

Glenn Greenwald on the WikiLeaks docs

Senate scuttles Pigford II (translation: fuck black farmers, fuck them, fuck them, fuck them black farmers)

And did I mention that Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller has officially discredited itself? Sorry if this blindsided you as I’ve been ignoring this online rag for as long as Carlson’s been putting it out, but after some singularly disgusting Journolist propagandizing, The Daily Caller has now utterly bankrupted itself journalistically speaking. There’s no coming back from shit like this. Deception is rarely more willful, or better orchestrated.

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Incredibly, some good news:

Franken et al endorse Elizabeth Warren

Cops endorse Bachmann’s opponent (again, just like they do every two years)

Big name authors “reprinting” books online

Clawback is a good thing

City Hall Scoop actually responds to my irate comment!

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Unsurprisingly, more bad news:

Doomsday Machine II (bonus points for mentioning Palin brownshirts)

USA! USA! Still imprisoning more of our own citizens than any other nation

Copyright destroying old piano player rolls (100 years after it was meant to)

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Etc.:

Court tells Apple to fuck off with the freakouts over folks jailbreaking their iPhones

If you’re not a CEO, Europe sounds like a way better place to work

Annual State Fair poll includes bogusly worded Vikings stadium question

Over repenetration

WINston with one of the great acts of the ’90s that no one ever saw other than some NYC hipsters (I cannot figure out why Bill Laswell isn’t world famous)

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This post written using Minefield, aka Firefox 4.0b3pre, which uses Firefox tab sets. Tab sets are just like they sound: you can drag open tabs into groups. For blogging, this kicks ass. Still some kinks to work out but mostly this makes aggregating a breeze.

Good work Firefox dudes/dudettes!

Enough talk, just kill the rich and be done with it

Krugman takes advantage of Shirley Sherrod to provide a teaching moment on how the oil companies orchestrate opposition to global warming relief efforts.

If the flow of information reflected the truth, there would be no Tea Party, no blind opposition to common sense fixes for what ails us.

If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn’t be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries — above all, the coal and oil industries — would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.

Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy. Again and again, you’ll find that they’re on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial, or Koch Industries, which has been sponsoring anti-environmental organizations for two decades.

Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.

By itself, however, greed wouldn’t have triumphed. It needed the aid of cowardice — above all, the cowardice of politicians who know how big a threat global warming poses, who supported action in the past, but who deserted their posts at the crucial moment.

There are a number of such climate cowards, but let me single out one in particular: Senator John McCain.

Yeah, I figured that would get you to click and read more.

McCain (and McLuhan) aside, the media is the problem, the message is just whatever bilge they’re selling at any given moment. The media can claim whatever he said/she said exoneration they wish, the fact is that they’re the engineers on the train taking us all to a global warming Auschwitz in the not too far distant future.

Who pays them to be driving that train is another matter altogether. Ultimately, the good Germans have to pay for enabling the Nazis, and CBS has enabled Exxon to an unconscionable degree.

Ross Douthat has more, and, as usual, it’s more crap along the lines of what CBS gets coerced to shovel, altho I think CBS has stopped shoveling Bjorn Lomborg’s highly shovelable content.

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Shirley Sherrod, cont.:

Matt Yglesias on Big Rock Candy Mountain excusifying

E.J. Dionne on right wing propaganda (and he doesn’t spare his propagandizing WaPost employers in the process)

Excellent take by Glenn W. Smith

Howie the Whore keeps shoveling [because that's what his newspaper does]

Ruth Marcus turns around and suggest that all the Sherrod problems would be fixed if only the nasty fucking bloggers would slow down and take a chill pill which in fact WOULD BE PRETTY FUCKING GOOD ADVICE FOR MARCUS TO TAKE BUT I DON’T THINK SHE CAN HEAR ME SHOUTING BECAUSE HER HEAD IS TOO FAR UP FRED HYATT’S ASS [Jamison Foser with more]

David Brooks cleans up the mess by sweeping it under the rug, as usual

Howard Dean: Fox News is racist, absolutely racist [but WaPost is even more cowardly than Fox is racist, and covers for Fox as best it can]

Republicans: doing everything they can to legitimize Breitbart’s fucking filth

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Hilarious. The PiPress wrote a story about a business having problems with the Better Business Bureau without mentioning what a crock of shit the BBB is.

No problem, the comments are overflowing with irate folks trash talking the BBB. That includes’s El Rushbo Fan of Rochester saying the BBB is socialist. (I’m not sure this guy is sincere, but sometimes it’s really hard to tell.)

Don’t ever give the Better Business Bureau any money, and don’t think businesses with BBB plaques are more ethical because they’re not.

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The thought police are strongest where conformity rules, so is it any surprise that a disgruntled citizen who rolled her eyes at an Elmhurst City Council meeting was ejected? The ChiTrib reports:

“Making faces behind the mayor’s back is disruptive, in my opinion,” said committee chairman Stephen Hipskind, who told Heslop to leave. (Wait — the mayor didn’t even see it? Facepalm.) Other aldermen objected to the eviction, and two of them got up and left, ending the meeting for lack of a quorum. (Silent applause.)

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Jon Tevlin writes about Nick “Robert Erickson” Espinoza. Espinoza’s life makes for a compelling case for immigration reform, but he’s far from the only U.S. born child of an immigrant who’s fed up with the USA’s racist* immigration laws.

*When’s the last time you heard about an “illegal” Canadian being dragged back to Canada? You haven’t. No, we just get treated to stories about the least powerful being overwhelmed by bureaucratic wrongness, over and over again.

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Also on the local front, The Same Rowdy Crowd’s Bruce Benidt issues a fatuous post on how you and I ARE EXACTLY THE SAME AS MICHELE BACHMANN.

After quoting Bachmann on subpoenaing everything that moves in the Obama administration, Benidt writes:

But wait. This has a familiar sound. When Obama was elected, there were a lot of liberals — friends and family members of mine, people I respect — who wanted hearings and investigations and witch trials of the Bushies. For all manner of transgressions — lying about the war, violating the Geneva Convention, shattering privacy, violating the laws of physics, ruining the atmosphere, selling the government to Dick Cheney’s parasitic friends, instituting the designated hitter, creating chain stores, spreading dengue fever, being bald and pudgy.

Sarcasm in the hands of a tool, etc. I underscored his bogus allegations so let’s look at what Obama did NOT investigate, much to Bruce Benidt’s great relief:

1. manufacturing evidence to lie us into a war
2. repeated and gross violations of Geneva Convention treaties on war including torture, torture and more fucking torture
3. a complete and total invasion of our right to make private phone calls and send secure emails
4. suppressing evidence of global warming and pollution
5. handing over billion-dollar contracts to Halliburton and Blackwater to murder Iraqis and Afghan citizens

Fuck no, why would anyone care about those things? Benidt continues to be the kind of “liberal” who really should be getting a regular check from Michael Steele because yes, this kind of shit is helpful to all the wrong people.

Jerk. As for Bachmann, she’s planning on subpoenaing information about the DOJ’s investigation of the New Black Panther Party. Bachmann believs that under Bush-Cheney the economy was 100% private, but is now 65% controlled by the federal government. She also says all government programs are nonsense and should be defunded.

Not the same thing at all, and only a fool would think otherwise. Benidt, btw, works for Weber Shandwick Worldwide, a P.R. firm with clients like MasterCard, Pfizer, Nike, Microsoft, etc.

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UK’s Mail Online looks at Sarah Palin.

She shouldn’t feel flattered by the attention.

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The problem with Israel and peace, and the religious bastards who exacerbate those problems.

Also, Max Blumenthal says an IDF report confirmed Goldstone’s findings of war crimes in Gaza, but that this report has been suppressed.

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Etc.:

Bitter Waitress writes about restaurants who coddle the whiny complainers who constantly seek to make every meal be entirely about them and how finicky they can be [locally, True Thai recently got hosed by some professional complainers]

Why everyone’s freaking out over the Wikileaks’ leaked military files [more from TBogg]

If California elects Carly Fiorina, I will officially wash my hands of this country and give up on this stupid blogging thing that never seems to change anything (if this is a country where you can buy anything, well, I guess I’m just not for sale)

Ann Coulter, of all people, has the sanest fall election prediction I’ve read to date

Paying more for chocolate because the super-duper-rich simply are not rich enough, not yet

Dumbasses

Taibbi on capital punishment (the link that wouldn’t work yesterday is now fixed)

Chinese official’s wife accidentally treated like a normal Chinese person

Making autoworkers labor under the same B.S. that fucked up the U.S. Postal Service

David Dayen with a wrap-up on Netroots Nation 2010

Clusterfuck Nation on Mel Gibson, deflation, fraud, etc.

And lastly, the GOP is still fighting tooth and claw for greater income inequality. Do not tolerate this financidal bullshit and call it out whenever and wherever you encounter it.

Enough with the fucking lying lies already.

Breitbartgate, Netroots Nation, and the usual nuts

Breitbartgate continues to unravel glacially, like most gotcha stories about the right. It takes so very little for the mainstream media to let go of these stories, anxiously fearful of losing the small chunk of their audience that buys the most godawful of the advertised crap that pays for our news gathering. That’s the real tragedy here: the inability of conventional American media to follow through when the stakes are highest.

But not all the players are playing along this time. This story is too perfect, too raw for the usual suspects to blithely let it go by.

The most notable additions to the canon are those least expected. Slate’s Will Saletan reams Breitbart [more from Digby], and even Peggy Noonan lauds Sherrod. Fox’s Carl Cameron is trying to walk back his remarks in which he clearly faulted his own network for rushing this story. And then there are the usual suspects with more:

MMfA on Breitbart’s efforts to “stop this racism”

Greg Sargent on the lie that both sides do it

FAIR on Howie the Whore’s latest whitewash

RJ Eskow on what Obama didn’t learn

FAIR on how the media still refuses to reexamine Breitbart’s successful anti-ACORN lies

Scroll down to Screed #2 for Lambert’s take on the Strib’s on the one hand on the other blame-sharing editorial

Frank Rich (once you get past the Mad Men tribute)

Phoenix Woman on the media’s love of Breitbart

Van Jones

Jew-hating racist Pat Buchanan likens Shirley Sherrod to Rosa Parks, then says the White House threw her under the bus (failing to mention that Pat was driving, hit the brakes and then backed over Sherrod repeatedly while humming Yes We Can in Latin)

Steve Benen on the media’s inability to so much as slap Breitbart’s wrist

Clarence Page on Breitbart’s bum story

Next up for Breitbart? Smearing Citizens for Tax Justice

Related:

Glenn Greenwald on “the scourge of anonymity” [more from Digby]

Deja heds

Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege

Phoenix Woman and the Axis of Coburn-Ensign

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Netroots Nation is wrapping up today. I was startled to learn that next year’s doings are right here in the Twin Cities so let me start by saying, I live in a very small apartment with only one bedroom, one bathroom and not much floor space….

From Vegas:

Obama uses Maddow clip in his prerecorded address

Roy Edroso on the swag

Hunter on the circuses

Roy Edroso on Matt Yglesias’ unexpected stature

Scarecrow on Van Jones

Dennis G. agrees with me about Ed Schultz

Roy Edroso skips Al Franken’s keynote speech to get a head start on the after-speech activities

Eric Roper on Minnesotans in Vegas, and that includes Michele Bachmann

Also, it must be assumed that Sheriff Bob “weaponized urine” Fletcher will be on the lookout for over-occupied residences during this most anarchist-approved of al Qaeda events. You wouldn’t want to get me into trouble with “the man,” now would you?

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More politics:

Bernie: No to Oligarchy

Nader Derangement Syndrome

Unsafe at Any Meal

Rove’s Texas billionaires’ club

Rangel v Ensign (we know who’s getting all the press, but who’s the bigger criminal?)

Jesus loved the little teabaggers, yes he did

Secession: it’s what you talk about when your party sucks and no one likes you

Linda McMahon video (not as bad as DougJ thinks — I mean, what do you say when your candidate is an insane meglomaniac?)

Batocchio’s Five Circles of Conservative Hell

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What Sarah Palin’s endorsement is worth . . . in Alaska

Andrew Sullivan backs off babygate until further notice

More Palin Doonesburys

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Rolling Stone’s index says Matt Taibbi has a new post up. The page is blank but here’s the link in case they fill it in.

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Retired cops in California say just legalize it.

And I will advertise it.

While the O Team undermines us. (At least they’re going after pesticides too.)

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Locally, my morning started with a thud as I read yet another one of glibertarian Craig Westover’s fanciful flights into tax policies in the land of made-up crazy shit. Today’s lesson: government cannot create jobs.

Except when it does. And does. And does.

It’s not a political movement. Libertarianism is a medical condition in which your rectum swallows up your entire being and then pukes it back out upside down so you spend the rest of your life talking out your asshole.

Speaking of which, read this and tell me if the quotes are accurate or made up. When the PiPress runs snark with no by-line, it’s kind of hard to know what the fuck they’re saying. The only thing I’m sure of is that whoever wrote this City Hall Scoop item is the same douchebag who writes Opinuendo.

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Surprisingly, just weeks after accusing me of having sex with the second youngest Palin in their comments, Mitch Berg writes a pro-bike post for MinnPost (warning: it goes on and on and on).

It’s also posted in the Blog Cabin space which always seems to have plenty of room for conservatives and moderates, but which I have yet to see publish a single honest to God lefty blogger from the ranks of mainstream Minnesota lefty bloggers.

It never ceases to amaze me how mainstream news media people involuntarily shut out real lefty voices when they strive for objectivity, as if we’re all crazy aunts and uncles living in their attic.

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Etc.:

Driving while drugged is OK if your doctor said so

Another study suggests driving while stoned isn’t really an issue

More on suicide

The U.S. used a nuke on a deposit of natural gas in 1969 (and they’re still covering it up)

In a tight job market, everyone gets discriminated against (because employers really only want to hire the friends and relatives of current employers because that’s how things work  when there aren’t enough jobs to go around)

Israel: still fucking over Palestinians

Criminalizing mental illness has its drawbacks, not that the insanely punitive right ever pauses to look back on what they’ve wrought

Norwegian Shooter on the United States of Dixie [more]

Fred Phelps’ son works for atheists who battle homophobia

Odin is God (does that make Breitbart Loki?)

No shortage of Shirley Sherrod material as some of the bigger names get around to weighing in, while others have still more.

The Shirley Sherrod story tells us so much about ourselves, and none of it is pretty. The most obvious and shameful fact is that the Obama administration, which runs from race issues the way thoroughbreds bolt from the starting gate, did not offer this woman anything resembling fair or respectful treatment before firing and publicly humiliating her.

Moving with the swiftness of fanatics on a hanging jury, big shots in the administration and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News came to exactly the same conclusion: Shirley Sherrod had to go — immediately! No time for facts. No time for justice.

— Bob Herbert

No, there certainly wasn’t. This is the cumulation of a decade’s worth of centrist Democrats capitulating to the right at the drop of a smear. The gutless left assuming the doggy position so the hate-driven right has a place to park their bicycles.

But James Rainey at the L.A. Times (!) does what no one else in the established media has the guts to do. Rainey calls out Breitbart for the lying liar he is:

But certain media outlets have played the story and the political ramifications for the Obama administration (and there are questions to be answered) as if they sprang out of the ether. There’s a continuing rush to talk about effect, and very little desire to talk about cause — the steaming pile of misinformation delivered on a platter by one individual with a giant ax to grind.

Andrew Breitbart, the conservative agitator behind websites like Breitbart.com and BigGovernment.com, likes it this way. Stirring the pot, gobbling up chunks of cable television time, doing whatever it takes to further his political beliefs, even if it means putting one woman’s reputation through a meat grinder….

Breitbart headlined the video as “proof” that “the NAACP awards racism,” when in fact it showed one woman trying to teach a lesson about the shortcomings of racial discrimination.

Conservatives including David Frum and Ann Coulter have acknowledged that the video Breitbart posted is a fraud. But Frum, a former speechwriter in the Bush White House, wrote that he has seen this act too many times to expect Breitbart to apologize for “distributing a doctored tape to defame and destroy someone.”

Indeed, anyone who has watched television in recent days has seen an unrepentant Breitbart insisting he did nothing wrong. His previous encounters with controversy reveal a similar pattern — make no concessions, savage critics, change the subject and keep attacking. Don’t bet he’s finished with Shirley Sherrod.

I saw this up close last year when I wrote about the “sting” that a couple of young videographers performed on the liberal activist group ACORN. Breitbart posted and touted the videos as proof of liberal evil. He became enraged when I urged him to release the unedited tapes so the public could see everything that happened between ACORN workers and videographers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles.

Sadly, that much truth had to be saved for Saturday morning but still, it is the truth, and it did appear in an American newspaper.

Will wonders never cease? Rainey also calls out Fox News, but for that Rachel Maddow once again deserves full honors as well as our respect. Not just for covering this story, but for going after Fox for their racist propaganda. No other television news person puts up with the low blows Maddow takes for reporting news while not being heterosexual and yes, I’m looking at you Anderson Cooper. Hiding in a closet makes you very wary of pissing off one side or the other, but only one side is sinning here but CNN won’t can the he said/she lied bullshit lest Cooper get the Maddow treatment.

This is already less about Shirley Sherrod than it is about the dying credibility of our news media. Amazing, when you think about it. By how many years has the media’s credibility outlived the media’s truthfulness?

More:

What did Breitbart know and when did he know it?

Power Line stops fellating itself just long enough to give Bretibart a reacharound

Coulter defends Breitbart

Iowa half-wit Steve King wants a Congressional investigation (please give it to him and then let Henry Waxman chair it)

Batocchio

Fox News’ Carl Cameron says more than he meant to

Wolcott

Ed Schultz also slammed the White House, but as I’ve said many times before, I can’t stand Rush Limbaugh style bullshit, whether it’s Rush talking or Ed. Ed is Rush, Rush is Ed, and we don’t need either of these guys getting people worked up over the news. Report the news accurately and people will get worked up without the histrionics.

But much has been accomplished this week. Fox News now can’t touch Breitbart’s bilge for a while. That’s a victory for democracy and civility all by itself. Fox’s most loyal viewers are again saddled with an utterly false talking point, one their neighbors and coworkers will be able to stuff a sock into. Breitbart didn’t just discredit himself, he discredited Fox News and the entire Wurlitzer.

All in all, it’s been a good week for democracy, even if Obama got royally punked for being a Neville Chamberlain centrist, always willing to cede Poland if only to preserve collegiality in the Senate.

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And the right was very bad this week indeed. Journolist is another faux scandal, this one shepherded along by the ever preppy always flatulent Tucker Carlson. Long story short, Carlson’s gotten the Journolist listserv database and is cherrypicking it for “scandal.” He won’t release the whole thing but tauntingly told participants they’re free to use their copies to correct him.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a listserv, but if you saved all the emails you clearly belong in the Guinness Book of Records for anal retentiveness. No one saves listserv emails, and these are years old. Carlson’s also aided considerably by the presence of “conservatives” on the listserv, and by the “bad habit” liberals have of discussing matters from both sides (which really enables the lying cherrypickers).

And that’s just the most gaseous of the made-up bullshit being peddled. See also:

Pat Buchanan on white racial consciousness

Impeachment?

MinnGOoPers back to gay-baiting Log Cabin state rep (most intolerant movement ever?)

Newt called on Americans to follow Saudi Arabia’s lead on suppressing religious freedoms

Jeffrey Goldberg still mau mauing lefty media over their failure to adequately enable Zionist thuggery

Telling others what they MUST do!

Winning the money race one refunded embezzlement at a time

Glenn Beck, btw, earned his own list:

Glenn Beck’s chickens-coming-home-to-roost connection to mass murderer wannabe Byron Williams [more]

Goldline

Apologizing to Brian Urlacher

And the right got hammered by the facts again this week:

Fuel contracts coming home to roost

Global warming [more]

Social Security

Infrastructure

VA says OK to pot

Reality TV meets real mayor

BP

Norm Coleman, a Jew man who will ruin everything for everyone

None of which is to say that Sherrod aside, Obama covered himself in glory this week:

DOJ whitewash (which allows fucking Fredo to posture some more)

Letting Blue Dogs flake on tax cuts for the rich (O is the head of the party, but demands nothing in the way of loyalty if in fact the O team really cares about income inequality and no, I don’t think they give it any thought at all)

Altho to Obama’s “credit,” there’s been zero media follow-up on the WaPost’s 3-part series on the privatization of the intelligence community. so I guess you can call that a win for Obama-Bush-Cheneyism.

But I don’t think they can call it a win for the left when they let the right lie and lie and lie, because this is about more than politics. The so-called conservative movement is nothing more than a front for the rapacious financial end times looters. That has to be dealt with, but this president seemingly can’t be bothered.

Floyd Norris was overjoyed to see Michael Dell nailed by a $4 million fine this week, but again, that fixes nothing because to Dell, $4 million is chump change.

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And, lest we forget….

That’s cute. But this is not: Coincidental Evidence. This is what lefty blogging would read like if we did it like the wingnuts do. This is not how to win. Hell, it’s not even compelling. It’s just more crazy shit that keeps people from seeing the real shit, of which there is no shortage.

But this is very, very cute.

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MN:

Koua Fong Lee is emerging as the only real issue in this fall’s county attorney race to replace the miserably vindictive Susan Gaertner (Emily Gurnon, btw, owns this story — I can’t think of any other metro area reporters who give a crap about Lee or his family)

Lying about Rebecca Otto because they really don’t have anything else to say

Target steps into an easily avoided MNGOoP cowpie

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Israel:

1/3 of House Republicans sign petition begging Israel to nuke Iran

Two old Jews talk about Israel

Interview with Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian Knesset member

click to enlarge

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Arts:

Tank ballet

How capitalism puts the penetration into celebrity porn

Ranking NBA home uniforms (Wolves get no respect, cont.)

I understand why my friends like Agora, but I found it to be proselytizing and tendentious

Disco dancing, gay Vatican priest style

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Etc.:

Coburn rolling over on Ensign?

More internal squabbling at the Washington Sun Myung Moon Times

Fixing the border problem through marijuana legalization [more]

Defunding charity through copyright

The patent tax

It’s definitely douchebag as douche and bag is mixing French with English

Life for the uninsurable

Beer cozies of the Real Gods

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Some truth. Big Daddy Malcontent has been blogging again, but I haven’t been linking to him because he’s so many magnitudes more angry than I am, I can hardly read his screeds. Which is an unlikely build up to a link to BDM excerpting a guy who’s even madder than BDM, but yeah, read Lance Freeman because there is truth in anger, and he’s got some white hot truth.

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The best thing that happened all week. Tild emailed to make sure I saw it and PZ (freshly back from being on strike) was overjoyed by the brilliance of Super Heroes Vs. the Westboro Baptist Church.

Yes!!!

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Daniel Schorr, R.I.P.

This leaves NPR with nothing.

Absolutely nothing.