A Spork in the Drawer

Things You Can't Make Up

House Republicans vote against Mother's Day.

No new word yet on the GOP's plan to criminalize baseball & apple pie.

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Solution: Stop The Voting!

Oliver Willis brings da snark:

I’ve crunched the numbers, looked them over again and again, then again with a sprinkling of eye of newt and found the weakness in Barack Obama’s candidacy:

He’s getting too many votes.

Read the whole thing.

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Annals Of Idiocy - Florida Edition

Just...I mean, just...

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.

But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.

"I get a call the middle of the day from head of supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a huge issue, you can't take any more assignments you need to come in right away,'" he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell and went much farther than he'd hoped.

"I said, 'Well Pat, can you explain this to me?' 'You've been accused of wizardry,' [he said]. Wizardry?" he asked.

First they came for David Blaine and I did nothing...

[Via PZ]

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STUNNING REVELATION!!!!!

The US didn't invade Iraq!

The last six years were all a bad dream I suppose.

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An Annual Spring Ritual Returns

Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran:

A second American aircraft carrier steamed into the Persian Gulf on Tuesday as the Pentagon ordered military commanders to develop new options for attacking Iran. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the planning is being driven by what one officer called the "increasingly hostile role" Iran is playing in Iraq - smuggling weapons into Iraq for use against American troops.

[...]

Targets would include everything from the plants where weapons are made to the headquarters of the organization known as the Quds Force which directs operations in Iraq. Later this week Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is expected to confront the Iranians with evidence of their meddling and demand a halt.

If that doesn't produce results, the State Department has begun drafting an ultimatum that would tell the Iranians to knock it off - or else.

You just know that St. John would love a little October Surprise. And with this administration running things...

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Our Friends On The Right

Right-winger extraordinaire Ben Stein - famous for Ferris Bueller's Day Off and a little-watched basic cable game show - recently made a "documentary" called Expelled (not going to provide link) which is really an extended hysterical screed against evolution. Various "real" scientists were interviewed for it under false pretenses including blog-favorite PZ Myers. Here's what Stein says about PZ:

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. [PZ] Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed.

Wow.

Just wow.

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Not Helpful

Hillary:

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

We've had 7+ years of the bellicose talk...couldn't we just dial it back a bit? For a little while, at least?

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The Intellectual Bankruptcy Of The American Right (Cont'd)

Neil Boortz:

If I had a button right now, two buttons -- push this button and it gets rid of all the drug dealers; push this button, it gets rid of the teachers unions -- I'm getting rid of the teachers unions."

What if the the teachers' unions start giving the kids heroin? Hmmm?

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The Intellectual Bankruptcy Of The American Right

Evidence:

QUESTION: How does your background in history influence your political ideas?

GINGRICH: If you think about the current situation, it helps to remember Harry Truman running in 1948, or even Sarkozy in France. Sarkozy distanced himself from Chirac without being hostile. That’s what McCain has to do with Bush. And what McCain is trying to achieve by explaining the dangers of the world to the public is like what Lincoln had to do in the Civil War.

QUESTION: McCain doesn’t exactly have Lincoln’s rhetorical skills.

GINGRICH: In style he’s closer to Truman, who did not have the rhetorical skills, but had passion.

I'm just happy that I never had Newt as a history prof.

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Told Ya

Now Karl Rove implies that Obama is a Marxist. Add "Squeaky Wheels" Krauthammer and Brit "I Love My Dead Gay Son" Hume so this will be pretty standard for FauxNews as well. And maybe CNN.

Another 6+ months of this...

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God Save Us

Jesus rides with me:

The Florida Legislature may create a new license plate that features the words ''I Believe'' and the image of a cross in front of a church stained glass window. The measure is moving in both the House and Senate.

[...]

The extra money earned from the sale of the ''I Believe'' license plate would go to an Orlando based non profit called Faith in Teaching Inc. that says on its website that money from the plates would be used for grants to ``continue faith based education for the youth of Florida.''

Perhaps I wouldn't be so opposed if the fine lawmakers of Florida also offered a Flying Spaghetti Monster license plate. Or perhaps license plates should be non-ideological.

[Via PZ.]

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Send For The Hessians!

The Chickenhawks are becoming a parody of themselves.

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Reading Is Fundamentalist

Randroids:

The charitable arm of BB&T Corp., a banking company, pledged $1 million to the University of North Carolina Charlotte in 2005 and obtained an agreement that [Ayn] Rand's novel ``Atlas Shrugged'' would become required reading for students. Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, say they also took grants and agreed to teach Rand.

While it's hard to complain about exposing students to a range of ideas it helps if those ideas are, y'know, somewhat grounded in reality. One would hope that students are also exposed to Karl Marx's critiques of capitalism but I suspect that's given short shrift.

Says one critic:

Scholars scoff at the Rand bounty, saying her ideas are too shallow to build courses around her.

``Rand could not write her way out of a paper bag,'' said Harold Bloom, a professor of the humanities and English at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Bloom, 77, is the author of ``The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages'' (Harcourt, 1994), an examination of the most important works in Western literature. Rand isn't on the list.

It should be noted that Bloom is no liberal. And it should be further noted that one of Rand's great disciples is former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan.

How's that working out?

Disclaimer: I last read Rand maybe 25 years ago and have since (mostly) successfully blotted the pain of it from my memory.

[Via The Shrill One.]

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I'm Sure An Apology Will Be Forthcoming

Caught lying:

A federal investigation has concluded that U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's 2006 re-election campaign was to blame for the crash of its Web site the day before Connecticut's heated Aug. 8 Democratic primary.

[...]

The Lieberman campaign alleged it was the target of a "denial of service attack," which can involve bombarding a Web site with external communications to slow it or render it useless.

"Our Web site consultant assured us in the strongest terms possible that we had been attacked," former Lieberman campaign spokesman Dan Gerstein said in December 2006.

According to the FBI memo, the site crashed because Lieberman officials continually exceeded a configured limit of 100 e-mails per hour the night before the primary.

"The system administrator misinterpreted the root cause," the memo stated. "The system administrator finally declared the server was being attacked and the Lieberman campaign accused the Ned Lamont campaign. The news reported this on Aug. 8, 2006, causing additional Web traffic to visit the site.

No doubt Holy Joe will do the honorable thing. <=Sarcasm

[Via Josh.]

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A Terrified Nation Begs For Them To Stop

The McCain Girls are back. This time I made it 47 seconds into the video before I plucked my eyes out and injected bleach directly into my cerebrum.

God have mercy on our souls.

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What First Amendment?

Illinois Rep. Monique Davis (a Democrat) to atheist Rob Sherman during committee testimony:

Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy -- it’s tragic -- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.

I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous--

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court---

Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

You have to listen to the audio to get the full flavor of Davis' hate.

It just goes to show that some Democrats can be as hateful and intolerant as your average Republican.

[Via Lindsay.]

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Around The Bend

Holy Joe Lieberman says that Iraq is in better political shape than the US.

Relatedly, Connecticut doesn't much like the Bush kisser anymore.

All we need to do is pick up one Senate seat in November and we can chuck Loserman out of the Democratic caucus.

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Pissy

Remember that uh, interesting McCain fan video? Well, the lead "McCain Girl" is none too happy with the ridicule heaped upon it:

You have to be a special kind of person to be so proud of something so astoundingly, mind-bogglingly, stunningly awful.

(As a side note, I've still not made it past the 57-seconds mark of the video.)

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Operation Enduring Freedom -- Caribbean and Central America

William Arkin:

My assumption was that "Operation Enduring Freedom -- Caribbean and Central America," a formal military operation I'd never heard of before yesterday, is oriented toward Cuba and Venezuela. But it is not. The U.S. military is indeed engaged in a global war, and the terrorist threat, at least in the eyes of the counter-terror warriors, extends to our backyard.

I don't know whether the actual threat necessitates such an "operation," but its bureaucratic existence says a lot about our overreliance on the military and the belief of many in government that the GWOT is a real war, equivalent to the Cold War, and is one that the United States should and will be fighting for decades.

[...]

Is this for real? Or is this just a bureaucratic invention to extend the GWOT to every nook and cranny of the globe?

There is no easy answer. But at least in terms of the hierarchy of priorities, such a threat seems overhyped. Just after 9/11 there was much talk of al Qaeda activity in the "tri-border" area of South America, but since then there has been very little new information and certainly little to indicate a threat in the region. The danger, of course, is that under the guise of the GWOT, this reserve unit is preparing contingency plans for Venezuela and Cuba, in which case one wonders why the "GWOT" label is being used.

We can't get rid of the maniacs running things soon enough. And if St. John is occupies the White House...

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Conservatives Are Strange And Worrisome

Now that Idaho Sen. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig is officially "retiring" the fine white people of the Spud State will have to choose a new Senator. Could it be this guy?

A Senate candidate has legally changed his name to Pro-Life and will appear on the ballot that way this year, state election officials say.

As Marvin Pro-Life Richardson, the organic strawberry farmer from Letha, 30 miles northwest of Boise, was denied the use of his middle name when he ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006 because the state's policy bars the use of slogans on the ballot.

Now, though, officials in the Idaho secretary of state's office say they have no choice because Pro-Life is his full and only name. He says he will run for the highest state office on the ballot every two years for the rest of his life, advocating murder charges for doctors who perform abortions and for women who obtain the procedure.

I await the candidacy of Bob Free Heroin for Schoolchildren Robertson.

[Via C&L.]

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Oh, Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh

Nonononono...

Oh, nonononono...

[Via Matt Yglesias.]

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The Mind Of The American Voter

Welcome to Pennsylvania:

Peter Contacos, 42, the fourth generation of his family to own and operate Coney Island Lunch, a downtown Johnstown business that survived two floods and the loss of thousands of regular customers when Bethlehem Steel eliminated 15,000 jobs in the 1970s and ’80s, will not vote for Senator Barack Obama, “because his name is Barack Hussein Obama — case closed.” Mr. Contacos, an avid hunter who proudly displays pictures of himself with a magnificently maned lion he killed in Botswana, said he considered Mr. Obama “a terrorist.”

I suspect Mr. Contacos voted for George because he's the sort of regular guy you can have a beer with.

We live in a very silly country.

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There He Goes Again

Vice-President Fourth Branch:

CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.

RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

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Fine

Dick:

The United States intends to complete its mission in Iraq and will not allow the country to become a staging ground for terrorist attacks on Americans, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on Tuesday.

Now tell me what the "mission" is.

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Civility

Rep. Steve King (R-Simpleton) on Obama:

"The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida … would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror," King said in an interview with the Daily Reporter in Spencer.

Now for the punchline:

King said his comments were not meant to demean Obama but to warn how an Obama presidency would look to the world.

Nope, didn't demean Obama at all.

Perhaps King should stick to model-making.

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Hitlers! Hitlers Everywhere!

We should have seen this coming. The latest Hitler? Barack Obama.

Honestly, the Republican wingers need to be driven out of this country.

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On Learning From Experience

Or not:

"The President has made the right decisions for the right reasons and he always reflected the values of the American people," Cheney declared, "Would I support those same decisions today? You're damn right I would."

The crowd was adoring. There was a standing ovation as Cheney entered, and a woman shouting: "We Love You!" Attendees clamored for a good "Cheney shot," with one young conservative pumping his fist after catching an unobstructed wide lens take of the Vice President on his camera.

Here's an exclusive picture of Cheney addressing the CPAC rally:

Another nugget of wisdom from Dick:

"The freedoms we enjoy, the rights we exercise, all the privileges we have in this country - none of them can be taken for granted."

Do you detect a not-so-subtle threat in there?

[Via Think Progress.]

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ADDED: They're flippin' delusional:

Bush spoke to a boisterous crowd shortly after 7 a.m. EST. The ballroom erupted in cheers when someone shouted "Are there conservatives in the house?" When the president walked on stage, they clapped and chanted "Four more years! Four more years!" They cheered his comments on tax relief, the military buildup in Iraq, the Reagan years and his opposition to abortion. They booed when Bush said his critics want to expand the size and scope of the federal government.

Talk about a cult of personality.

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We'll Always Have Marilyn

9iu11ani to go bye-bye. Judi on suicide watch.

---

ADDED: From Taegan Goddard:

"The beast is dead."

-- Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, quoted by ABC News, on the end to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign.

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McCain Wins Florida...

...wingers on suicide watch.

Heh.

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Nutcase.

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From The Big Brains Of The GOP

A couple of things from Think Progress. First up, creepily insane Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Straightjacket) on working:

I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs.

Of course, that means no one is around to raise the children. So much for "family values."

Next, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-WTF?) on, well, I'm not sure:

You know, we’re buying carbon credits. It reminds me of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages when you could buy indulgences. I like the food that we had before. I like real food, food that I can pronounce the name of!

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the word "taco" is one he can't pronounce. And for all that is decent keep arugula away from him!

It's a wonder that they win elections at all.

Or maybe it isn't:

Republican voter.

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Dicky!

I finally got around to reading Vanity Fair's piece on our favorite batshit crazy billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. The bits I like most:

THE HOOKER

In December of 2005, the private detective proved Ritchie’s (the soon to be ex-Mrs. Scaife - ed.) fears to have been well founded: he took pictures showing the reclusive 75-year-old billionaire with a woman named Tammy Vasco, a tall, blonde 43-year-old whose criminal history includes two arrests for prostitution. The pair was photographed at Doug’s Motel, a roadside establishment near Pittsburgh, where rooms rent for $49 a night, or $31 for three hours.

He spends all of that money in an attempt to destroy a president yet meets an (ex?) hooker in a motel that charges by the hour. Gotta keep those priorities straight, I guess.

THE ANGORA SWEATER

Ritchie says Dick started pursuing her immediately. Dick himself says that he didn’t see Ritchie again for another six months. Then one day she came to his office, soliciting for a charity; he couldn’t take his eyes off her white angora sweater. That afternoon, he adds with a wink, “we did what comes naturally.”

“Never owned an angora sweater,” Ritchie protests, aghast and lilting. “I’m allergic to things like that!”

Was it Ritchie or Ed Wood?

CORRUPTION OF A MINOR

David (Dicky's son from his first marriage - ed.) says that Ritchie soon won him over: “My grades were so bad at school at that point, I just thought, Well, instead of getting yelled at,” siding with Dick against Franny could be “a new chapter to our friendship. All of a sudden, he and I were drinking buddies.” When Dick and Ritchie visited him at Deerfield Academy, David claims, Ritchie brought pot for them to smoke together, and his father bought him alcohol.

“To take marijuana to a child? To a prep school?,” Ritchie marvels, when asked about the story. “Never,” she declares, her petite hands holding one another in her lap. “And how dare anyone even make a comment like that?”

Dick, who regretfully confirms the details of his son’s story, says that he did not inhale.

"I didn't inhale."

HIS NAME IS "DICK"

For the exchange of vows, on the old Penguin Court property (Dick had had the gloomy mansion torn down after his mother died, in 1965), Ritchie wore a short white dress. For the reception, at Ligonier’s Rolling Rock Club, the new wife surprised her husband, a fireworks aficionado, by hiring Zambelli, which is responsible for the July Fourth shows on the Mall in Washington, to create a blazing sign on the lawn that proclaimed, in sparkling letters, ritchie loves dick. Even today, a certain set of Pittsburgh women, including wives of some of the country’s most brass-knuckled industrialists, speak of Ritchie’s flaming double entendre as among the most shocking moments of their lives.

It was not a double entendre, Ritchie says, with tears in her eyes: “My mind doesn’t work that way. Please. His name is Dick. His name is Dick, and I thought of the human being. And how evil of them, because I was saying I loved my husband.”

Sometimes you just gotta have Dick.

BEAUREGARD

After Dick had Ritchie arrested and thrown in jail (and stories about it appeared in his newspaper), Ritchie and the Scaife’s three dogs—including Dick’s favorite, a yellow Lab named Beauregard (Dick says Beauregard was a gift from Ritchie; Ritchie says the couple owned the dog together)—moved in with Pietragallo and his wife, Helena, who is one of her oldest friends. Then, in March 2006, Dick arranged for a sign to be made and placed on his front lawn: wife and dog missing—reward for dog.

Woof.

DICKY = BILL CLINTON

For his part, Dick does not believe that any of his efforts to humiliate Ritchie were excessive. Erecting those signs in his front yard, he says, was just plain “fun.” Do the end of the marriage, its escalating vindictiveness, and the ongoing consequences of such anger make him in any way sad? His eyes go blank, and he says, “No, I don’t think about that. I just don’t want her near me. That’s all I think about.”

Asked whether his infidelity is hypocritical, in light of his political commitments, he refers not to a moral principle but to his own personal history. “My first marriage ended with an affair,” he says, amused. And monogamy is not, he continues, an essential part of a good marriage. “I don’t want people throwing rocks at me in the street. But I believe in open marriage.” Philandering, Scaife says with a laugh, “is something that Bill Clinton and I have in common.”

That's our Dicky!

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Republicans Are Insane

Willard:

Well, you know, I think the race in Iowa was really a very clear call that people want change in Washington, not in the White House, in Washington.

The Mittster's referring to President 25%.

Next up, the former NYC Mayor and would be Führer:

None of this worries me - Sept. 11, there were times I was worried [.]

As Joe Biden so brilliantly put it, "I mean, think about it! Rudy Giuliani. There's only three things he mentions in a sentence -- a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There's nothing else! There's nothing else!"

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1,000,000 Years

That's long time:

After the event ended, I asked McCain about his "hundred years" comment, and he reaffirmed the remark, excitedly declaring that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for "a thousand years" or "a million years," as far as he was concerned. [via Think Progress.]

The DNC provides us with a helpful bar-chart:

Of course, the Huckster's version of that graph would show humans as only having been around for 6,000 years so....

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Schadenfreude Alert

Whackjobs of the right file a lawsuit:

In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

Some of the authors’ books have appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, including “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,” by Mr. Corsi and John E. O’Neill (who is not a plaintiff in the suit), Mr. Patterson’s “Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America’s National Security” and Mr. Miniter’s “Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror.” In the lawsuit the authors say that Eagle sells or gives away copies of their books to book clubs, newsletters and other organizations owned by Eagle “to avoid or substantially reduce royalty payments to authors.”

[...]

“They’ve structured their business essentially as a scam and are defrauding their writers,” Mr. Miniter said in an interview, “causing a tremendous rift inside the conservative community.”

So much for tort reform.

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The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

The War on Christmas has begun!

Let's go, "Secular Progressives", it's time to carpet bomb some crèches!

Woohoo!

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Yes, But

So what might happen to the oil market if (when?) BushCheney attacks Iran? The WaPo takes a look:

A U.S. military strike against Iran would have dire consequences in petroleum markets, say a variety of oil industry experts, many of whom think the prospect of pandemonium in those markets makes U.S. military action unlikely despite escalating economic sanctions imposed by the Bush administration.

The small amount of excess oil production capacity worldwide would provide an insufficient cushion if armed conflict disrupted supplies, oil experts say, and petroleum prices would skyrocket. Moreover, a wounded or angry Iran could easily retaliate against oil facilities from southern Iraq to the Strait of Hormuz.

We already have this:

Continuing:

Oil traders said that even if the chances of military conflict with Iran were small, the huge run-up in oil prices that would result encourages some speculators and investment funds to bid up the price of oil, adding a premium of $3 to $15 a barrel.

"It will be chaos. . . . I can't really see it," said Abdulsamad al-Awadi, an oil trading consultant and former executive at Kuwait Petroleum. "Having been in the marketplace for almost 30 years, I can't see a scenario for it, or precautionary measures" that oil companies could take. "There are no precautionary measures."

The problem with these various oil traders and analysts is that they're thinking rationally. We already have ample evidence that those who are most pushing for an attack on Iran - the Cheneys, the Kristols, the Boltons - aren't rational.

Just something to keep in mind.

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And People Wonder Why The Country Is Screwed Up

Oy:

Put Conrad, a homemaker from Hampton, Va., firmly in the camp of the 34 percent of people who say they believe in ghosts, according to a pre-Halloween poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos. That's the same proportion who believe in unidentified flying objects — exceeding the 19 percent who accept the existence of spells or witchcraft.

Forty-eight percent believe in extrasensory perception, or ESP. But nearly half of you knew we were about to tell you that, right?

[...]

To put the roughly one-third who believe in ghosts and UFOs in perspective, it's about the same as, in recent AP-Ipsos polls, the 36 percent who said they are baseball fans; the 37 percent who said the U.S. made the right decision to invade Iraq; and the 31 percent who approve of the job President Bush is doing.

Now for the truly depressing part:

A smaller but still substantial 23 percent say they have actually seen a ghost or believe they have been in one's presence, with the most likely candidates for such visits including single people, Catholics and those who never attend religious services. By 31 percent to 18 percent, more liberals than conservatives report seeing a specter. [Emphasis added.]

It's a good thing that liberals have open minds. But nobody's mind should be so open that their brain falls out. Rational thought is a good thing!

And a quibble with this: "...with the most likely candidates for such visits including single people, Catholics and those who never attend religious services." Presumably people who do attend religious services believe in gods and angels and whatnot. How is that different from ghosts?

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The Roll Out Continues

Condi:

The Bush administration announced sweeping new sanctions against Iran Thursday — the harshest since the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in 1979 — charging anew that Tehran supports terrorism in the Middle East, exports missiles and is engaging in a nuclear build up.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, joined at a State Department news conference by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, said the steps the Bush administration is taking against the Revolutionary Guard Corps and a number of banks are designed, among other things, to punish Tehran for its support of terrorist organizations in Iraq and the Middle East.

Springtime in Tehran, anyone?

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Damn! I Forgot!

Yesterday was our planet's birthday. Exactly 6010 years old.

Doesn't look a day over 5327 if you ask me.

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Beam Him Up, Scotty

Hopeless Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich talked to visiting space aliens and tried to outlaw "chemtrails."

Frankly, there's little practical difference between New Agers like Kucinich and End Timers like, well, most Republicans. The former may be more benign but both groups are operating from an anti-intellectual mind-set. And after the last seven years I think we've had quite enough of that.

Here's another one who should go away quietly.

(Gosh, I am single-handedly winnowing the Democratic field today, ain't I?)

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The Stupidest People In The World

The National Review:

Whatever may be said about the U.S. House of Representatives committee vote concerning the use of the term “genocide” in reference to Turkey’s atrocities against the Armenians during World War I, two facts are indisputable: It was gun confiscation that made the atrocities possible. And it was the possession of firearms that saved many Armenians.

This would be a variant of "if European Jews had guns there would have been no Holocaust."

Well, here's a fact: Superior firepower.

Allow me to present a playlet:

[Ted Nugent and his friend Gomer are standing on Ted's front porch]

Gomer: Say, Ted, what's that thing streaking through the sky?

Ted: Why, Gomer, that there's a cruise missile.

Gomer [worried]: Ted, it looks like it's headed right towards us!

Ted [cocks AK-47]: Don't worry, Gomer, I got all I need right here. [Pats AK]

[Ted and Gomer are obliterated in a fireball of death.]

[curtain]

Lookit, I'm a pro-gun Liberal. But all of these "what ifs" are beyond silly. And trying to claim "if [x] had guns then [x] would be alive" is ridiculous to a comical extreme.

[Via Matthew Duss.]

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Rudymania

JMM:

I know I've said before that Romney's profound and almost incalculable phoniness is a terrifying prospect to behold in a possible president. But the danger of phoniness, aesthetic or otherwise, cannot hold a candle to the truly catastrophic foreign policy Giuliani would likely pursue if he got anywhere near the Oval Office. Watching him campaign it's pretty clear that the guy has no real sense that posturing and pandering to ethnic paranoia in New York City simply isn't the same as running a national foreign policy. The people he's coalescing around himself as his foreign policy advisors are the ones who are going to help him learn as he goes. And they are simply the most dangerous, deranged and deluded folks you can find in American political and foreign policy circles today. It's really not an exaggeration. Scrape the bottom of the "Global War on Terror" Islamofascism nutbasket and you find they've pretty much all signed on as Rudy advisors.

As I've been saying, a President Rudy would make us nostalgic for the moderation and sanity of the BushCheney regime.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

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Whore Of Babylon

Tony Norman:

Because intolerance is as natural to Ms. Coulter as dyeing her hair a mustard-gas yellow, it was only a matter of time before she got around to saying something offensive about another member of the Abrahamic Axis of Eden.

[...]

Mr. Deutsch pressed her. Asked if "we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians," the tarty Torquemada quickly agreed.

"Well, it's a lot easier," she quipped. "It's kind of a fast track."

[...]

What non-Christian could resist becoming a part of a tradition with this kind of history of perfecting others? If we were all to become like the happy Christians who smiled like idiots through the 2004 Republican convention, we would never have to fear another Holocaust, would we?

Judging by the makeup of the "perfected community" with all of its segregation and intolerance, perfection probably isn't all its cracked up to be.

As the saying goes, read the whole thing.

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Our Friends on the Right...

...strike again. This time it's Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) and his staffer Trent Wisecup. They apparently have granted themselves themselves the power to decide who is a citizen and who is not. Witness:

Protester: I'm a citizen.

Wisecup: No you're not. You're a political activist. You're a political activist with a political agenda.

[...]

Wisecup: Go away. We don't want you here.

Protester: Well, that doesn't matter.

Wisecup: You're not a citizen. You're a political hack.

Wisecup: You are a political hack with a political agenda. You're for everything that is wrong in this country, sir. You want our soldiers to lose in Iraq. You want Toyota to beat GM. If we followed your approach, Michigan would be in the tank.

Protester: Let's hear Joe say that. Is that what Joe thinks?

Wisecup: Ha! I'm speaking for Joe, because I'm his Chief of Staff, and he doesn't dignify you by talking to you.

So I guess it's settled: Bruce Fealk is not an American citizen. So sayeth Knollenberg and Wisecup.

Via Steve Benen, we find that Wisecup has a whole list of un-American activities:

"Per Politico’s blog on my run-in with Moveon.org, I will define what’s un-American for you.

It’s un-American to wage a political protest of a congressman’s wife at her home.

It’s un-American to disturb a congressman’s neighbors with weird anti-war tactics while our soldiers are deployed overseas fighting radical Islam.

It’s un-American to cheer for the imposition of $85 billion of Nancy Pelosi CAFÉ mandates that would destroy the American car companies and the good-paying UAW jobs they provide.

It’s un-American to use bullying, gotcha political tactics that scare female congressional staffers.

It’s un-American to use stalking and harassment as a means to score cheap political points.

"Weird anti-war tactics"? "Scare female congressional staffers"? (Is it okay to scare male congressional staffers?)

Wisecup goes on to claim that the Democratic Party is controlled by Michael Moore, Daily Kos, and Moveon.org (what, no mention of George Soros?)

And just think, the real election season hasn't even begun yet!

This is going to be a long 13 months.

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I Guess That's Settled

It's an impossibility for Our Friends on the Right to be anti-Semites (e.g., AnnCoulter). Only Lefties can be anti-Semites.

Who would have guessed?

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Attack Of The Randroids

On the 50th anniversary of its publication Morbo looks at Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged:

If you’ve never read it, “Atlas Shrugged” is a work of fiction that explores Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, a kind of personal fascism based on the premise that selfishness is a virtue, government regulation is always bad and taxation and social welfare programs are a great moral evil. In “Atlas Shrugged,” characters frequently offer up extended rants outlining the virtues of finding new ways to shaft your fellow human being. One of them goes on for something like 50 pages. This is considered the centerpiece of the novel.

[...]

The idea is that once these rugged individualist super-geniuses have withdrawn from the pathetic, socialist welfare state that America has become, society will quickly collapse and beg for them to come back — only this time it will be on their terms. The books ends with society in chaos as the square-jawed, ravishingly beautiful hyper-capitalists scheme to put the boot on our necks for good and smoke even more cigarettes and have even better sex while liberals squirm in their wretchedness, pining for the days of food stamps.

It's a hilariously on-target review. Check it out.

That anyone takes the "novel" seriously - let alone build a whole world-view around it (I'm looking at you, Alan Greenspan) - reveals a horribly purile aspect of our society.

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Our Friends On The Right

Just keep talking, rightwingers:

During the October 8 edition of CNBC's The Big Idea, host Donny Deutsch asked right-wing pundit Ann Coulter: "If you had your way ... and your dreams, which are genuine, came true ... what would this country look like?" Coulter responded, "It would look like New York City during the [2004] Republican National Convention. In fact, that's what I think heaven is going to look like." She described the convention as follows: "People were happy. They're Christian. They're tolerant. They defend America." Deutsch then asked, "It would be better if we were all Christian?" to which Coulter responded, "Yes." Later in the discussion, Deutsch said to her: "[Y]ou said we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians," and Coulter again replied, "Yes." When pressed by Deutsch regarding whether she wanted to be like "the head of Iran" and "wipe Israel off the Earth," Coulter stated: "No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. ... That's what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws."

The more they open their mouths the more people will turn on them.

Except, of course, for the 30% or so that agree with them.

Oh, and Ann? Thou shalt not bear false witness. As a "perfected Christian" you should know that. It's kind of basic.

.

Yep

John Dean:

And how does Bush compare with the Republicans seeking to succeed him? "If a Rudy Giuliani were to be elected," Dean said, "he would go even farther than Cheney and Bush in their worst moments."

[...]

I asked Dean to imagine the moment when Bush leaves office on Jan. 20, 2009, presumably to be replaced by a Democrat, presumably Hillary -- will it then be possible to say "our long national nightmare is over"? Dean replied with one word: "Yes."

He quickly added, "I do feel strongly that the Republicans have so abused the law and embedded so many people within the system, within the executive branch, that's it's going to take a couple of terms of Democratic presidents before you have people there who are representing the American people."

I too have been saying for a while now that a Rudy! presidency would make us wish for the sanity of BushCheney.

Hell of a country we live in.

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Rudy9/11Rudy9/11Rudy9/11Rudy9/11Rudy9/11

From Democrats.org:

Rudy Giuliani is now saying that he took a cell phone call from his wife in the middle of a speech last week because of--wait for it--September 11. Of course.

Giuliani also addressed a cell phone call he took from his wife, Judith, last week during his speech to the National Rifle Association...

"And quite honestly, since Sept. 11, most of the time when we get on a plane, we talk to each other and just reaffirm the fact that we love each other," he said.

I've said it before: If Rudy could dig up the corpses of the WTC victims and put them on the stage at one of his rallies he would.

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Why Libertarians Are Insane Part CCCXXVIII

Over at Reason:

David Boaz looks from FDR to Mussolini and from Mussolini to FDR and is unable to tell the difference.

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Let Us Now Praise Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

For he has replaced Moveon.org as the Most Important Story Ever™.

Don't the Republicans have anything better to do, indeed.

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Speaking Of Crazy People

Another issue for the presidential candidates to deal with:

This loophole has not been lost on the life form