Sunday, November 18, 2007

And you still wonder why we're in Iraq?

Martha Rosenberg at Alternet devastates Dead-Eye Dick:

While most people are lamenting the violence in Pakistan, Burma, Afghanistan and Iraq, apparently it's not enough bloodshed for Vice President Dick Cheney.

Last month in a caravan of 15 sport utility vehicles and an ambulance -- no jokes, please -- Cheney made his way to Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club, about 70 miles north of New York City, near Poughkeepsie, for a day of controlled bloodletting.

Cheney landed at Stewart Air Force Base and took off the following day for the upscale gun club at a cost of $32,000 for local law enforcement officials who guarded his hotel, protected his motorcade and diverted school buses. ...

Some hunters say shooting the pellet-ready tame animals, which offer no resistance, is like having sex with a blow-up doll.

But others say hunting itself is like sex with a blow up doll and that the 10 percent decline in hunters seen in the United States since the late '90s -- from 14 million to about 12.5 million -- coincides exactly with the debut of impotence drugs like Viagra.

Still for the veep to pursue his addiction to the "programmed massacre of scores of tame, pen-raised birds" despite all the "negative publicity it has generated for him" suggests a deep psychological disorder, writes Gerald Schiller in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Especially since criminologists have long recognized that premeditated, sadistic treatment of animals is a strong predictor of criminal and homicidal violence.

Sociopaths Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Speck were both big on animal cruelty. And they weren't running foreign policy.

The entire article will disgust you even further. It's way past time to impeach this sorry bastard. The country literally cannot stand another day of him.

Sunday Funnies I






Friday, November 16, 2007

FoxNewsPorn

Continuing on an earlier theme...



Proceed to the website for for more hot action. N all that SFW.

Oh yeah: Roger Ailes is the News Corp. executive who asked Bernie Kerik's paramour, publisher Judith Regan, to lie about their relationship while Kerik -- now under indictment for corruption -- was being vetted for his nomination to be director of Homeland Security. All of which was done to protect the presidential viability of one Rudy Giuliani.

Is conspiring to obstruct a federal investigation illegal?

And I just thought Fox was vile for employing Hannity and O'Reilly.

"They referred all questions to their attorneys..."

"... but it was clear from their body language that the two had not shared the same bed for quite some time."

(caption winner)



Line of the evening goes to Dennis K:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio took a direct shot at fellow White House hopeful former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina at Thursday's CNN Democratic presidential debate.

"In the last debate, Hillary Clinton was criticized by John Edwards for some trade-related issue," said Kucinich. "But the fact of the matter is, John, you voted for China trade understanding that workers were going to be hurt. Now, you're a trial lawyer, you knew better."

When given the chance to respond, Edwards said, "I'm not sure what being a trial lawyer has to do with it."

Kucinich quickly shot back "product liability."

"Cute," Edwards responded before emphasizing the need to stop big corporations from lobbying the federal government."

I heard Edwards say "Cute, Dennis. Cute."

Kooch was the only candidate on the stage to qualify his support for the eventual Democratic nominee. I think this signals a third-party run for him.

Looks to me like Hillary won the evening, not only because the media is all saying so, but because Obama stumbled again on driver's licenses for undocumenteds and Edwards ... well, Edwards got knocked around a few times and even booed by the very pro-Hillary audience.

Her competition is busily conceding Nevada to her.

Inevitability creeped back quite a bit last night.

Update: Hal's got a take I agree with.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

The latest suck from Faux News

Robert Greenwald has documented the atrocities:



Whoring for Rudy G also:

Of all the allegations contained in former ReganBooks Publisher Judith Regan's lawsuit against her one-time employers at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the most explosive is the first. Regan charges that News Corp. executives wanted to destroy her reputation because she knew too much about her ex-boyfriend, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, and that what she knew could be harmful to the presidential hopes of Rudy Giuliani -- whom she depicts as the preferred candidate of News Corp. and its subsidiary, Fox News. According to Regan's suit, "This smear campaign was necessary to advance News Corp.'s political agenda, which has long centered on protecting Rudy Giuliani's presidential ambitions."


I had a conversation yesterday with a hard-boiled conservative acolyte who noted his concern about a Clinton presidency as the discussion had turned to wiretapping Americans. This is what he wrote, when I asked him why he favored government surveillance for "terrorists" and didn't realize he had been caught in the sweeping net:

Actually yes, I have a few things to hide....

My offshore bank accounts when Hellory tries to take away all of my assets to redistrbute; My guns when Hellory tries to remove the 2nd Amendment. My medical information when Hellory decides I am not capable of choosing who my medical provider is; my internet and radio, when Hellory decides I should not read or listen to what I want; my voting record when Hellory decides I need to be "re-educated" becuase I prefer to think for myself.

Leaving aside the rhetorically failing ad hominem bastardization of her name (as well as most of the other paranoid drivel), I wanted to inquire as to the lack of concern for Dick Cheney's expansion of the unitary executive concept that lay at the heart of his paranoia, but chose instead to reassure him that nobody was going to be taking his guns away. (That right-wing myth gets trotted out every four years, have you noticed?)

He backtracked, responding that the Washington Post was no honest source of information.

Yes, a denizen of Fox News questioned the reliability of the nation's capital's most respected newspaper. But please note the Mukasey-tortured logic inherent in this conversation: how powerfully dishonest must a person be to believe that Hillary Clinton is going to take away their guns, yet faced with the evidence that the Bush administration has been wiretapping them, refuse to believe THAT?

I mean, "monumentally stupid" just seems too mild a description. Yet that is the precise finding of the research that reveals FOX news viewers are the most uninformed in America:

The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland conducted a thorough study of public knowledge and attitudes about current events and the war on terrorism. Researchers found that the public’s mistaken impressions of three facets of U.S. foreign policy — discovery of alleged WMD in Iraq, alleged Iraqi involvement in 9/11, and international support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq — helped fuel support for the war.

While the PIPA study concluded that most Americans (over 60%) held at least one of these mistaken impressions, the researchers also concluded that Americans’ opinions were shaped in large part by which news outlet they relied upon to receive their information.

As the researchers explained in their report, “The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR or PBS are less likely to have misperceptions. These variations cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographic characteristics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the demographic subgroups of each audience.”

Almost shocking was the extent to which Fox News viewers were mistaken. Those who relied on the conservative network for news, PIPA reported, were “three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions. In the audience for NPR/PBS, however, there was an overwhelming majority who did not have any of the three misperceptions, and hardly any had all three.”

You know, this is really embarrassing. For the United States of America, I'm talking.

What do you suppose we ought to do about the willful and arrogant ignorance of the conservatives among us? Or would anything we might do be the equivalent of teaching a pig to sing?

An Academic All-American


Dorrell, who maintains a 3.65 gpa in finance, has enjoyed success both on and off the volleyball court. A four-year starter for the Lady Razorbacks, she became the 12th player in program history to tally 1,000 career kills. She has since moved up into the 10th spot and will likely overtake the ninth position this weekend.


Niece-y was selected to ESPN The Magazine's Academic All-American Team for District 6, University Division, second team (.pdf).



Looks, brains, and a hell of an athlete.

All in the family. =)