Sunday, July 5, 2009

Headlines - Sunday

Wonkette:
 
Insane Sarah Palin, late at night on July 4, threatens to sue entire internet, via Twitter

'Now when all the clowns that you have commissioned, Have died in battle or in vain, And you're sick of all this repetition, Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?'

How did you spend the Fourth of July? Maybe having a BBQ with friends and family, watching a fireworks show, and generally enjoying a happy patriotic holiday? Batshit-insane American Quitter Sarah Palin ended her own special "Independence Day" by posting a series of desperate grammar-challenged nonsense and vicious threats on her Facebook and Twitter pages. Really.

(Also: Sarah, you idiot, when do you plan to give up your Twitter name AKGovSarahPalin? Because, you know, you just quit being governor ….)

It is unwise to dwell on the past or be obsessed with an unknown future, but we should all appreciate the wonderful present — a present in which Sarah Palin is nothing more than a punchline. Because, had things gone very differently in November, this dangerous delusional numbskull would've been just an Ambien overdose away from the presidency.

Thank you, America, for steering clear of the Sarah Palin disaster.

So, after crazily quitting her elected position as governor of Alaska, via an alarming backyard last-minute press conference void of any explanation , at the classic 4 p.m. hour of the Friday-Holiday news dump, Sarah Palin is now twatting on the twitter about how her Anchorage attorneys are going to SUE THE AMERICAN MEDIA, for saying "WTF?"

Honestly, this is what Sarah Palin twatted on Saturday Night, July 4th, Independence Day, in America.

Her link goes to (of course) Scientologist nut and sub-literate weirdo Greta Van Susteren's blog on FoxNews.com, where Greta has helpfully (?) posted seven pages of legal threats from Palin's lawyers, although you can't actually read beyond the first vague page of whining bullshit, because Greta/Fox can't figure out how to operate the Internet.

But, from other websites, we gather Palin's lawyers plan lawsuits against MSNBC, the New York Times, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, individual bloggers in Alaska, and other such anti-Palin forces such as "rain on your wedding day" and static cling.

Just go read this entire Anchorage Daily News article, which is hilarious.

Sarah Palin, a snowbilly grifter who spent her entire adult life desperately trying to become a Public Figure, apparently wants her attorneys to stupidly and pointlessly threaten American practitioners of free speech regarding our public figures and elected officials.

Happy fourth of July, you daft racist moron!

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Dead fish prefers to go with the flow rather than be a quitter like Sarah Palin.
 
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North Korea launched 7 missiles yesterday. Kim Jong-Il didn't count on Sarah Palin filling the weekend news hole and stealing all the attention.
 
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Kurtz blames Letterman

The blame Letterman meme is catching on fast:

It's too early to tell, but it's likely that Palin simply got tired of the ritual media humiliations, along with the mundane reality of governing. It was only three weeks ago that she called David Letterman "pathetic" for telling an insensitive joke about her daughter getting "knocked up" by New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez.

And what does "likely" even mean in this context where no one knows anything about what is going on? How is it journalism to engage in such baseless speculation?

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The no-win scenario

So once again, we at Mock, Paper, Scissors find ourselves challenged with some serious business, and we have to put down our spitball tubes, walk away slowly from the snark, and otherwise leave our childish ways behind us for just a moment.

You probably do not know (because the press has buried it pretty well) that one of our US soldiers has been captured in Afghanistan by the Taliban. The soldier, whose name is not given, walked off his base and was promptly captured. We only know this because the military tells us this. He (or she) is believed to be the first US soldier to be a prisoner of war in the 8 year old war.

This puts us in a strange position, as The Carebear only just this week validated Chimpy's policy that he can detain "enemy combatants" indefinitely, and presumably torture them. (I don't believe in the euphemism of "harsh interrogation techniques" - torture is torture is torture, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein.) And now one of our soldiers is, in effect, in the same limbo world and being held by the Taliban.

And so, suddenly, we are in a no-win scenario:

  • The Taliban, if they choose to treat our US soldier with dignity and respect will have a propaganda tool unlike few others: they will have taken the moral higher ground, and they will no doubt be able to use this to their advantage.
  • The Taliban, if they choose to torture our US soldier, will put the spotlight on the US policies of detaining and torturing prisoners. It will be hard for us to demand that this soldier is treated better than we profess to treat their people.

Knowing that the GOP mouth-breathers are going to latch onto this, I want to say this very carefully: I hope that the Taliban is caring for our guy better than we have been caring for their guys. This is not Blaming America First — as I will no doubt be accused of doing — this is hoping that their policies are more humane than ours.

I also hope that this might finally be a moral beacon to our politicians that when they discover that they cannot be outraged by torture as a policy of the enemy when we do it ourselves. Torture is not American, and we must work to have this repellant policy repealed.

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During a townhall in Waukon, IA Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Assley (R-IA) was asked by a constituent of his: "Why is your insurance so much cheaper than my insurance and so much better than my insurance?" When Assley struggled to explain the details of his own health care plan, the elderly man followed up, "Okay, so how come I can't have the same thing you have?" Assley said, "You can. Just go work for the federal government." 

Assley has been at the forefront of railing against Obama's health care plan, declaring, "We need to make sure that there's no public option." As Igor Volsky notes, there is an irony in government workers like Grassley complaining about "government-sponsored health care." If Grassley wants to stand on principle, he could abandon his government-sponsored insurance and try his luck in the individual health insurance market. 
 
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I'm sure that the billions paid out in lawsuits for the sexual abuse of little children has nothing to do with their deficit. 
 
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The state budget crisis that has been growing steadily for the last two years has had one salutary effect:  it has dropped to the bottom of legislators' priority list the unconstitutional proposal for "In God We Trust" license plates.

Now a religious group has sued Kentucky to demand not only that the state produce the god-walloping plates, but that it also pay profits from the plate to said freakazoids.

A Kentucky anti-pornography group has sued the state Transportation Cabinet and two legislators for turning down its application to sponsor a specialty license plate with the motto "In God We Trust."

The Louisville-based Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana claims in a lawsuit filed in Franklin Circuit Court that the Transportation Cabinet erred in 2008 when it denied its application for the license plate.

In its application, ROCK said it would use money from sales of the plate to raise awareness about harm caused by pornography and the sex industry and to help people hurt or victimized by porn, sexual predators and the sex business.

If approved, the plate would cost $34, but buyers could volunteer to add $10 that would go to ROCK.

In the cabinet's response, attorney Allan Weiss of Louisville asked the court to dismiss the complaint because ROCK promotes religion, making the organization ineligible to sponsor a specialty license plate under state law.


Read the whole thing.

My last-word rant on freakazoid license plates from last summer is here. It's ironic but predictable that the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet will go to court to prevent a religious group from sponsoring such plates, but has no problem with the state itself profiting from promoting religion.

It doesn't matter who sponsors or even who profits from the plates. What matters is the unconstitutional injection of a religious message into a basic government service that non-freakazoid citizens cannot escape.

And no, "In God We Trust" is not the "national motto."  IGWT was stamped on coins as a Civil War-era sop thrown to slave owners, and hypocritically promoted by McCarthyites to intimidate freethinkers.

The national motto is E pluribus unum, "out of many, one."  Put that on the license plates.

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WTF? Bernie Madoff has hired a veteran prison consultant to help him to find the best possible jail in which to serve his 150-year sentence for Wall Street's biggest fraud. 

 

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