Oh, here's a tragedy: Minnesota's (now former) Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch had been working so hard on a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage in her state, but ALAS, the amendment couldn't be approved in time to keep her own straight marriage safe from harm — she resigned her Senate leadership post last week after being caught having an affair with a male staffer. Minnesota's homos feel just terrible about all of these problems she is having as a straight married lady, on their account, so they have kindly decided to apologize, aww.
From the open letter written by Minneapolis gay rights activist John Medeiros:
Dear Ms. Koch,
On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community's successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage. We are ashamed of ourselves for causing you to have what the media refers to as an "illicit affair" with your staffer, and we also extend our deepest apologies to him and to his wife. These recent events have made it quite clear that our gay and lesbian tactics have gone too far, affecting even the most respectful of our society.
We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry. And we are doubly remorseful in knowing that many will see this as a form of sexual harassment of a subordinate.
It is now clear to us that if we were not so self-focused and myopic, we would have been able to see that the time you wasted diligently writing legislation that would forever seal the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman, could have been more usefully spent reshaping the legal definition of "adultery."
Okay, now HURRY UP Minnesota and make sure that constitutional amendment is approved before any more Senate Republicans are forced to cheat on their spouses. [City Pages]
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One of the greatest success stories of the first four years of the Obama Administration is the resuscitation of Detroit and the American auto-industry, and this would not have been possible without direct, government intervention.
That intervention was a success, and the entire country is better off because of it.
After selling roughly 11.8 million cars and trucks last year, U.S. vehicle sales to businesses and consumers are expected to hit nearly 12.8 million in 2011…That's up from 10.6 million at the height of the Great Recession in 2009. Through November, new-vehicle sales had logged six straight months of year-over-year gains. That should continue in December, when 1.2 million vehicles are likely to be sold.
If it weren't for the Obama Administration, Government General Motors would have imploded, and the economy would have lost at least another million jobs as the endless chain of service centers, suppliers, and dealerships that maintained and sold GM vehicles closed their doors.
The auto-industry bailout was not without casualties, as General Motors was forced to discontinue several veteran brands such as Pontiac and Saturn, but the consequences of doing nothing would have been severe and the American auto-industry may have never recovered.
The saving or creating of jobs isn't the only story though. The rest of the story is a renewed relationship between the auto-workers union and the auto-industry, and in the wake if its restructuring, Detroit is giving back to its workers.
Meanwhile, the general consensus among Republicans is that bailing-out the auto-industry was a mistake, and some have even outright called for letting the industry go bankrupt.
The most infamous opinion on the subject is of course Mitt Romney's 2008 op-ed simply titled 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.'
Romney would also like to take credit for the bailout, which he claims was modeled after his own plan, even though he called for bankruptcy. Or something. It's difficult to keep track of where he stands on any issue, but 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt' is pretty clear.
The rest of the Republican candidates, including Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Jon Huntsman have also declared that they would not have bailed out the auto-industry.
Suffice to say it should be crystal clear who is on the side of working-class people and who is not. Because both parties are not the same. Not even close.
You can find a comprehensive list of GOP stances on the auto-industry bailout here.
There's no indication of content, but it might clarify how the administration interprets the law.
Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed speculation Wednesday that President Barack Obama would issue a signing statement when he makes the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its controversial detention provisions law.
"We made really substantial progress in moving from something that was really unacceptable to the administration to something with which we still have problems," Holder said in response to a question from the Wall Street Journal's Evan Perez. "But I think through these procedures, with these regulations we will be crafting, we can minimize the problems that will actually affect us in an operational way."
I doubt it will contain the magic words ("the war on terror is over") but it could help to ameliorate some fears about civil liberties.
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Mario: You'll Never Hear About It On Fox News
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Krugman: The Post-Truth Campaign
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Utah proves once again that it is fucking retarded.
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The TSA has wasted hundreds of billions of dollars in its relentless production of security theater. One wonders how confiscating the Cupcakes of Death is keeping us safe.
Someday, people will smarten up and realize that it is high time that we stop giving blank checks to the "we're only trying to keep you safe" crowd. But I don't see that happening anytime soon. So we'll keep surrendering our liberties, freedom and dignity to the "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear" security goons.
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Vote for me, I'm incompetent!
That is her pitch: That she should be elected president because she is not good at her job.
"I am not a politician. I am a real person. I don't even know how to be a politician," Bachmann said in a news conference outside a high school in Grundy Center, Iowa.
Bachmann has been a Congressman for five years. Before that, she was a Minnesota state senator for six years. She'd been politically active for years before that.
Eleven years in elective office, more than that flogging for donations, and she claims that she's not a politician?
She's either one of the biggest liar in this year's pack* or she's telling the truth, in which case she is bragging about a stunning level of incompetence.
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Tell me again why this is so dangerous to the world?
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A series of bomb attacks killed at least 63 people in Baghdad. The attack is the first major act of
violence in Iraq since the U.S. troop withdrawal last Sunday and offered the first sign of a violent backlash against
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's efforts to arrest Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi. Police report the bombings targeted
Shi'ite districts in Baghdad.
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