Headlines - Thursday

They put a provision in the credit card bill to let people carry guns in national parks. So when you're buried under a mountain of debt, at least you'll have a scenic place to go kill yourself. - Bill Maher

 

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Press the Meat's David Gregory, just said "President Obama did open up a pretty big area of scrutiny, though, when it comes to identity politics and personal experience, talking about the need for empathy, stressing the importance of her own personal story." He said there will be questions about whether her personal story is brought into her decision-making. I guess he didn't know about Samuel Alito, who, during his confirmation hearings cited his personal story as a factor when making decisions. 

 

Take it away Glenn Greenwald.

 

And here's another reason the wingnuts are upset: Sotomayor is unfit for the bench because she does not save enough money. Or could it be that she took Chimpy's advice and went shopping?

And here's a Twitter from Newt Gingrich: 

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Part of the reason your health insurance is so expensive, is that you're paying for the uninsured - about $1,000 per year.

 

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Doughy Pantload Jonah Goldberg reportedly unhappy when friends tell him he is looking more and more like his mom. 

 

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Aaah, the smell of it: Eau de Torture

After a hard day of waterboarding, there's nothing that freshens up a tired, sweaty Junior Torquemada better than a spritz of 24 The Fragrance. That's right, direct from the master parfumers of Dubai comes 24 The Fragrance, a new masculine scent that will drive the female prisoners wild with a desire to confess to anything - and we mean anything!

That's right, 20th Century Fox (why is it always Fox?) came up with the brilliant idea to license the name of Jack Bauer's neo-con television fantasia 24 to the land of exotically weird architecture. But the oddest part is where they plan to sell the stinky stuff - exclusively in the Middle East.

Now I'm no marketing major, but selling perfume based on an infidel American who tortures Arabs might not have the big "potent brand synergy" Fox expects.

Although there's no important connection between this stink juice and real torture, it's amazing that companies can have such a tin ear. In our society's quest to brand everything from political parties to online casinos, we're getting a little carried away.

What's next, Nuke 'Em Till They Glow aftershave?

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The Reincarnation Bank. What a terrific way to swindle people!

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For a limited time only: buy one Tata Nano and two large drinks at regular price, get second one free.

 

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No wonder Obama doesn't want the photos released 

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. And child rape.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html

The USA is awesome.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rebuffed Israel on a key Middle East peace negotiating issue yesterday, saying that "the Obama administration wants a complete halt in the growth of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory, with no exceptions." President Obama "wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions," Clinton said. 

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Sotomayor's magical bean foods make her hate white people more: http://wonkette.com/408783/sotomayors-magical-bean-foods-make-her-hate-white-people-more#more-408783

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This administration is willed by God: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2009/05/this-administration-is-willed-by-god.html

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Strange bedfellows

Wow. Ted B. Olson, the U.S. solicitor general under Bush and his lawyer in Bush v. Gore, and David Boies, who represented former vice president Al Gore in that case, have joined forces to challenge Proposition 8 in federal court after this week's loss in the California state court system. Story here.

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More taxpayer millions and millions given to the millionaires who are politically connected...to the Bush administration and Katrina:

The Shaw Group Inc. has been awarded a contract of up to $375 million by the federal government for post-disaster services in Louisiana and eight other states. - Yahoo Finance

You remember "Brownie's" roomie... Joe Allbaugh. He's a lobbyist for the Shaw Group. Why the h*** we would want to be dealing with those crooks again is anyone's guess.

 

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Obama may let superstition compromise science at the NIH

 

PZ Myers explains why the rumored appointment of Human Genome Project leader Francis Collins to head the National Institutes of Health would be a disaster.

 

More dangerous even than President Obama's eagerness for republican cooperation is his apparent tolerance for believers in invisible sky wizards and other fairy tales.

While it's remotely possible that someone who suffers from superstition could be trusted to run, say, the White House motor pool, you really don't want him in charge of things that require an acceptance of facts.

And you especially don't want him in charge of things like scientific research if he has made a career of publicizing his belief in myths that contradict scientific facts.

Obama is rapidly solidifying a reputation as the Great Compromiser. Bad enough he's already compromised the economic stimulus into ineffectiveness and is likely to compromise health care reform into an HMO bailout. Appointing freakazoid Collins to run the NIH would be killing scientific integrity.

Between science and superstition there can be no common ground, no meeting halfway, no compromise.

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That's JUDGE Sotomayor to you, Beaurregard

Used to be, dense white guys exercised their sexism against uppity females with condescending epithets like "little lady."  That was how they addressed little white ladies, of course.  Minority females were lucky to get called something not obscene but merely demeaning, like "Mammy."  Anita Hill didn't even rate that courtesy, getting labeled the "C" word. 

Federal Appeals Court Judge and Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor presents a unique challenge: a Hispanic woman born to the lowest of the low - Puerto Rican from the Bronx projects - who achieved one of the highest posts in the nation.

What to call this uppity-est of the uppity bitches?

Mike Huckabee hit on a brilliant ploy by calling her "Maria."  No, he didn't just blurt out the only Hispanic female name he could think of; this was deliberate.

"Sonia" is the intelligent, educated, lovely-mannered European wife of your upper-class suburban neighbor.

"Maria" is your illegal maid. The fat one.  Who whores around.

Backwoods Alabaman "Senator" Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions calls her "Ms. Sotomayor."

Every time he does that, Judge Sotomayor should say this:  "Ms. Sotomayor is my mother, Mr. Sessions.  You can call me Judge."

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If we lived in the Real World, the confirmation
 

of Sonia Sotomayor to be a Supreme Court justice
would proceed expeditiously and with dignity. But
we live in the Unreal World, where dragons and
other horrid beasties roam freely.