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The friendly skies
NOW ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE SNOWGLOBES: There are so many ways that snow globes can harm someone. The most obvious is that you could replace the water within with a clear water-like explosive substance, of the sort that doesn't actually exist. You could also simply bash someone with one in the back of their skull, rendering them unconscious, or shatter the globe and use the resulting shards of glass as a crude blade-like weapon. And, of course, you could simply shake the globe, letting the falling snow cause your target to go into a reverie, flashing back to the childhood sled that represents his lost innocence. While we are still subject to these sorts of attacks as we walk the streets, we at least know that on airplanes we will be safe, thanks to the heroes at the TSA. Salon
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Yesterday's centrist is today's left winger Great 'recommended read' by The New York Crank.
The curse of John Mitchell: How a middle of the road guy like me became a raving leftist — without changing any of my political opinions
I still favor almost exactly the same things today. So how come I'm suddenly considered a raving leftist in my dotage?
I haven't found support for this during a quick dive into Google, but I distinctly remember John N. Mitchell, who was Nixon's attorney general, venomously telling a TV interviewer, "This country is going so far to the right you're not going to believe it." I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining that I saw the old sourpuss says this, some time before he did time for his participation in the Watergate scandal.
Well, the vindictive SOB was right. We moved so far to the right that we're even to the right of John N. Mitchell, who while a New York State official tried to borrow money in defiance of the voters with something called "moral obligation bonds."
Mitchell's dead. But his
evil curse lives on.
What's happened is, a huge chunk of Americans have gone so far to the right that they're now voting to destroy themselves.
And they want to take the rest of us down with them.
What is now "centrist" — like Barack Obama — used to be considered conservative Republicans. What are now right wing Republicans used to be considered batshit crazy lunatics. And today's batshit crazy lunatics like the "Tea Party" party-goers, Michelle Bachmann, Sharron Angle, and Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner, and this week's version of John McCain would have been locked up in mental institutions because they're a danger to themselves and others.
I can relate to this post. Up until the right wing curse fell on the land, I was only called a communist once and that was by a good friend because I don't care much for baseball. Now it happens all the time, at least in the media. I used to be more to the right side of left of center, but I like to think I've gotten wiser and more fair over the years.
It's pretty far left these days to think the Constitution means equal treatment under the law for all, ain't it?
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Morford: Gay marriage makes the world shrug
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Brave, brave, brave federal officer
Namely, the one who gunned down a dog in a dog park in Severn, MD. The county cops apparently tried to sweep it all under the rug, but thanks in part to the Internet, the story isn't going away. There was a memorial service, where the cops were apparently concerned about a riot or something.
There was also the standard line from the cop's attorney that "the shooting was justified", as if that's never been said before.
(Continuing coverage here.)
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Another massive meat recall This one is for a million pounds of ground beef and patties, processed by the Valley Meat Co. in Modesto, California and sold in California, Texas, Oregon, Arizona and overseas. Most of it was frozen. To identify products from Valley Meat, look for "EST. 8268" in the USDA inspection mark. Seven people who ate the meat were sickened and it was determined to have been contaminated with E. coli O157:H7
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New wingnut movie will teach children about national debt with 3-D computer animated Obama and Reagan
Here is a cool new movie about Obama's socialist federal spending! One-third of the documentary is animated with claymation and computers to "make it entertaining for a younger audience," according to the filmmaker, Ray Griggs. But what will make it REALLY entertaining for children is that it features interviews with their friends Ken Blackwell and Newt Gingrich. Hooray! MORE »
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"There are stories all over the internet about Obama being bi-sexual. That he lived with his gay partner in college. There is a picture of this man and Obama sitting side by side. Stories of homosexual men from Obama's church being murdered before he ran for president, men he'd
had affairs with. There is a mountain of information about this man being withheld from the public. I can't believe that classified war information is being released and no one can trace Obama's past." Lilly in Illinois, Link
So, Obama is so gay, he sits next to men?
What do you call it when Bush goes down on a sheik?
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Tiny African kingdom has more interesting sex scandals than we do 
Nobody is having a decent sex scandal in America this week, which has really put a crimp in your editors' style, man. But it's nice to see that our helpful friends in the nation of Swaziland are helping out! Swaziland is a wee little country mostly surrounded by South Africa, and it has a plump, youngish king (pictured), Mswati III, who has 13 wives! You might think having 13 wives would be pretty sweet, but when you have that many wives to keep track of, how can you tell when one of them might be sexing some other dude? Maybe even a cabinet minister? MORE »
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Confucius says...
A lion would never betray his wife,
but a Tiger Wood.
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"If they won't charge him with treason, they ought to charge him with murder. We know for a fact that people will likely be killed because of this information being disclosed. That's pretty serious." Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), wanting to kill Pfc. Bradley Manning for those Wikileaks, Link
Hey Mike, should we arrest the Bush bastards for murder?
We know for a fact that people likely died when they outed Valerie Plame.
Every Iranian who called Plame "my friend" is likely dead now.
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Is the party over for the teabaggers?
What do you call a "movement" that's not actually moving? That's a question people are beginning to ask about the tea party movement. Defined mostly by those things they oppose, teapartiers -- almost by design -- don't really have any forward momentum. Like any other conservative, when the teabagger talks about change, it means they want to change things back. As a whole, conservatives always seem to see the future as a way to return to some perfect past. And that past is always mostly imaginery -- plenty of people have already written that the Ronald Reagan conservatives have made a saint is not the Ronald Reagan who actually existed.
http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/08/is-party-over-for-teabaggers.html
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Reframing gay marriage
The battle is far from over but…
The 14th Amendment is a mighty sword, and U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker used it Wednesday to slice and shred all the specious arguments — and I mean all of them — that are used to deny full marriage rights to gay and lesbian Americans. Bigotry has suffered a grievous blow.
Walker found that California's Proposition 8, which sought to ban gay marriage in the state, violated not one but two of the amendment's clauses — those guaranteeing due process and equal protection under the law. By deciding the case on constitutional grounds, and by crafting such a detailed and comprehensive ruling, Walker all but guaranteed that the issue will reach the Supreme Court.
[...]
One decision by one federal judge does not settle the controversy over gay marriage. But Walker's 136-page ruling lays down a formidable marker because it changes the terms of the debate. He frames gay marriage as a question involving the most basic, cherished rights that the Constitution guarantees to all Americans. In doing so, he raises the stakes sky-high: Are gays and lesbians full citizens of this country, or are they something less?
Walker stepped up to the plate and swung for the fences. He hit a home run.
It is only a matter of time before full rights are granted to the gay and lesbian community but if the Civil Rights movement proved anything, it's that the battle against bigotry will be both long and arduous. Intolerance and hate are formidable foes which understand no logic and while laws can be enacted which sets justice on the right course, acceptance is a different matter. It requires a set of forces which have nothing to do with constitutional rights and everything to do with understanding, intelligence and education. That part of the equation will most likely be with us for a long time to come.
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