Headlines - Saturday December 18

Spreading that Christmas cheer ....

 

Pakistani officials: US drones killed 54 in Khyber. 

 

And in other news ....

 

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says the government really doesn't care what you think and isn't going to end the war no matter how unpopular it gets

 

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Have Gun Will Travel Right Past the Clueless TSA

TSA screeners at Houston's airport were apparently too busy checking out the neighborhood junk to notice a loaded .40 caliber handgun a guy inadvertently carried onto his flight. Officials said that after the incident screeners got "remedial instruction" - presumably, as in: "This is a gun." Recent tests show screeners miss most of this stuff. Are we feeling safe yet?

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Mooselini has a plan!

According to a WaPo-ABC Poll only 8% of Americans would vote for Mooselini to be Preznint.

But fear not! She has a strategy in place. Prayer:

"It's a prayerful consideration because, obviously, the sacrifices that have to be made in order to put yourself forward in the name of public service is, it's brutal," she said in the interview at her home in Wasilla, Alaska.

Keep praying, Griftzilla. It's going to take Divine Intervention.

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Wisco: A study in rightwing media misinformation - the FDA and Avastin

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Tax exempt Family Research Council Vows To "Endorse & Fund" 2012 Primary Challengers To Senators Who Vote To Repeal DADT

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The good news is the numbers are inching our direction. The bad news is, the numbers suck for the rational in this country. "Four in 10 Americans, slightly fewer today than in years past, believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago. Thirty-eight percent believe God guided a process by which humans developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms, while 16%, up slightly from years past, believe humans developed over millions of years, without God's involvement."

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Unsatisfied with the November retention vote that ousted three pro-equality Iowa Supreme Court justices, GOP lawmakers there are drafting a bill to impeach the remaining four for "malfeasance" because they enabled the legalization of same-sex marriage.

State Reps. Tom Shaw (R-Laurens), Glen Massie (R-Des Moines) and Kim Pearson (R-Pleasant Hill) are working on the legislation that could result in the removal of the four justices — Mark Cady, David Wiggins, Daryl Hecht and Brent Appel. During last month's judicial retention vote, three justices were removed from the bench after a contentious campaign that saw five out-of-state anti-gay organizations spend nearly $1 million to oust the judges. The impeachment effort got a boost Wednesday when Speaker-elect Kraig Paulsen (R-Hiawatha) said if he thought Iowans wanted the four justices removed, he would not stand in the way. A few days earlier, state Sen. Kent Sorenson (R-Indianola), who will sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he will also push for impeachment proceedings.

RELATED: Last week an anti-gay Christian group filed a lawsuit demanding that the public be allowed to vote on the appointments of all future state Supreme Court justices.

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Tax exempt American Family Association Celebrates A Year Of Anti-Gay Religious Bigotry.

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Tax exempt Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council say they are going to wreak vengeance on Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) come the 2012 elections after her "turncoat" announcement of support for the repeal of DADT.

Has anyone noticed how the tax exempt organizations are the hateful ones?

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Fact-checking site Politfacts has released their Biggest Political Lies Of 2010 list. Here's their readers' picks. Unsurprisingly, almost all of the liars are Republicans. Surprisingly, Crazy Eyes isn't the #1 GOP liar.

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"Let's make a deal: give us our full civil equality—repeal DOMA, let us marry legally in all fifty states, end DADT, pass ENDA, stop torturing gay kids to death—and we'll let you have your fucking rainbows back." - Dan Savage on yesterday demand by NOM that queers stop using the rainbow.

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Shep Smith joins with Jon Stewart -- as well as all reasonable people everywhere -- in blasting the Republican filibuster of the 9/11 first responders healthcare bill.

Of course he didn't mention the vote, he just said "lawmakers", so the retards watching Fox will not know it was Republicons.

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Sarah Palin is not popular

We should absolutely continue to expose this grifter as the screechy doofus she is, but with the knowledge that despite what cable news says, no one likes her all that much. Her approval ratings are way low. Her show is failing. Her books sales are shrinking. And now this:

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found Obama with a 55 percent to 33 percent lead over Palin, and a 47-percent to 40-percent lead over Romney. The survey also found Obama with a 47-percent to 27-percent lead over the relatively unknown South Dakota Senator John Thune. The poll was conducted Dec. 9-13 by Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican pollster Bill McInturff among 1,000 adults, and has a 3.1-percent margin of error.

I don't understand why people don't love a marble-mouthed instigator who routinely embarrasses herself on Twitter and Facebook. Hmm. Such a mystery. And the fact that cable news is blind to her unpopularity says a lot about the demographic of older white guy network executives with creepy Palin fetishes.

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Every year we dutifully send in our taxes so things like this can be done:

WASHINGTON — When the CIA decided to waterboard suspected terror detainees in overseas prisons, the agency turned to a pair of contractors. The men designed the CIA's interrogation program and also personally took part in the waterboarding sessions.

But to do the job, the CIA had to promise to cover at least $5 million in legal fees for them in case there was trouble down the road, former U.S. officials said.

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Obama Replaces Costly High-Speed Rail Plan With High-Speed Bus

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Believing in the sanctity marriage (and apparently child rape), Repiglicans block Child Marriage Protection Act. 

Here's Jill's take on it.

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Cool: A small, feathered raptor-like dinosaur thought to be 125 million years old has been discovered in eastern Utah, scientists announced Thursday.

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Bradley Manning's Health Deteriorating in Jail, Supporters Say

The intelligence analyst suspected of leaking US diplomatic cables is being held in solitary confinement.

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"This Christmas season Americans are facing 9.8 percent unemployment. And the only chestnuts they want to see roasting on an open fire are the ones attached to Wall Street bankers." ---Stephen Colbert

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This is pretty amazing.

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You say poTAYto, I say PoTAHto: Congressional edition

As everyone should know by now, the word "earmark" has become a dirty word to the ears of Teabaggers, among others.

A source has told me that the politicians have come up with a new term: A "Demonstration of Good Policy", or "DGP". A DGP is an individual project that is supposedly an experiment to help determine what new policy ideas work and what does not.

But make no mistake about it, Gentle Reader, a DGP is nothing more than an earmark in new clothing.  

 

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Interesting paragraph from a WikiLeaks cable:

The final border crossing only served to re-inforce the concerns that emerged from the first two sites the group visited. One of the most memorable images of the day was the steady flow of rafts transporting people and goods across the river illegally within sight of the legal border crossing.

Not our border, but the one between Mexico and Guatemala.

Guns, drugs and illegal migrants are flowing across that border. And if you think that those weapons were first bought in Texas, I have a bridge to sell you, assuming that an intrepid editor from the Washington Post doesn't buy it before you.

 

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Change we can believe in: Pentagon bars own journalists from reading Wikileaks.

 

If that's not enough change, here's some more: Pulitzer-winner, ex-CIA analyst, FBI whistleblower among those arrested outside White House

 

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No worries - Big Daddy will take care of us.

 

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The countdown starts now: to recovery or catastrophe. "US President Barack Obama has signed into law a compromise tax bill agreed with the Republicans, averting income tax rises for millions of Americans. Mr Obama said the $858bn (651bn euros; £542bn) package was "real money that's going to make a real difference". The deal also extends benefit payments for some of the longer-term unemployed for 13 months. The bill passed over objections from House Democrats about tax breaks for wealthy Americans."

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It just stuns us that this is happening -- in 2010 -- and in blatant violation of federal law. "In a disturbing development, the TAX EXEMPT Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix is pressuring one of the nation's largest hospital systems to stop providing life-saving abortions. This extreme stance by the diocese was made public yesterday after the media published a vitriolic letter that the Bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, wrote to Catholic Healthcare West (CHW). ... This issue stems from an abortion that was performed in a Phoenix hospital, St. Joseph's, which is part of CHW, in November 2009. The woman, a young mother of four children, would have died if she did not receive an abortion. We've written about the issue here and here. We also wrote to the federal government and asked them to investigate this instance and others across the country where women's health and lives were jeopardized by religious hospitals' refusal to provide emergency abortions. ... Now the Bishop of Phoenix is threatening to remove his endorsement of St. Joseph's unless CHW meets his demands by December 17, 2010. Those demands include requiring CHW to sign a written pledge that St. Joseph's will never provide another life-saving abortion like the one that occurred in November 2009. But the bishop is asking the hospital to agree to something that is not only very troubling, but is also illegal. Federal law requires all hospitals to provide all emergency care to all patients who walk through their doors. There are no exceptions to this law."

 

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This is just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong, wronger, wrongest. More wrong than ham at Passover.  

Serious journalism operations simply don't team up with partisan political players for presidential debates. Not serious journalism outfits that want to continue to be taken seriously, anyway.

Sorry, but that is just an inviolable tenet of journalism, and CNN has violated it. They are officially at the bottom of the slope they started down with the hiring of Erick Erickson as a political analyst.

CNN is teaming up with the Tea Party Express for a first-of-its-kind presidential primary debate, both organizations announced Friday. The Tea Party debate, featuring 2012 Republican presidential candidates, is scheduled for Labor Day week 2011. It will take place in Tampa, Florida - the site of the 2012 Republican National Convention.

Since the spring of 2009, the Tea Party movement has been increasingly vocal in advocating for less government spending, lower taxes and shrinking the deficit. The Tea Party debate will place specific emphasis on those issues.

Tea Party Express Chairman Amy Kremer talked to CNN about what activists hope to hear from Republican presidential candidates. "We want to hear what their ideas are - what their thoughts are - on turning this economy back around and getting us on a sound economic footing, paying down some of our deficit, getting a balanced budget, and reining in the spending," Kremer said.

Kremer added, "We've proven ourselves in this last campaign, election cycle of 2010, we're the only Tea Party group that engaged in election activity. And we got involved because we simply believed that if we're going to affect change we're going to do it at the ballot box. And the tea party movement has proven how powerful it is."

Sam Feist, CNN Political Director and Vice President of Washington-based programming said, "The Tea Party movement is a fascinating, diverse, grassroots force that already has drastically changed the country's political landscape."

"Undecided voters turn to CNN to educate themselves during election cycles, so it is a natural fit for CNN to provide a platform for the diverse perspectives within the Republican Party, including those of the Tea Party," Feist added.

Funny...I thought that media outlets at least feigned neutrality and exercised caution in selecting debate partners to avoid appearances of bias and to protect the reputation of the media outlet as a purveyor of information instead of of ideology.  

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Newt Gingrich has some very interesting schemes for making money, it seems, but it troubles him that the same stip joint keeps trying to give him funds for one of his special Newt trophies. Newt, of course, needs monies to build a prison of Christianity around the GZ MOSK, but it keeps getting infected with the sweater stripper cash he keeps accidentally asking for. READ MORE »

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