Danny Glover: More Science-y Than The Scientists

You know, I have a difficult time mocking fools like Danny Glover, because I was always taught  to treat the "special" people on this planet with compassion and tolerance, especially when they make statements such as this.

 

Posted by: eddiebear at 10:28 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Question time

When did President of The United States (like George W. Bush, or any of his predecessors for that matter) ever mobilize his supporters with his won own personal campaign symbol?



Um, does anybody else find it a bit creepy that the Big O is still being employed?  That they're not using the official symbol of the Democrat Party instead?

This is an "Organizing for America" thing, but, come on...

Posted by: Sean M. at 05:49 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Gee, guess who's upset that Palin has a new Fox News gig?

His name rhymes with "Brandrew Grullivan," he's not getting a link, and he seems to think that this is proof of Roger Ailes setting up a "New Political-Media Party" and orchestrating some kind of "FNC-RNC Hostile Take-Over," all the while failing to recognize that he's writing about himself, in part (with my emphasis):

Ailes' new political-media party is fueled by Beck's integration into the paranoid far right, aided by O'Reilly's fading but still significant grip on ageing Reagan-Democrats, and galvanized by Hannity's nightly unvarnished propaganda and endless demonization of all things not-Republican. But until Ailes found Palin - a figure who instantly short-circuits rational thinking in those who support and oppose her, he had not yet found the sub-rational rallying point.

Um, do we know anybody who fits that description? Bueller? Bueller?

This FNC/RNC merger is another threat to reasoned discourse in public life, because it is a showman's concoction of very powerful emotional elements: resentment, sex, religion, anger.

Aaaaaand...is it just me, or does that sound strikingly similar to the blog of a certain somebody? Emotion, resentment, sex, religion, and anger? The only thing that's missing is amateur gynecology.

He then goes on to describe several positions that Fox News has supposedly taken, including that "Obama wants to ignore the war in order to effect a radical transformation of America into some kind of scary version of France and Waziristan" (um, okay, that must have been during their morning show, which I don't really watch, or from the voices in Andrew's head, which only he can hear) before saying...

I'm not exaggerating. Listen to these maniacs.

Those are Andrew Sullivan's italics. And while it kind of sucks to have to descend to the schoolyard level, I don't think it's inappropriate to say, hey, it takes one to know one, you fucking maniac.

Posted by: Sean M. at 01:22 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Good News Everybody! It's no longer all Bush's fault...

Now the computers are to blame.

A big reason why the government is inefficient and ineffective is because Washington has outdated technology, with federal workers having better computers at home than in the office.

But... You know who didn't update the computers? Bush that's who. So, I guess it is his fault after all.

Good News Everybody! It's still all Bush's fault.

Posted by: chad98036 at 12:31 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Common sense will never stop terrorists - but it should.

I feel the need to preface this with a brief story about a good friend of mine.  This friend is from Jordan; his family immigrated here (legally) when he was 6.  He has two beautiful children by his white, American wife.  He himself is an electrical engineer for an American company.  He and his family are practicing Catholics.  They are intelligent, kind, upstanding American citizens.

Unfortunately, they all bear his last name.  He and his children have olive skin.  After 9/11, his wife, a school teacher, received death threats from parents because of her "Muslim-sounding" last name; several parents tried to demand that the school system remove their kids from that "terrorist-loving classroom."  Someone leaked their personal number to the community - a very small town in rural Nevada.  They received threats on their answering machine for weeks before finally breaking down and having their number changed.  Time passed, and eventually, everyone in town forgot that they had treated this family like shit for months because they might be Muslim.  The family forgot.  Everyone moved on.

Common sense probably would have told everyone in town that these people were in their church every Sunday.  One of the parents who asked to have his kids removed from the wife's class had, in fact, been at the youngest son's baptism.  These were members of a community, and after 9/11, they were turned against because of stupid stereotypes and a lack of common sense.

An entire community turned against these people. 

This lack of basic good sense doesn't just apply to scared men and women who think they're doing what's best for their community.  Sadly, it applies to some of the very agencies that are meant to keep us safe.  Instead, they let people with explosive-laced underwear get through security, but ensure that small children are patted down and treated like potential criminals:

“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.”

Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled.

The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.

After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home.

“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”

It is true that Mikey is not on the federal government’s “no-fly” list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10 percent of them from the United States. But his name appears to be among some 13,500 on the larger “selectee” list, which sets off a high level of security screening.

At some point, someone named Michael Hicks made the Department of Homeland Security suspicious, and little Mikey is still paying the price. (His father, also named Michael Hicks, was stopped for the first time on the Bahamas trip.)

Both lists are maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are given to the Transportation Security Administration, which in turn sends them to the airlines.

[...]

Certainly, Mikey’s date of birth, less than a month before 9/11, should prevent him from being mistaken as a terrorist.

A third grader at a parochial school in Clifton, N.J., Mikey recites the drill like the world-weary traveler he is. Leave early for the airport, always with his passport. Try to get a boarding pass at the counter. This will send up a flag. The ticket agent, peering down at tiny bespectacled Mikey, will apologize or roll her eyes, and call for a supervisor. The supervisor, after a phone call — or, more likely, a series of phone calls — will ultimately finagle him onto the plane. But the Hickses are typically the last to select seats and the last to board, which means they sometimes can’t sit together.

Mrs. Hicks, a photojournalist who herself got Secret Service clearance to travel aboard Air Force II with then-Vice President Al Gore, anticipated additional chaos following the attempted underwear bombing. Before leaving for the Bahamas on Jan. 2, she reached out to Congressman Pascrell’s office, which then enlisted a T.S.A. agent to meet the family at the airport. Even this did not prevent Mikey from an extra pat-down.

On the way home last Friday, Mikey’s boarding pass showed four giant red S’s at the airport in Nassau. “Oh, random screening,” Mrs. Hicks said. Mikey asked his mother not to worry and said he would use his tae kwon do — he has a junior black belt — if needed. Mrs. Hicks said she wanted to take pictures of her son being frisked but was told it was against the rules.

If only someone would apply some common sense, maybe - just maybe - we'd have a lot fewer frustrated citizens and a lot more terrorists under arrest.

But, then again, we're just going to read them their Miranda rights and give them a lawyer, so, at the end of the day - what's the point?

Posted by: Ember at 09:47 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Obama Campaigns for Scott Brown

At first I assumed that was an Obama look-alike reading Scott Brown's talking points for him in this commercial, talking about how he's going to stop cap and steal and the health care debacle and then, Obama, the Chicago politician, starts talking about outsiders going into Massachusett(e)s.

But it really is Obama.

Okay, that's funny.
Ace, where I saw this, said that we need to send Brown money to counter the Dems money, but with the Dems running ads for him, why bother?

Posted by: Veeshir at 08:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Well, that's an unfortunate "accident"

Note to diet groups everywhere: don't hold your meetings anywhere but the basement.

A Swedish Weight Watchers group got a sign they might want to lay off the meatballs, according to a local report Thursday.

When a group of 20 members gathered in Vaxjo, south central Sweden for their regular weigh-in, the floor collapsed, the Smålandsposten newspaper reported.

“We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air. The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls,” a member told the paper, according to a translation on Swedish news Web site "The Local."

The smell of sewage quickly collected in the collapsed room. Luckily there was never any danger because the floor was only slightly above ground level, the newspaper said.

No injuries were reported.

Posted by: Ember at 08:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Would you like some Astroglide personal lubricant with your communion wafers?

Now in child friendly cherry flavor.

Amazon,com:  Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

(We need a so funny I almost pissed myself tag)

Posted by: chad98036 at 06:54 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Remember: Follow The Money!

In a development as shocking as me laying waste to a toilet after a plate of Three Mile Island Wings, the Stimulus Bonanza may, just may, have been going to some shady characters, especially one of the cats involved in the Manbearpig Hoax.

“It’s outrageous that economic stimulus money is being used to support research conducted by Michael Mann at the very time he’s under investigation by Penn State and is one of the key figures in the international Climategate scandal. Penn State should immediately return these funds to the U.S. Treasury,” said Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project.

I know, shocking, isn't it? I mean, who would have ever thought that an administration that is a moneygrabbing and redistributionist scam based on lies and illusions is sending cash to a guy who helps pepetuate and defend a  moneygrabbing and redistributionist scam based on lies and illusions?

 

Posted by: eddiebear at 12:21 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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But it was for the children

It's not like I was ever a Martha Coakley supporter but finding out that she lobbied against the release of Gerald Amirault is the last straw.

For those that don't remember, the Amirault family was prosecuted for supposedly sexually abusing a number of children in the daycare which they ran.  These were part of the repressed memory, Satanic ritual cases that blazed through the 1980's.  There is overwhelming evidence that they never did any such thing.*  The parole board unanimously recommended clemency which was denied. 

Lobbying to keep an innocent man in jail is pretty much beyond the pale.  It is not For The Children to do this.

I find these cases absolutely infuriating becasue they result in the destruction of numerous lives.  There are children who have been brainwashed, and I do mean brainwashed, into believing that they were abused.  So now these children have the trauma of believing that and then, for those who realize they were lied to about this, now have the trauma of realizing that they sent innocent people to jail.  Then you have the innocent people who are in jail.  The only ones who make out are the prosecutors.

Look, I'll be the first one to help hold down actual molesters while they're staked to fire ant hills and honey poured on them.  But it's the false accusations, knowingly or not, that have lead to my being incredibly cautious about interacting with any child.  There is no way in hell that I would ever volunteer to work with children.  The risks are simply too great.  I don't have the link to hand, but I remember reading articles recently about how volunteer organizations are having problems getting men to volunteer and part of the reasons are fear of false accusations.  It's a reasonable fear.

I view this as yet another example of some on the Left's willingness to agitate for the freeing of actual killers while remaining silent on issues such as these.  (Note:  There are many on the Left who found what happened in this case appalling, specifically Katha Pollitt).   I know that Coakley didn't prosecute this case.  But she actively worked to keep a man in jail who should not be there.  That's horrifying.


*Yes, there's a clown involved.  Yes, I find that pretty amusing despite the serious nature of this. 
 

Posted by: alexthechick at 10:15 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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So, Is This Beauty Or Travesty?

Seriously, I don't know. I am not a motorcycle guy, but I am impressed with these guys making a Harley ATV.

Posted by: eddiebear at 02:20 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Someone give this man his World's Biggest Douche Award.

A lot of times, I'll say a story left me speechless, and then proceed to follow it up with two or three paragraphs of shit.  This story really, actually left me speechless.  I will say this is some seriously fucked up shit and leave it at that.

Posted by: Ember at 11:36 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Andrew Sullivan is just giddy...

Congressional negotiators and White House officials are moving forward with plans to add the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell to the upcoming defense authorization bill, Democratic sources tell the Huffington Post.

No link for Andy

(Barney) Frank noted that a floor vote on repeal would take place either way — whether or not the Armed Services Committees vote to incorporate an end to the policy in their FY 2011 Defense bill.

“If the committee puts it in, there will be a vote to knock it down. If the committee doesn’t put it in, there will be a vote to add it. In both cases, I am confident that we will have the votes on the floor to pass it,” he said of a vote in the House. “In fact, my recommendation would be if there’s any difficulty, not to waste efforts trying to get it in committee, but to add it as an amendment on the floor.”

Frank added that he didn’t anticipate the leadership at the Department of Defense would oppose repeal in any way and that Congressional members would take their cues from President Barack Obama.

Source

Found via Fark

Myself I can't say I care one way or the other.  I spent 12 years in the Navy and the only people I ever met who vocally gave a shit were CPOs that I wouldn't follow to a whorehouse much less a fight.

Posted by: chad98036 at 11:07 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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Please don't cave, GOProud!

Liberty University withdraws its support of CPAC over GOProud's sponsorship of CPAC.  GOProud is a gay conservative group founded in reaction to the rampant RINOism and active selling out by the Log Cabin Republicans.  I've seen nothing that indicates that GOProud has been anything but a conservative organization.  I say if Liberty and other social conservative groups want to be this disrespectful to a conservative organization, fuck 'em.  I don't have any patience for this sort of ignorant stupidity, not when the Democrats are attempting the kind of authoritarian takeovers that they are.

I hope GOProud doesn't fold, and maintains their sponsorship of CPAC, the behavior of the groups withdrawing is pathetic, and I question the usefulness of allies that are willing to withdraw over something so minor.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 10:04 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Let's store 'em at Gitmo!

Looks like we're using Guantanano Bay for Haitian earthquake victims.

I'm trying to come up with a good reason for this, here are a couple of thoughts...

1. Obama in all his prescient wisdom realized months ago that Haiti would be devastated by an earthquake and so he wanted to make sure we provided a safe haven not far from home, which is why he is trying to move the current detainees to the US.
2. Obama hates black people, so what's not good enough for terrorists who want to kill us is plenty fine for innocent Haitian refugees.

I'm sure someone here can come up with the real reason.

Posted by: Alice H at 05:46 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Name that article

First in a series.
Once in a while I like to play a game with my conservative email buddies. I'll quote something and ask them, "Real or Satire".

So in today's exciting episode we have:
Headline
White House Gets 'A' For Openness

In the body we read
Under fire for backing away from a campaign promise to open up health care negotiations to C-SPAN cameras, the White House on Monday highlighted a report from a coalition of watchdog groups awarding the Obama administration an “A” for its openness.
The report... gave the administration high marks across the board for its various initiatives to increase transparency and reduce the power of lobbyists

So what do you think, Politico or Scrappleface?
Click "more' to see if you're right.
more...

Posted by: Veeshir at 05:38 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Scary: Army seeks input from RAND on national police force

And RAND Corporation thinks it's just a brilliant idea, it would be a dual purpose organization, acting as a foreign policing force in nationbuilding operations, but maintaining this sort of force would only be cost effective if they served as a national domestic police force too.  And look at this little bonus,

In particular, for the MP option to be as cost-effective as possible, relief from the Posse Comitatus Act [which forbids the US Army from being used in law enforcement in the United States] would be required to permit its members to perform domestic law enforcement functions.

...anyone else as horrified by this as I am? 

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 05:28 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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I'm not dead yet.

I was pining for the fjords.
Yeah, I know, different skits.

So anyway, I was feeling low so I called this helpline.
Apparently, they have their call center in Pakistan.
I told them I was feeling suicidal.
They got all excited and asked if I could fly a plane.

Badum-Chee!

So anyway, to celebrate my return, click and see how long you have after being bitten before becoming a zombie.
I got 1 hour 8 minutes. I wonder how to make quicker, no sense sitting around waiting for it.

Posted by: Veeshir at 05:03 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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A mystery for the ages

Who is the greater whackadoodle?

Excitable Andi or Pat Robertson.

I'm thinking it's a tie myself. 

Posted by: alexthechick at 03:44 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Must See CNBC Interview of Kyle Bass

Did ya know Fannie & Freddie were leveraged 95x at the peak of the housing bubble? Yeah...

CNBC's David Faber interviews investor Kyle Bass:

(If you can't see the embedded video, go here.)


Important notes...

* - "Why is the taxpayer losing a dime" on Fannie and Freddie?

* - Washington is more sensitive to Chinese losses than losses to the US Taxpayer.

* - We must end the corrupting situation where Fannie & Freddie lobby and contribute to their Congressional overseers.

* - Japan is the canary in the coal mine for sovereign debt and deficit spending... and we're 10-12 years away from being Japan.

Posted by: JoeCollins at 12:49 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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