Dependable Renegade

A day late and a metric assload of common sense short,

but Shirley Sherrod gets the apology she so rightfully deserves from No-sack and the White House.

No word yet on whether the lesson was learned.

Behold the fall of Empire.

"Subtle Butt". Which is a better name than "Butt Briquets", I suppose.

Via Gawker. "Instructional" video at link.

Everybody run, Mama Grizzly's got a gun.

Oh dear:

Bristol Palin has told Us Weekly that her mom, Sarah, "doesn't really approve" of her and Levi Johnston's engagement. Bristol said, "My mom is not 100 percent backing us up right now," and that, "People are more worried for me than excited for me."

Well, yeah. With that lazy eye, there's no guarantee she'll hit the target (I'm looking at you, Levi).

"Hey, slow down! Stop tailgating! Your turn signal's on!

Can you turn up the AC? I don't want to listen to that station...."

Via McLeroy]

Glenn Beck isn't dangerous? O RLY?

Remember that lunatic who basically brought Oakland to a halt the other day while he engaged in a shootout with cops? You know, the one who claimed he wanted to "start a revolution" by shooting up the ACLU and the Tides Foundation?

Wait, WUT? The Tides Foundation is a philanthropic organization that, besides engaging in social and environmental justice projects (SHRIEK! Socialist ecoterrorists!), matches up wealthy people and charities. How the hell would this twice-convicted, unemployed carpenter know about Tides?

Oh. THIS is how.

[h/t Teddy]

What the Shrill One said.

How many times does Lucy pull away the football?

What’s shocking here isn’t the behavior of the right, which was par for the course. It’s the seemingly limitless credulity of the inside-the-Beltway crowd. I mean, there’s a history here: ACORN, Climategate, Vince Foster, Whitewater, and much much more. (Someone recently reminded me that the GOP held two weeks of hearing on the Clinton Christmas card list.) When the right-wing noise machine starts promoting another alleged scandal, you shouldn’t suspect that it’s fake — you should presume that it’s fake, until further evidence becomes available.

"O hai!"

I has a sad.

Shakespalin's comrade-in-barms won't be joining her to butcher the English language this Fall:

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions said Tuesday that former President George W. Bush would not be involved in House GOP campaign efforts this fall.

“He has not been involved. He does not do fundraisers. He’s said to us, ‘I’m not interested in doing it,’ and that goes back to the day he left,” Sessions told reporters in a pen-and-pad briefing at the NRCC’s Capitol Hill offices. “He’s not interested.”

Oh, fer CRISSAKES!

Okay, so Asshole Breitbart got yet another black person fired from the Obama administration. It's not news that Breitbart's a racist, right-wing scumbag.

But seriously, what the hell does this say about any residue of spinal matter in the White House?

Sherrod told CNN that a USDA undersecretary told her the White House was worried the controversy was “going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.”

It gets better. According to Sherrod,

she was told repeatedly to resign Monday afternoon after the clip surfaced. "They harassed me," she said. "I got three calls from the White House. At one point they asked me to pull over to the side of the road and do it because you are going to be on Glenn Beck tonight."

Of course, never shall the taint of abject fear sully the White House, when they've got so many goats willing to be scaped:

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this afternoon took responsibility for firing an official, Shirley Sherrod, whose appearance on video recalling her behavior toward a white farmer drew charges of racism, and whose immediate firing drew suggestions that the administration had over-reacted to an edited video clip.

Jesus tits, would it kill the White House to actually review the facts before it kneejerks people out of their jobs? This isn't "zero tolerance", it's pusillanimous bullshit.

So there you have it. Van Jones, ACORN, and now Shirley Sherrod. I, for one, do NOT welcome Andrew Breitbart and/or Glenn Beck as our new alien human resources overlords.

"Palin actually likened herself to Shakespeare?"

AP/Zoological Society of London>

"I'm not dead!" A Horton Plains lorus, thought to be extinct. Apparently not! But give BP and other multinationals time...

"The new phone book is here!"

Oy.

Geography is HARD!

The Refudiator keeps stepping in it:

CONCORD, N.H. —

Sarah Palin incorrectly calls Alaska's Kodiak Island the largest island in America in a Facebook post endorsing a Senate candidate in New Hampshire.

The Big Island of Hawaii is about 440 square miles larger than Kodiak, where Palin and her family were headed Monday.

In endorsing Republican candidate Kelly Ayotte (AY'-aht), Palin also strayed a bit from the facts in praising her for having "won" a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

"How I got through college. All five of 'em!"

Dick Cheney doesn't have a pulse.

They're just figuring this out now?

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is recuperating from surgery to implant the kind of mechanical pump now being given to a small but growing number of people with heart failure so severe that they would most likely die within a few months without it.

The pumps are partial artificial hearts known as ventricular assist devices, and they come in various models. Mr. Cheney’s kind is about the size of a D battery and leaves most recipients without a pulse because it pushes blood continuously instead of mimicking the heart’s own pulsatile beat. Most such pulse-less patients feel nothing unusual. But they are urged to wear bracelets or other identifications to alert emergency room doctors as to why they have no pulse.

Too much chalk dust in the eyes?

Glenn Beck tearfully tells a crowd of fundies that he might be going blind.

God missed Beck's larynx by thiiiiis much.

If English is a "living" language,

Palin's in her helicopter lining it up in the crosshairs.

"Wut's dis?"

That's trouble, son.

[Via The Daily Kitten]

[h/t Elliott]

Zoh. My. God.

The Twatwaffle of the Tundra thought 'refudiate' was a real word.

I'm . . . speechless.

"DERP! DERP! DERP!"

Right. Progressive are just whiners

who don't understand politics. Fuck you, Lord Saletan:

f you listened to Slate’s Gabfest on Friday, you were treated to this finger-wagging from Will Saletan (7/16 podcast, start audio around 14:35):

I’m happy with everything he’s [President Obama] done. [...] For them [progressives] to be complaining just shows how little they know about politics.

...

[L]eaving aside his silly “you’d have to be a naive idiot not to agree with Obama” thesis, what’s particularly annoying about this segment is John Dickerson frames the issue as whether Obama “has done enough.” That’s not the issue. Nor are liberals upset with Obama because getting things done in politics sometimes requires compromises — even though Obama was given huge historical margins in the House and Senate.

The fact is, as Commander-in-Chief, Obama doesn’t have to compromise on foreign policy and civil liberties. He could’ve ordered the troops home in Afghanistan and Iraq. He could’ve rolled back the most odious Bush-era executive power policies. And the public option wasn’t traded away as some sort of grand bargain to win the votes of recalcitrant Blue Dogs or Republicans — it was a blatant backroom sell-out to hospitals–exactly the kind of sleazy shenanigans Obama decried during the campaign.

Shorter Saletan: Stop rocking the boat, dammit! If you make Democrats question their mindless tribal loyalty to Obama, their heads will explode from the pressure!

I propose a new game: Obama/Biden '12 campaign slogans. Here, I'll start you off with a few:

Obama/Biden '12: Would You Rather Live in Anbar Province?

Obama/Biden '12: Still Better Than "The Human Centipede"!

Obama/Biden '12: Because Corporations Need a Voice in Politics!

Arizona Nazis. I hate those guys.

Oh, this will end well:

PHOENIX — Minutemen groups, a surge in Border Patrol agents, and a tough new immigration law aren't enough for a reputed neo-Nazi who's now leading a militia in the Arizona desert.

Jason "J.T." Ready is taking matters into his own hands, declaring war on "narco-terrorists" and keeping an eye out for illegal immigrants.

...

But local law enforcement are nervous given that Ready's group is heavily armed and identifies with the National Socialist Movement, an organization that believes only non-Jewish, white heterosexuals should be American citizens and that everyone who isn't white should leave the country "peacefully or by force."

"We're not going to sit around and wait for the government anymore," Ready said. "This is what our founding fathers did."

This is what our founding fathers did? WHAT?! WHAT FUCKING PLANET DO THESE PEOPLE LIVE ON?!

Llamas on the roof of a car.

Because I'm ennervated from running errands in this heat.

Via Rick O'Shea

I'd better win Powerball tomorrow.

Came home to find both the phone and cable out. Fingers crossed that they actually fixed the cable problem for real . . . the phone I can live without. Meh.

It's just been one of those weeks.

Via Naked Capitalism

[h/t flory]

And how.

[h/t Krishna987]

Mind-bogglingly self-unaware quote of the day.

As the Palin/Romney wars heat up:

"For Washington consultants to sit around and personally disparage the governor anonymously to reporters is unfortunate and counterproductive and frankly immature," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Fluffy bunnies.

That is all.

[h/t JD]

And speaking of in-fighting...

What a charming family the Palins are:

Barber says upon hearing the news he went outside with Track and asked him what he thought of the rekindled romance. Barber said Track was "disappointed and didn't approve of the situation"—so much so, Barber says, that Track called his sister two four-letter pejoratives.

The whole article reads like a rejected script from "Beverly HillsHillbillies, 90210".

Republican catfight!

Meeeeow, hisssssssssssssss!

Still, few express much regard for Palin's ultimate chances. One adviser to Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and, by traditional standards, the putative 2012 frontrunner, says of Palin, "She's not a serious human being." Another Romney intimate warns, "If she's standing up there in a debate and the answers are more than 15 seconds long, she's in trouble."

"DERP!"

[h/t Blue Texan]

The WShite House.

My apologies in advance for any typos - I can't see the keyboard clearly through all the steam that's shooting out my ears:

A leading big-business group, responding to a request from top White House aides, last month submitted to President Obama's Office of Management and Budget a 54-page hit list that takes aim at regulations protecting the environment, workers, consumers and investors.

...

The push to placate business leaders is being led by Obama's political team -- in this case, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

But just like the advice the White House politicos are giving Obama about pressing forward with deficit reduction in the midst of a jobs crisis, the idea of loosening the reins on big business -- at a time when the cost of deregulation has been so viscerally on display in the Gulf of Mexico -- strikes some observers as spectacularly tone-deaf. Not just bad policy, but bad politics.

BP announces it capped the well.

Whether the well head doesn't explode under the pressure is another question.

And now for something completely different.

A parrot doing laundry.

[h/t Elliott]

Headline du jour.

Lab tests cast doubt on olive oil's virginity.

As if there were any question?

When your refutation is on the line,

never repuse to refudiate your detractors!