Watch this

Oh my. I know I'm posting a lot tonight, but this is good. Read More......

I once told a lie...

...that was THIS big.

PS And this one is for extra credit. Read More......

Just how many is 1,724 dead US service members?

See for yourself. Read More......

6,000 US soldiers have deserted in Iraq

Jesus. They don't tell you that one on the news. Of course, we have to hear it from Canadians (not that there's anything wrong with that).

More proof here. And even the Moonie Times confirms it. Read More......

Video of Dean on the Newshour

It's supposed to be quite good. Read More......

Ok, this is some of the funniest shit I've ever seen

I know I'm probably way behind the 8 ball on this one, but I hadn't discovered this "music video" until today. The caption from whoever put this online says:

Ever wonder why the terrorists hate us? Maybe this video has something to do with it.

And they're right. (You need to click "watch now!" to see it)

Ok, for your viewing pleasure, here's the parody someone did on that horrible video. Read More......

Dean tells Cheney to stick it

Go, Howard, go! Read More......

Open thread

Seemed like a good time Read More......

Wimpy House Dems blasted for refusing to file ethics complaint against Randy "Duke" Cunningham

Never gonna be a majority until they get some cojones. Read More......

Why does the Bush family hate our flag?

The House has finished using patriotism as a wedge with its debate over a constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration.

But in case they’re not quite ready to return to actual work, here are a few new constitutional amendments they might debate next:

The 29th Amendment to Ban Flag-Themed Doobie Rolling Papers



The 30th Amendment to Ban Flag-Themed Dog Sweaters



The 31st Amendment to Ban Tacky Flag-Themed Bikinis



The 32d Amendment to Ban Flag-Draped Mothers of Pro-Flag Hypocrites



The 33d Amendment to Ban Flag-Wearing By All Those Who Don't Practice Abstinence

Read More......

House passes flag burning amendment, terrorism is therefore now defeated

Or something like that. Man, I knew I felt safer around 4 o'clock today, but couldn't put my finger on it... Read More......

Nudder open thread

So there Read More......

More on Durbin

Kos is ticked that Durbin apologized. As are a number of other liberal bloggers.

Personally, I can see how Durbin decided to finally stop the hemorrhaging. He was getting help from the blogs, but it didn't seem to me like he was getting much help from his fellow Democrats - well, at least not as much help as the GOP would have given one of their own members being similarly attacked. The Chicago Trib savaged him (Durbin is from Illinois), and then Mayor Richie Daley totally sold him up the river (your dad would be proud, Rich - not).

While I think what Durbin said was spot on - we are condoning torture, and we are acting like animals, and it's not un-American to defend the principles our country was founded on - it wasn't clear to me what more Durbin could do. Their noise machine was better than ours.

Durbin needed a coordinated and massive and overwhelming response from the left in his defense - equal to, if not larger, than the onslaught the right was throwing at him (even the religious right groups started contact-congress campaigns against the guy) - but our guys don't play that way. Just look at the lynching story.
The blogs banded together and made it a story, embarrassing the hell out of the GOP, putting a wedge between them and the black community and their own racist base. But did you see any help on that story from the Hill or the mainstream civil rights groups? Uh, no.

I rest my case. With friends like that, Durbin didn't need enemies. What's a guy to do?

Markos linked to, by the way, a rather well-done explanation of the Durbin saga from a conservative blogger who actually gets it. Read More......

Kids Hurt By Anti-Gay, Anti-Marriage Laws? Tough, Says Far Right

USA Today has a nice story about the legal complexities of parental rights when a gay couple splits. It shows how the refusal to recognize reality and provide the same basic civil rights and legal protection to same-sex couples as others enjoy creates a legal morass and hurts the kids involved. The best part of the article? Reporter Richard Willing just lays out the facts and didn't feel the need to provide "balance" and quote a far right radical who'd simply want to condemn all gay Americans. Anyone with a heart would say, Gee, these laws aren't good; they're hurting kids and families -- even if these families don't look like mine, they still deserve respect. But the far right says, Kids are hurt? Tough. These sickos shouldn't be having kids anyway, so who cares what happens to them? Read More......

Geez, we got Newsweek too

Ok, that's majorly cool. Newsweek, TIME, and the Sunday NYT credit our/your efforts on the lynching story. Wow. Read More......

O'Reilly says Air America, and apparently Senator Durbin, are traitors and should be jailed

I know he's just blowing hot air, but this kind of talk is downright dangerous, and rhymes with Schmitler, Whole Kot, and Balin. Read More......

GOP says dead World Trade Center victims would want flag burning amendment

I so kid you not.

"Ask the men and women who stood on top of the (World) Trade Center," said Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, R-Calif. "Ask them and they will tell you: pass this amendment."

I think they had other things on their mind at the time. Unless he means the fire crews and survivors who stood on the ruins of the Trade Center. But again, I really have a hard time believing they looked at the smoldering ruins, the 3,000 dead lying round, and said to themselves "if only we had a flag burning amendment." Read More......

Air Force Academy basically covers up evangelical bigotry

Big surprise. The Air Force Academy has just issued its report on the evangelical bigots running wild in the institution, and you'll be very surprised to find out that the report concludes that there is "no overt religious discrimination" at the Academy!

Of course, that might come as a surprise to the cadets who were told by a campus chaplain that they would "burn in the fires of hell" if they weren't born-again Christians. Or the Jewish cadets who were told they killed Jesus.

Even weirder, the report did fault the academy for "failing to accomodate minority beliefs." Huh? What the hell does that mean? Since when is NOT being a born-again proselytizer a "minority belief"? Not to mention, the issue here isn't accomodating minority beliefs, it's telling the evangelical hate crowd to shut the F up and stop harassing students who aren't fundamentalists like this were the Taliban's Air Force Academy. Read More......

Open thread

Sup? Read More......

Sirota nails it

David Sirota has a great piece on how alleged Democrats play in to the right wing spin machine. He focuses on the case of Aril Melber. But think back over the past couple weeks and you'll see how Joe Biden played in to it. Seriously, the right wing much just sit back and laugh at how easy it is to draw Democrats in to the game of criticizing their own:

But the sheer lying isn't what's interesting about this - it's the exposure of the right-wing spin machine that is noteworthy. You see, the GOP feeds off of people who purport to represent progressives and Democrats, yet who carry the right-wing's most shameful lies/stereotypes. Conservatives have an entire infrastructure to get the criticism as far and wide as possible. It's why Melber's piece has now gone from the right-wing New York Post, to a prominent place in the fringe-conservative Washington Times today.

This is exactly how it's supposed to work for the GOP: they grab someone who calls themselves "liberal" or "progressive" (usually from a place like the New Republic). This person typically has little - if any - political experience in the real world outside of the Beltway, and is really only interested in promoting their name at the expense of others. Then they get that idiot to validate dishonest right-wing lies in the media. Finally, they then cite that self-proclaimed "liberal"/"progressive" as proof that the GOP's dishonest stereotypes are actually true, no matter how factually inaccurate. It's a brilliant machine, actually - but it is pathetic that so many people in the insulated Washington, D.C. Democratic Establishment play along.

Meanwhile, we can't get any Democrats in DC to take up the lynching issue or to file ethics complaints against GOPers like Cunningham and Ney.

The Democrats don't know how to play to win. They play to make sure they don't get anyone inside the Beltway mad at them. And, the ones who do play to win are called "mean" or "extreme" by their own party. Read More......

Fags and flags

When the polls are tanking, where does the GOP turn? To fags and flags. Yesterday was fags when Bush addressed the Southern Baptist wackos and promised, again, to push that Gay-Bashing Amendment to the US Constitution. Then today, the US House is bringing up the flag burning amendment to the US Constitution, because, apparently, over 1,700 Americans have died in Iraq because, uh, the flag is at risk of being burnt, uh, somewhere.

But this is NOTHING like Nazi Germany. Read More......

How To Have Fun Mocking Creationism

I've been playing a little game for the past few months with the Science section of the New York Times. I've often wondered what it was like for creationists -- their anti-science bias is so strong that they can barely go a day without being assaulted on TV, in movies and in the newspaper by facts and ideas that undercut everything they believe. So I've tried to get through the Science section each week without stumbling across something that would send them into a frenzy of denial and lies. It isn't possible. This week, the very first story was on the amazing complexity of jellyfish, which included the passing thought that it had inspired new ideas about "how animals evolved 600 million years ago." Oops. There goes that "the earth is 6000 years old" argument.

Many weeks, almost every story in the section will include some scientific fact that makes a mockery of the arguments of un-intelligent design. Quite simply, it's impossible to stay on top of the latest scientific news without realizing creationism is both hogwash and undercut by almost every area of science you can name. Try and read the science section of your local paper without being tripped up by "facts" and see how far you get. Read More......

Dear "Today Show," your anti-gay contest is quite likely illegal

UPDATE: Today Show's email. You know what to do. today@nbc.com

NBC's Today Show is offering a wedding contest where the lucky winners get a wedding and honeymoon thrown by the Today Show. Great! Except that the rules explicitly ban gay couples from winning.

Check out what the contest rules say:


(Gee. Wonder how NBC feels about inter-racial couples?)

First, uh, bigot much? The marriage of gays is legal in Massachusetts, so where does the Today Show get off banning gay couples?

Second, uh, lawsuit much? I researched a similar issue extensively a few years back - remember Sandals resorts that used to ban gay couples, well a number of US companies were offering contests where the prizes were a trip to Sandals, but the contests banned gay couples. I talked to the ACLU and other lawyers at the time who said that those contests could very well violate public accomodations laws covering sexual orientation in any jurisdictions in America, state and local, where such laws include gays. And in lots of jurisdictions, they do.

So, Today Show, guess what? You may be about to get your asses sued for violating state and local civil rights laws.

Suddenly, the whole Cojo firing is starting to look a lot more interesting... Read More......

Right-wing media not happy that Mary Carey wants to have sex with the Bush twins

I broke the story last week. WorldNetDaily picked it up today.

Man, I hate when stuff I do gives the White House a bad day.

Now that the presidential fund-raiser is over, hard-core porn star Mary Carey doesn't mind the public knowing about one of her secret desires – having sex with the twin daughters of the president.

Carey was the guest of her boss, pornographer Mark Kulkis of Kick A– Pictures, at the National Republican Congressional Committee's multimillion-dollar dinner with the president here last week.

She made no secret prior to the event of wanting to have sex with Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Pat Buchanan and Alan Colmes – in addition to at least one player from every team in the NBA. But she asked blogger John Aravosis to hold back reporting her feelings about the Bush twins until after she cleared out of town.

"Oh my God, his daughters!" she said. "I'd love to party with his daughters. I'd love to meet them. I totally want to have sex with them. You can write it the day after I leave here."....

Read More......

Evolution Vs. Creationism: There's No Debate

When Kansas held hearings on the "debate" between evolution and "intelligent design" (ie. the Bible), a curious thing happened according to the New York Times. Most major science organizations refused to take part. Their reasoning is sound, but I don't know if I agree. In short, the National Center for Science Education, top textbook authors and others said showing up would reinforce a lie.

1. There is NO debate in the scientific community on "intelligent design," which has had decades to inspire some research or findings and proven empty.
2. You can't debate faith -- the people arguing for intelligent design are not scientists, are unwilling to accept any other point of view and therefore will never admit they're wrong.
3. The scientific community has spent the last few decades appearing with these groups, taking them on scientifically, proving why their crackpot ideas hold no water and nothing changes -- so why appear?
4. It's a waste of time in a political arena -- in this case, they figured the board had already decided to rule it was an interesting debate and that kids deserved to hear about it in class. They were right.

Now I'm of two minds about this. NASA finally realized they had to weigh in on the basics of how man landed on the moon because crackpots arguing it was all fake had permeated society and they realized that well-intentioned teachers didn't always have the facts at hand to answer students' questions. Pretending idiots weren't out there (heck, the "hoax" even made it onto a primetime special on Fox) didn't make the problem go away.

In the same way, school boards all over the country -- well, at least in the South -- keep holding hearings and its scary to think the debate would be ceded to pseudo-scientists who can spout lots of complicated arguments that laymen aren't equipped to handle.

On the other hand, this really isn't a scientific debate, is it, so no one should need scientists to argue with these crackpots. Instead of getting into a discussion on evolution, maybe supporters of teaching science in science class should not play that game. Detail all the subjects that supporters of intelligent design would like to see dropped or challenged -- astronomy, biology, archeology, geology, physics, and so on. Once people realize it's not just one particular issue but science as a whole they want to attack, people might wake up. Show how many chapters of a typical science book they'd like to rip up. And trips to the local planetarium are now out of bounds? Hold on, board members might say. Maybe emphasizing that they are completely unwilling to ever change their views makes it a matter of faith, not science. Maybe emphasizing that not a single public university in the country teaches intelligent design as an alternative to evolution will get the point across -- why are you trying to teach kids something that is rejected at every non-Bible college in the country? Point out how not a single atheist supports intelligent design? (But atheists are godless, so who cares what they think.) Argue that fringe theories are NEVER taught to young students -- you teach them commonly accepted fact and if a fringe theory ever gains hold, then THAT will be commonly accepted fact. Yes, there are a lot of other ways to attack these foolish people. But I'm afraid that scientists simply dropping out of the debate will cede too much ground to the bad guys.

What do you think? Did the scientific community make the right decision in Kansas? Read More......

Bush Says Bring It On And Uh, The Bad Guys Bring It On

Well, Bush got his wish. He hoped would-be terrorists would come to Iraq and now the New York Times reports a new CIA study says that Iraq is becoming a breeding ground for terrorists. Unfortunately, instead of standing around and waiting politley to be killed, these jihadists are going to take the skills they've learned so effectively in Iraq and spread it around the world.

The assessment had argued that Iraq, since the American invasion of 2003, had in many ways assumed the role played by Afghanistan during the rise of Al Qaeda during the 1980's and 1990's, as a magnet and a proving ground for Islamic extremists from Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries.

The officials said the report spelled out how the urban nature of the war in Iraq was helping combatants learn how to carry out assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings and other kinds of attacks that were never a staple of the fighting in Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet campaigns of the 1980's. It was during that conflict, primarily rural and conventional, that the United States provided arms to Osama bin Laden and other militants, who later formed Al Qaeda....

The officials said Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries would soon have to contend with militants who leave Iraq equipped with considerable experience and training.

As for how many of the insurgents are foreigners, it seems to me like every day we get a new answer. About a week ago, top military people in Iraq were admitting that early on they saw a big percentage of foreigners, but now the insurgency was dominated by Iraqis (ie. Sunnis). Then a few days later someone else argues the exact opposite. Another New York Times story says the insurgency is now facing a lot of infighting with locals tired of the fanatical foreigners.

"There is a rift," said the official, who requested anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the talks he had held. "I'm certain that the nationalist Iraqi part of the insurgency is very much fed up with the Jihadists grabbing the headlines and carrying out the sort of violence that they don't want against innocent civilians."

The nationalist insurgent groups, "are giving a lot of signals implying that there should be a settlement with the Americans," while the Jihadists have a purely ideological agenda, he added.

Yeah, right, the locals are dying to lay down their arms but keep the insurgency going so they can kill Saudis. Mixed into the story is this detail: during certain raids, Marines report killing 40 insurgents, at least three of them foreigners. That would mean the insurgency was about 92% Iraqi. Read More......

Busted: Ohio Scandals snare the Governor

Toledo Blade, of course, has the story:

As a widening scandal at the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation threatens his administration, Gov. Bob Taft last night admitted that he had failed to include golf outings on his annual financial disclosure statements filed with the Ohio Ethics Commission.

A source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, yesterday said that Tom Noe, a Toledo-area coin dealer at the heart of the state investment scandal, told him at Toledo’s Inverness Club in 2002 that he was playing golf there with Governor Taft.

The Gov. has hired lawyers, the Democrats are talking about whether Taft should resign or be removed from office.

To think, it all began with a simple $50 million investment among friends. Absolute power has corrupted the Ohio GOP absolutely. Read More......

Recess Appointment for Bolton? Don't recess

Today's NY Times:

The two sides remain in the same standoff they have been in for weeks, raising the prospect of a recess appointment, which is not possible until Congress leaves town for its July 4 break. In the meantime, the administration appears intent on criticizing the Democratic leadership as obstructionist while trying to sway a few Democratic senators to its side.

"We've got lots of options," Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, said in an interview on Tuesday on the MSNBC program "Hardball." But he added that the "most important option" would be "an up-or-down vote on John Bolton."

On the Today Show, Joe Biden was asked about the possibility of a recess appointment. He said there was nothing they could do. Not very creative, Joe. Here's an idea: don't let the Senate recess.

I mean, is it that hard to imagine the US Senate having to stay in session over a holiday. It's hard work being running the country -- sometimes you have to work on holidays. After all, we are at war.

If Bush wants to play games, then play hard ball with him.

Keep the Senate in session and there's no recess appointment. Read More......

Open Thread

Good Morning. News? Read More......

International arms trade is the 800 lb. gorilla in the room at the G8

The Brits will be proposing a plan for the G8 to address the considerable problem of arms trade which until now, has been sidestepped by the G8 countries. In this business, the US is #1 by a mile, leading the world with $15.18 Billion in arms trade though combined, the G8 members make up 84% of the global trade. Any serious comprehensive aid plan for undeveloped countries has to include the arms trade or else it is otherwise almost meaningless.

With a delicate economy in the US and even worse in France, Germany and Russia, I just don't see these countries giving up billions in sales. Add to that the the close ties in all countries between government and the arms industry, I'm even less confident in change, unfortunately. Read More......

The insanity continues in Zimbabwe

Now Mugabe is destroying vegetable gardens because according to a report on state radio, the gardens are causing "massive environmental damage." This is all happening in a country that is already starving and set to receive UN food aid because of the incompetent and politically motivated farming practices by Mugabe supporters. The opposition MDC is now suggesting that Mugabe is following a Pol Pot-like program of sending people back to the countryside for re-education. It sounds as though he already has the starving population aspect of Pol Pot mastered.

Read More......

Gnite open thread

Gnite Read More......