Lap Dancing at Ground Zero

An Islamic community center is clearly off limits but strippers are A-OK, apparently. What could be more hots dogs and apple pie than lap dancing at Ground Zero?

There are actually a couple of adult entertainment venues that show up on Google Maps if you search around the former site of the World Trade Center. Internet reviewers seem to like New York Dolls best, due to its sexy, disproportionately Russian staff, mirrored stage and purportedly high-quality lap dances.

As yet, I haven't heard anyone wonder why our political class is silent as the sex industry operates on sacred ground. It would be a bizarre complaint: It's Manhattan, where you can find anything mere blocks from a given location. The closest strip club to Ground Zero happens to be two blocks away, a fact that has nothing to do with our reverence for the place where so many Americans were killed by terrorists. As you've probably noticed, it doesn't even make sense to call it The Ground Zero Strip Club.

But it makes no less sense than naming an Islamic community center "The Ground Zero Mosque"--as much of the media have done--because it's going to be located a couple blocks away. Even worse, opponents of the project are opportunistically invoking the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, even going so far as to appropriate their imagery. "Join the fight to kill The Ground Zero Mosque," intones a video advertisement released by a group called National Republican Trust PAC. "A mosque at Ground Zero must not stand. The political class says nothing. The politicians are doing nothing to stop it. But we Americans will be heard."

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Pay czar: Bailed out banks overpaid execs

You don't say? Why didn't Bush attach any strings when he implemented this system? As "the CEO President" shouldn't he have known better? Or is it because he was "the CEO President" he failed and stuck the public with a few billion dollars more? Either way, where were the Republicans back at the time of the bailout calling for precautions against a blank check? The shameless GOP bastards were fine with the corporate socialism but struggled to support helping average Americans who are unemployed because of Wall Street greed.

The government's "pay czar" announced Friday that 17 companies benefiting from federal bailout money handed out $1.6 billion in excess executive compensation at the height of the financial crisis.

Kenneth Feinberg, who was appointed as the Obama administration's special master for compensation, examined executives earning more than $500,000 at the 419 firms that received taxpayer assistance. Out of the 17 companies he found were egregious in their compensation, 11 have paid back the assistance received from taxpayers.

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Crazy GOP Rep. Bachmann: 'All We Should Do Is Issue Subpoenas' If GOP Wins House

TPMDC has the audio. Read the rest of this post...

Obama failed to help with climate bill

This is becoming an all too familiar story with this administration. Making progress means you have to get involved. Like other potentially controversial issues Obama has avoided the issue and let it slip away. The BP Gulf disaster could have been used to help move this along as could the fact that June was the hottest June in recorded history but no, that might have required effort on the part of the White House. More from Mother Jones:

Handled correctly, the BP spill should have been to climate legislation what September 11th was to the Patriot Act, or the financial collapse was to the bank bailout. Disasters drive sweeping legislation, and precedent was on the side of a great leap forward in environmental progress. In 1969, an oil spill in Santa Barbara, California – of only 100,000 barrels, less than the two-day output of the BP gusher – prompted Richard Nixon to create the EPA and sign the Clean Air Act. But the Obama administration let the opportunity slip away.

Early on, Obama failed to challenge blowhards such as Senator Jim Inhofe who distorted the science of global warming. Revkin points out that the president has not invited researchers and climate analysts to the White House (as even Bush did). And after BP's well blew out, Obama's infamously milquetoast address from the Oval Office never connected the disaster with the need for a cap on carbon. All of this wasn't for a lack of pressure from his allies. Nine high-profile environmental groups wrote a letter to the president pleading that "nothing less than your direct personal involvement" will break the logjam in the Senate.

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Beck & Limbaugh: Sherrod story may have been orchestrated by White House

Um yeah, because the White House has looked so good during this story. Media Matters has all of the details for this grand conspiracy. Read the rest of this post...

Arizona State Rep. Kirsten Sinema gives insight on Gov. Jan Brewer

I first met Arizona State Rep. Kirsten Sinema at the Democratic Convention back in 2008. As an Arizonan, she was able to expose the Maverick mantle claimed by John McCain and she did.

Arizona is in the spotlight again. This time, it's the state's Governor, Jan Brewer, who is garnering headlines over SB 1070. So, I asked Kirsten to give us some insight on her state's governor. She did.


I love Kirsten Sinema. I think our country would be better off if we had more very smart, very hip, pretty fabulous elected officials like her. Read the rest of this post...

Palin tweets about climbing mountain peak that doesn't exist

BD athlete Renan Ozturk and Zack Smith in Alaska's Ruth Gorge from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.

Even if she was mistaken with the name, the possible mountain peak that she may be referring to would not be a simple climb for a family. It's a highly technical climb for alpine experts as you can see in the video above starting at around 2:32. More on the story here. No worries because she will refudiate the tweet soon enough.

Ahhhh, summer strolls with the Palin family. No wonder Discovery is giving her a TV show about nature.

There's only one problem: "Sweettooth" doesn't exist on Denali. She might mean "Sugartooth," but even then, climbers who know the area are scratching their heads. "Sugartooth" is a multi-day, highly technical climb on sheer rock; despite Palin's ability to scale the ranks of Republican leadership, it's unlikely she's got the skills to send a "5.10b/c with short sections of A2, 16 pitches," according to Alpinist.com.

The Alaskan outdoor blogosphere is understandably taking Palin to task for 1) claiming to be an Alaskan mountain woman without even knowing the names of the places she's going, and 2) exploiting their state in a selfish bid for spotlight. Some speculate she'll fly in to the Ruth Glacier, take photos and go home. "Sweettooth = name of ridge you got wrong while trying to sound like a mountain woman," went one criticism.

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Alan Grayson receiving death threats following Fox News smear

This behavior by Fox News has to end immediately. Murdoch's media empire is always about promoting division and hatred. What makes this even worse is that they hammer away stories to the gun-toting Teabaggers who somehow think the US is poised for a revolution. Congressman Grayson, on DailyKos:

One day, a Republican operative offers $100 to anyone who'll punch me in the nose.

The next day, I get a death threat.

After Fox News spewed its usual clownish hatred about me yesterday, my office received a call. The caller told our receptionist - a young intern - that "10 people are going to kill the Congressman within 24 hours." We gave the information to the Capitol Police; they are investigating.

Fox. You'd think that they would have learned their lesson after Dr. George Tiller was killed. And they did learn a lesson: a lesson in killing.

And why? Because I told the truth: the truth that by stalling on unemployment insurance, right-wingers revealed themselves to be heartless, selfish wretches, who have been taking food out of the mouths of children.

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Video of whale crashing onto sailboat in South Africa

The quality is not great but wow. Boats can be repaired but I hope that the whale is OK. The crew said previously that they saw the same whale later and it seemed to be doing well. Read the rest of this post...

'Vote for me — I don't wear high heels'

Huh? This was forwarded by a reader who commented, "I am sure there is a perfectly good explanation for this, because no one could possibly be this blatantly sexist on purpose." At AMERICAblog, we're not so sure.

The context: During a meet-and-greet event, Colorado Senate Republican primary candidate Ken Buck is asked by a woman in the audience, "Why should we vote for you?"

Buck's answer: "Because I do not wear high heels" (emphasis his). Note that he was talking to a woman at the time. Synchronicity at work.

The context of the context is provided by Ben Smith at Politico:

Buck was apparently responding to his rival Jane Norton's recent ad blaming him for independent attacks on her.

"You'd think he'd be man enough to do it himself," she says in the ad.

The connection isn't immediately clear in the video, in which he responded to a simple question from a woman in the audience.

And now the walk-back from this quasi-macaca moment. Explanation 1:

"She has questioned my manhood. I think it's fair to respond," he explained. "I have cowboy boots. They have real bulls*** on them." (euphemistic typography theirs)

Oops, that won't fly. Explanation 2:

Buck spokesman Owen Loftus e-mails, "Obviously, the comment was made in jest after Jane questioned Ken's 'manhood' in her new ad."

Questioned his manhood? Click the link for the ad — that "manhood" seems rather easily questioned.

This is almost a cliché, isn't it? Republican candidates duking it out in high heels; and that name — Ken Buck. Really?

GP Read the rest of this post...

Obama & the Embeds (Mirror-Mirror edition)

This is a both drive-by and a heads-up. (How's that for a mash-up of south-central LA and corporate metaphors?) Rachel had an excellent long piece yesterday about the use of scary-black images to manipulate easily frightened whites.

Who's the manipulator? Shirley Sherrod said on the tape, "That's when it was revealed to me that y'all, it's about poor versus those who have." (h/t The Nest)

That girl is really in trouble now. Rachel didn't mention it, but pre-Civil Rights days, the way the rich Southern elites manipulated the poor white sharecropper, was always to shout . . . Well, fill in your favorite n-word here (mine is "Nutella").

But I wanted to point out this, from one of the (ahem) embedded Fox News bits in Rachel's later segment about the Fox reaction:



Notice the use of "burrowed." Apparently criticism along these lines — "Right-thinking burrowed embeds perverting the Obama administration" — has some force, since the Right-thinking are now doing their usual Mirror-Mirror trick to turn it around: "Radical Left-thinking burrowers perverting the Obama administration; oh my!"

The sign that Movement Conservatives are afraid of a given criticism — the sign that they think the crit is strong and might stick — is the use of Mirror-Mirror to kill it. (Mirror-mirror; it's not me, it's you. Mirror-Mirror; I'm not the racist, you are.)

By the way, the whole Rachel Fox-reacts segment is here, and it's a nice one. Watch and enjoy.

GP

P.S. For more on "Mirror-Mirror" (or as I sometimes call it, the "180-Tell" since what they say is exactly 180-degrees wrong), see this great piece by Billmon, now writing at Daily Kos. (He calls it "mirror image," but that's just because he's a better writer and I don't want to steal.)

The specific disinformation technique in play is one I call "mirror image" (or, when I’m in a Star Trek mood, "Spock with a beard"). It consists of charging the opposing side (i.e. the enemies of the people) with doing exactly what you yourself have been accused of doing, typically with a hell of a lot more justification.

"Mirror image" was Rove’s standard response on those relatively rare occasions when the Bush White House seemed to be losing control of the media narrative.

Thus, when Richard Clarke blew the whistle on the Bush White House sleepwalking past the CIA’s warnings about Al Qaeda in the summer of 2001, the White House quickly constructed a competing story line in which Clarke himself was the official responsible for flubbing the response.

Likewise, when the Democrats began making noises in early 2004 about using Bush’s somewhat, er, questionable, accounts of his National Guard service against him, the Republicans quickly rolled out counterclaims that John Kerry had lied about his war record. [my emphasis]

You get the idea; child's play, as only children can do it. Read the rest of this post...

Desmond Tutu criticizes Obama, praises Bush

What I have always appreciated about Desmond Tutu is that he's not afraid to call out anyone. When praise is due, he's quickly there to offer praise. When criticism is deserved, he's not shy regardless of who it is or what position that person holds. Tutu is one of the best out there. NY Times Op Ed:

George W. Bush made an impressive commitment to the international fight against AIDS when he formed the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program. Since 2004, Pepfar has spent $19 billion to help distribute anti-viral treatments to about 2.5 million Africans infected with H.I.V.

Thanks to these efforts — and similar initiatives, like those spearheaded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — the number of African patients with access to AIDS drugs jumped tenfold from 2003 to 2008. Since 2004, the AIDS-related mortality rate in sub-Saharan Africa has dropped 18 percent.

Yet President Obama added only $366 million to the program this year — well below the $1 billion per year he promised to add when he was on the campaign trail. (Pepfar’s total budget now stands at $7 billion.) Most of the countries in Pepfar will see no increase in aid.

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Friday Morning Open Thread

John and Joe are in Vegas so Paris is kicking off the East Coast morning today. As soon as the wifi situation improves for them I'm sure we will be hearing some interesting updates.

One of the big stories emerging today will be whether Shirley Sherrod will file a lawsuit against Breitbart. The right wing noise machine delivered another hatchet job to a very decent person. It was sickening to watch how they distorted the real story, which was a story everyone should hear and learn from. Shep Smith from Fox even talked about the story and why his program on Fox did not run with the story. If only the rest of Fox used the same level of common sense.

Heck, if only Team Change had used some common sense. We expect people on the extreme right to behave this way but not fellow Democrats. Remember when this team used to inspire and excite people? Now they either bore you to tears or alienate friends.

So what else is happening this morning? Read the rest of this post...

Desmond Tutu to retire from public life

What a loss for us all but completely understandable. It's impressive that Tutu has managed to fight for justice this long. He has never shied away from criticizing those who deserve criticism and he has consistently fought for equality for everyone. Rather than backing down from a fight because the issue was controversial (for others) Tutu has never shown fear. World leaders could learn a lot from him.

"Instead of growing old gracefully, at home with my family, reading and writing and praying and thinking, too much of my time has been spent at airports and in hotels," Tutu said. "The time has now come to slow down, to sip rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket, to travel to visit my children and grandchildren, rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses."

Tutu trained as a teacher, but his anger at the poor education offered to black children turned him towards the clergy. His position in the church afforded him a degree of protection from the authorities, which he used to great effect in criticising the apartheid system, to the annoyance of the white minority government.

He was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1984. Two years later he became archbishop of Cape Town, the first black man to hold the position. In 1994, when an all-race election was held, he coined the term "rainbow nation", and introduced Nelson Mandela as president which, he said today, was one of the greatest moments of his life. "I said to God, 'God, if I die now, I don't really mind.'"

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Scottish government officials turn down invitation to US Lockerbie hearing

It's understandable why they would decline but still, it's disappointing. Staying at home only makes their decision look even more suspicious though speaking to the Senate has the potential to make matters even worse. What will be interesting is to hear BP's Tony Hayward discuss this issue. BP already confirmed that it did speak with government officials about the Libyan oil fields even though British PM Cameron said that was not the case while in Washington. BBC:

Scottish ministers and officials have turned down a request to attend a US Senate hearing next week over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and the Scottish Prison Service's medical chief Dr Andrew Fraser were invited.

Senators also invited Westminster former justice secretary Jack Straw.

BP chief executive Tony Hayward was asked to attend after allegations that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's release was linked to an oil deal.

Megrahi was jailed for life for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 which killed 270 people, most of them Americans.

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Second henge unearthed in England

Archeologists have to be thrilled with this news.

The new "henge" - which means a circular monument dating to Neolithic and Bronze Ages - is situated about 900m (2,950ft) from the giant stones on Salisbury Plain.

Images show it has two entrances on the north-east and south-west sides and inside the circle is a burial mound on top which appeared much later, Professor Gaffney said.

"You seem to have a large-ditched feature, but it seems to be made of individual scoops rather than just a straight trench," he said.

"When we looked a bit more closely, we then realised there was a ring of pits about a metre wide going all the way around the edge.

"When you see that as an archaeologist, you just looked at it and thought, 'that's a henge monument' - it's a timber equivalent to Stonehenge.

"From the general shape, we would guess it dates backs to about the time when Stonehenge was emerging at its most complex.

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