One Place At The Same Time

Josh Marshall:

For those who aren't familiar with it, La Raza is basically a Latino equivalent of B'nai Brith or the NAACP. Garden variety and uncontroversial unless you thinks it's a public safety issue if more than a handful of Mexicans or Puerto Ricans get together in one place at the same time.

Y Kant Wingnutz Reed? Vol. 2 Billion

Just checking in on my favorite Cornell associate clinical professor of law and Dijongate progenitor, William Jacobson, doop-dee-doop.

In an earlier post, I noted how one Huffington Post blogger, Allison Kilkenny, had called John Bolton "crazy" just five days ago for warning that North Korea was on the verge of another nuclear test.

Huh! That's funny, but not "ha-ha" funny. More like "that's-crazy-how-you-make-stuff-up" funny.

I know, I know! You'd think that Jacobson's use of quotes around "crazy" would imply a direct quote, but while her prose isn't to my taste either, Kilkenny's actually saying Bolton's nuts simply because he's always, always belligerent.

Bolton has risen from the dead to show the world America's credibility is back by...rattling...his...saber...again.

Now I started to wonder if that would stop Jacobson from going sanctimonious, and--

I wondered whether there would be an apology in light of the North Korean's nuclear test last night, and the answer is no apology.

That reminds me! Jacobson needs to apologize for saying that puppies are not cute. They totally are! Not only can't the man read, he can't swoon!

Blood Is Thicker

Josh Marshall:

Why is Dick Cheney's daughter the only person he can find to go on TV to defend him?

Rachel Marsden: I Can Godwin That In 13 Words

Ahh, good morning, Rachel Marsden. What's new with you over at Town Hall? I see you have a new article. What's it called?

Obama: Not The First Head Of State To Design Cars*

Hmm, intriguing. I guess I'll read on - whatever other head of state could she be talking about?

“Sitting at a restaurant table in Munich in the summer of 1932, Hitler designed the prototype for what would become the immensely successful Beetle design for Volkswagen (literally, the "car of the people"),” says the Hitler Historical Museum’s website. He then said to the head of Daimler-Benz: “Take it with you and speak with people who understand more about it than I do. But don't forget it. I want to hear from you soon, about the technical details."

Sigh.

And then way way way down at the end of the article you find the antecedent of that apostrophe:

* I am not saying that Barack Obama is Hitler, just that they have a similar propensity for vehicular design.

Can't imagine why anyone would have gotten that impression.

Discriminate

How embarrassing is the Republican Party?

Democrats have focused solely on what they call green jobs. Those are jobs from alternative energy. I support green jobs, but why discriminate? American energy means American jobs, which is why I support red, white, and blue jobs

Can you please stop paddling backwards against any improvement we're trying to make?

This is also an example of them taking a word with a true historical context of real victims, and play the victim with it themselves (ie, "discriminate"). See also "torture," "waterboarding," etc.

Perfection

Not sure if anything could be better than a slow loris getting tickled.

(via)

Average

David Kurtz:

But if you frame it as a debate between Cheney's extreme position and Obama's very moderate position, you've suddenly dictated an outcome to this so-called debate that is considerably to the right of where the political center is right now on this issue.

Nonsense On Stilts

Cole:

There seems to be an effort to pretend that we chose to put these people in Gitmo for security reasons.

That is simply nonsense on stilts. It was little more than barbed-wire and plywood when we started detaining them there, and we had to build the damned place. We didn’t put the detainees there because it was super secure. We put them there so there would be no controlling legal authority and we could do whatever the hell we wanted with them.

Darwinius

PZ Meyers takes stock of the creationist freakout over the recently unveiled Darwinius masillae fossil, and also give this chuckly little take on the expectation the media coverage set up:

It's an interesting transitional form from an early point in the history of primates, and the sloppy media coverage had people expecting a revivified Fred Flintstone carrying a video camera that had been left running for 47 million years.

What We Do

Hullabaloo:

Prisons are what we do. We have more people locked up that any other nation on earth. It's one of our biggest industries. We may be bad at everything else, but locking people up we are really,really good at. The idea that we can't keep a few broken, foreign, torture victims in jail is patently absurd. If you don't believe that the government is capable of protecting a prison from attack by foreign terrorists, anyone who lives near a nuclear power plant should be completely petrified. Talk about a target.

Happee

Stressful times. This helps:

Doing His Thing

Bill O'Reilly has a "body language expert" who is agreeing with him that Pelosi is a liar. And now they move onto a Matt Lauer interview with Carolyn Kennedy.

Update: Apparently Obama's body language proves that Obama's a liar, too.

Suicide

I may have to kill myself because of this ad.

One Day

It's great to have William Gibson on Twitter, sharing bits like this.

5 Years of Planning

Cole:

Imagine if the Democrats had spent 2001-2006 arguing over what silly thing they should rename the Republicans.

Nauseous

This GOP strategy of countering Obama's attempts to close Guantanamo by claiming that he's sending terrorists to live with us is making me physically nauseous.

And Harry Reid, I used to like you...but fuck you very much.

P050809PS-0297

P050809PS-0297, originally uploaded by The Official White House Photostream.

Don't miss the official White House Flickr photostream.

FOR REALS

The Editors ask the real questions:

How can we investigate if we don’t know all the facts?  How dare we enforce laws against things which might possibly be permissible in some highly artificial thought experiment?  What if ‘24′ is FOR REALS?!?

The Full Armor Of God

This is so profoundly fucked up. Donald Rumsefeld, while Secretary of Defense, included inspirational Bible verses on the cover sheets to the top-secret intelligence briefings he gave President Bush about the Iraq War. Here's an example:

"Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” [The quote appears over an image of a tank at sunrise]

And why is it Gentleman's Quarterly that does this investigative journalism? Has it really fallen on their shoulders to do this kind of thing?

Shorter Rightwing Blogosphere

• Every sperm is sacred!