What’s next? An official investigation into the presence of pod people in the halls of Congress? How about lizard men from the center of the Earth?

I mean, why not? As long as we’re entertaining fucking stupid-ass conspiracy theories…

Pulling The Trigger | Talking Points Memo

UPDATE: Okay, it appears they have NOT actually submitted a formal request. Why not?! What are they waiting for? What about the horrible national security threat we face from the swarthy, bearded Muslim hordes?

btch, plz…

http://www.dailykostv.com/w/001852/

Fox News is a bad joke, told by an idiot who forgets the punch line.

Hmmm…”unprecedented.” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

You wanna take the guy with 40 years of military service, the former National Security Advisor, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, former Secretary of State and throw him under the bus in favor of a dishonest, megalomaniacal, drug-addicted radio comedian with boils on his ass?

That’s fine. We already know that Limbaugh is the boss of the GOP and that relatively sensible moderates like Powell are not welcome. (I say “relatively sensible” because Powell still has a lot of answering to do for his ghastly presentation at the U.N. in 2003.)

I usually don’t go in for polls, and I’m sure there’s a lot of criticism to be laid on this one, depending on how the question was asked. But the DNC commissioned a poll from Rasmussen on the popularity of Cheney, Limbaugh and Powell.

The results are amusing. Even allowing for the vast discrepancy between results, Colin Powell is still more popular than both Cheney AND Limbaugh.

• Cheney: 18%
• Limbaugh: 26%
• Powell: 80% (Rasmussen), or 54% (CBS/NY Times)

Michael Moore has never had any influence on the Democratic Party. Sure, he’s made a few salient points about the Right, some of which our Democratic leadership might agree with. But he hardly commands a majority audience with the base. As a commenter on Balloon Juice points out:

Democrats didn’t need to [defend Moore], because the right-wing attempt to make Moore the grand poo-bah of the Dem Party was on its face laughable…

Democrats defended Moore where defense was warranted, but they didn’t engage in the “Michael! Michael!” idolatry that we saw at CPAC (“Rush! Rush!”).

And now we have this alleged conspiracy involving the White House attempting to “silence” Rush Limbaugh by…uhh…saying his name at a press conference? I dunno, I’m still trying to figure out what the wingnuts’ complaint is here. Tim speculates that it loosely follows this pattern:

Step 1: Publicly suggest that Republicans agree with Rush Limbaugh.
Step 2: ??
Step 3: Clear Channel replaces Rush’s show with Randi Rhodes and CounterSpin.

In Step 1, we have committed the Right’s most unpardonable sin – we have said something true! (Nothing flips out the GOP more than having their foibles pointed out to the public.) Obviously, Step 3 is never going to happen. And, frankly, no one has been able to fill in Step 2.

I’ll give it a shot.

Step 2: A few Republicans step out of line and oh-so-mildly criticize das Limbaugh, only to see the error of their ways and immediately go groveling to the Great One for forgiveness in order to make the yelling stop. This same group includes the fucking leader of the RNC, supposedly the TOP Republican in the country, who later lies about what he said and tries to play it off as a “misunderstanding.” Meanwhile, Limbaugh reaps huge ratings and manages to keep his name in the papers, thanks to our corporate media who just love a dust-up.

A few other Republicans play damage-control by going on TV and claiming “no, no, it’s actually the White House that started this whole thing” which, of course, is contrary to every bit of evidence we’ve seen over the last week or so. Ari Fleischer was talking to Schuster the other day and actually tried to pin the whole thing on Obama specifically, concern-trolling and tsk-tsk-ing the President for not living up to his “post-partisan ideals” (which really only exist in Fleischer’s head; the GOP likes to project these things on Obama when it is convenient to do so.)

(Watch the Fleischer/Schuster video by the way. Schuster eviscerates Fleischer for his rank hypocrisy in accusing anyone of being “childish” and “distracting” with a record of his own childish and distracting rhetoric and name-calling. Fleischer does a pretty good job of staying on-message, I’ll give him that. But his message is horseshit and is itself a ridiculous distraction. Schuster pretty well nails him for it.)

So now we’ve got Republican media personalities accusing the White House of being “childish” and “distracting the nation with this Limbaugh nonsense when there are more important issues at stake.” (This is the wingnut talking-point du jour, by the way. Meritless on its face, of course.)

Yeah…it’s all Obama’s fault.

Never mind the Chairman of the Republican National Committee crawling to beg forgiveness for daring to criticize Limbaugh. Ignore the fact that no Republican has been willing to say that Limbaugh was wrong for not only hoping that President Obama fails, but for claiming that every Republican feels the same way but is too afraid to say so. It’s all the White House’s fault.

Basically, as Tim says in closing:

Republicans could have kept their yap shut and let the country think that a drug-addled ignoramus pulls their strings. Instead they opened their mouth and proved it.

I find it amazing that Republicans, who doubled the debt of the country in eight years and produced no new jobs doing it — gave us an economic record that is totally bereft of any productive result — are now criticizing [Obama] for spending money. … This stimulus is our bridge over troubled waters. He did the right thing.

- Bill Clinton

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A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother’s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

The point is that the bible-thumpers and god-botherers (Prop 8 supporters included) pick and choose how they apply their own supposedly sacred texts. The approach was exactly the same throughout the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960′s. That is why the current struggle mirrors that of the plight of African Americans and other minorities in this country. I cannot even fathom how anyone could not see this.

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Since [Election Day], Barack Obama’s margin of victory has grown from 5% to 7% and his vote total has swelled by 12.6 million…

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Daily Kos: Sorry, GOP: America Is Left Of Center

The Right has spent years insisting that their one and only position on race is that race is completely irrelevant to everything, that the only proper thing to say about race is that everyone is color-blind and race plays no real role in anything.  For that reason, it was amazing to watch — the minute Powell stepped out of line — how quickly and overtly they dismissed the endorsement by saying, in essence:  “that’s just because Powell and Obama are both black.”

Glenn Greenwald

Bonus: check out this photographic essay on all the other prominent Republicans who support Barack Obama, cuz it’s totally about race. Totally.

…state records show Gov. Palin has asked U.S. taxpayers to fund $453 million in specific Alaska projects over the past two years.

That means in the 652 days since Sarah Palin took office as Governor of Alaska, she’s hustled for $453,000,000 in federal pork.

That’s $694,785.28 a day.

Six hundred

ninety-four thousand

seven hundred

eight five dollars

and twenty-eight cents…

Every day. Even Sundays!

Palin was grubbing six hundred ninety-four thousand, seven hundred and eight five dollars and twenty-eight cents out of the federal trough on the same day John McCain looked America in the eye and said she was taking zero.

…using the same calculation that the McCain campaign uses, the total amount of earmarked dollars divided by the number of working days while each held office (assuming a five-day workweek, every week, for both), Gov. Palin sought $980,000 per workday, compared with roughly $893,000 for Sen. Obama.

Wall Street Journal via Daily Kos