George Carlin – Abortion

Okay, Obama: Will You Investigate NOW?

Raw Story: “Whistleblower: NSA spied on everyone, targeted journalists”:

“The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications — faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications,” Tice claimed. “It didn’t matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications…”

“In one of the operations that I was in, we looked at organizations, just supposedly so that we would not target them,” Tice told Olbermann. “What I was finding out, though, is that the collection on those organizations was 24/7 and 365 days a year — and it made no sense… I started to investigate that. That’s about the time when they came after me to fire me.”

When Olbermann pressed him for specifics, Tice offered, “An organization that was collected on were US news organizations and reporters and journalists.”

Comic Books Politics

Writer Steven Grant has a nice essay about a recent firestorm in the comic book community regarding the nature of superheroes (i.e. is the superhero concept liberal or conservative), touched off by right-wing shill/writer Bill Willingham. The piece is halfway down the page, after an essay about Diamond, the direct-to-market comic book distributor; hit Ctrl + F and search for the name “Dirk Deppey.”

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

Good-bye, George W. Bush; you are an America-hating traitor who has done incalculable damage to both the United States and the world. Your legacy — and that of your junta’s — will be an infamous one for centuries. History spits on you.

Oh, NOW the Media Cares About “Consensus”

From the Washington Post:

The fervent courtship [between Obama and Congressional Republicans] is turning the debate on the economic package into a test of whether the Obama White House can put an end to years of distrust between the parties and overcome their recent inability to shape consensus legislation.

Isn’t it funny that when the GOP controlled both the legislative and executive branches the Washington Post and the rest of the “news” media cared neither a jot nor a tittle for consensus?

When Republicans routinely refused to inform Democrats when and where committee meetings were being held or refused to allow (or severely limited) Democrats who made it to those committee meetings a chance to speak, or when Republicans refused to allow Democrats their right to offer amendments to legislation, consensus was not very high on the Post’s — or the rest of the media’s — agenda. For the most part, the so-called liberal media failed to cover the GOP’s disenfranchisement of Congressional Democrats and, by extension, their constituents. Now that the Democratic Party controls the White House and Congress, “consensus” (which is code for giving Republicans whatever the fuck they want) is suddenly all important.

Thank You, Arthur

What Arthur said.

Pelosi Finally Wants to Go After Bush Juntists

Maybe Pelosi was referring to these two insubordinate fascists when she began to lay the groundwork for investigations today.

We Now Resume Our Regularly Scheduled Blog, Already In Progress

…and that’s how world peace can be achieved.

Matt Nathanson – Come on Get Higher

“Thanksgiving is next week, and President Bush could make it a really special holiday by resigning.”

I must admit that if I’ve heard of Gail Collins before tonight (or this morning, as it were) I have no recollection of it, but as of now I completely and TOTALLY heart her — although I can only imagine how many death threats the NYT is receiving on her behalf from the Radical Reich.

Forty-five Years and One Day Ago…

…a tragedy befell our nation.

What’s Your Score?

I answered 29 out of 33 questions correctly on this Civics Test, for a score of 87.88%. I missed questions 4, 7, 30, and 33. The average score for the month of November as of this writing is 77.6%.

This certainly takes the sting out of a certain verdict by a particular website (discovered via Susie) that passed judgment on this blog yesterday and found it to be at a high school reading level (a judgment that has since been revised based on some mysterious criteria):

(“Civics Test” via Sarah at Corrente)

Too Cool

Gmail now has themes!

Buster

Napolitano Tapped for DHS Post

Wow, the Republicans are going to have a field-day during her confirmation hearings, pointing out that perhaps the job of defending our nation’s borders should go to someone who isn’t the governor of a state that is home to the kidnapping capital of America and a major corridor for drug smuggling:

Last year alone, Phoenix police reported 357 extortion-related abductions — up by nearly half from 2005 — targeting individuals with ties to Mexican smuggling rings.

In addition, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement police have also recorded cases of kidnappers snatching illegal immigrant day laborers off the street for ransom…

Each year, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are smuggled through Arizona from Mexico, most heading on to join relatives living and working in the shadows in towns and cities across the United States.

The desert state also straddles a furiously trafficked corridor for drugs, especially marijuana, more than 400 tons of which were seized last year by the U.S. Border Patrol alone. Profits from the two crimes amount to billions of dollars…

The surge in kidnappings has earned Phoenix the tag of U.S. “kidnap capital” among law enforcement authorities.

And expect a whisper campaign about her sexuality to come into play, too. A similar campaign didn’t have much of an impact here in Arizona, but it also didn’t have the kind of push that Republicans at the national level — looking to put dent after dent in the incoming Obama Administration — are going to give it.

I don’t believe this is going to go well. At all.

Again, I Told You So (Plus One Surprise)

I stated here and here that Joe Lieberman wasn’t going anywhere, and 42 assholes have proven my right.

I’d much rather have been wrong; Joe Lieberman is scum. Get used to the Democratic Party’s capitulationist behavior, kids, ’cause it’s not going to change with Barack “Let’s Sing Kumbaya with the GOP” Obama in the Oval Office.

Meanwhile, I’m pleasantly surprised that the voters of Alaska seem to have done the right thing — barely:

Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican in Senate history, narrowly lost his re-election bid Tuesday, marking the downfall of a Washington political power and Alaska icon who couldn’t survive a conviction on federal corruption charges. His defeat to Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich moves Senate Democrats closer to a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority.

Stevens’ ouster on his 85th birthday marks an abrupt realignment in Alaska politics and will alter the power structure in the Senate, where he has served since the days of the Johnson administration while holding seats on some of the most influential committees in Congress…

Stevens’ loss was another slap for Republicans in a year that has seen the party lose control of the White House, as well as seats in the House and Senate. It also moves Democrats one step closer to the 60 votes needed to overcome filibusters in the Senate. Democrats now hold 58 seats, when two independents who align with Democrats are included, with undecided races in Minnesota and Georgia where two Republicans are trying to hang onto their seats.

Happy birthday, motherfucker! You’re eighty-five years old and your life is in ruins.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Senator Clinton as Secretary of State

Just a couple of thoughts on this:

– Remember when the Obama campaign’s Greg (“Judas”) Craig did a hatchet-job on Clinton when she stated that she had more foreign policy experience than Obama did? Now Obama wants to give her America’s top foreign policy position. As if we needed more proof that Obama ran a dirty campaign and that Greg Craig was full of shit. At least it’s a nice slap in Craig’s face; for months, rumor had it that Craig would be tapped for the position.

– I sense that Joe Biden, a strong supporter of Senator Clinton’s, is behind this. If that pans out, I will dislike him a little less. Just a little.

I Told You So

Earlier I noted that Harry Reid can’t touch Joe Lieberman. And guess what? I was right:

President-elect Barack Obama has informed party officials that he wants Joe Lieberman to continue caucusing with the Democrats in the 111th Congress, Senate aides tell the Huffington Post.

I hope the pro-Obama zealots who’ve routinely proclaimed that he’s an uber-liberal who was just masquerading as a centrist all these months are realizing what asshats they’ve been, but somehow I doubt they’re that intelligent.

You Call THIS Change?

Smells like the same old shit to me.

There is absolutely no — zero, zip, nada — NO reason to keep criminals like Robert Mueller, Ben Bernanke, and Michael Mullen; these Republicans are part of the most corrupt band of thugs to ever occupy America’s executive branch of government and they will seek to undermine everything that a Democratic administration could and should want to implement.

Then again, Obama hasn’t really seemed all that interested in being a Democrat, has he? He cares more about being a “centrist” (meaning he wants to play both parties against each other so that neither has any leverage against him).

Onward Christian Bigots

California’s passage of Proposition 8 certainly got a lot of help from members of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Bigots, but African-American and Hispanic bigots were the deciding factor in stripping a minority of their civil rights:

Weston, 44, is one of an overwhelming number – 70 percent – of black voters in California who voted for Proposition 8 and helped secure its passage, according to exit polling conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.

African Americans, energized by Barack Obama’s presidential bid, boosted their numbers at the polls this year to 10 percent of the state’s electorate, up from 6 percent in 2004.

“The Obama people were thrilled to turn out high percentages of African Americans, but [Proposition 8] literally wouldn’t have passed without those voters,” said Gary Dietrich, president of Citizen Voice, a nonpartisan voter awareness organization.

Latinos were 18 percent of California’s voters, and through sheer numbers also contributed to Proposition 8′s success. But 53 percent of Latino voters supported the measure, a much lower percentage than black voters. Among white and Asian voters, 49 percent voted for the measure.

I doubt there’s anything that Obama could have done to persuade these constituencies to set aside their religious bigotry, but it would have been nice if he’d tried instead of sending messages via right-wing, anti-gay, pro-Bush gospel singer Donnie McClurkin that it was okay to be a bigot.