This is AWESOME

The Prez torches Polamalu on a crossing route from Brees. Those 12 year olds can't cover for anything.

Click the picture to see the video, which will air during all 3 Thanksgiving games as a part of the NFL/United Way's Play 60 campaign.

A very good week for Jon Stewart

It's been a fruitful week for Jon Stewart. First, he landed an interview with Lou Dobbs, who recently quit/didn't quit but definitely wasn't fired either from CNN.

Jon was not gentle.

Over a long interview, Stewart and Dobbs discussed the newsman's decision to quit on the air... or not quit on the air... or come to some sort of mutual understanding tied up in contracts that dissolved the relationship between CNN and the controversial anchor. Dobbs basically offered that CNN "wanted to move in another direction," to which Stewart replied, "I see the direction they're going in, I believe it's called down."

Then, praising Dobbs for having "abhorrent and wrong" views that are nevertheless "consistent," Stewart pressed Dobbs on the issues he invoked in his "I'm quitting, in some contractual fashion" speech: "The issue seems to be -- and you allude to it in your resignation speech -- that the winds of change are blowing this country -- people have, apparently, lost their minds. there seems to be a panic that we have lost the fabric of our society and I'm having trouble getting a handle on what has happened that is so drastic that people would think it's tyranny or fascism or Hitler-esque."

Dobbs noted that "what has happened" goes back to previous administrations, and that the Bush administration fostered a great "indifference" to the way policy impacted the lives of Americans. Stewart basically countered by saying that it seems to be the coming of the Obama administration that has set everyone's "hair on fire."

Dobbs allowed that he thought that "part of that fear is simply catching up with the events of some years ago." Stewart observed, "Why do they always catch up to the fears during the Democratic administrations? It feels like all the people that want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans."

You can get access to the unaired portions of the interview at Comedy Central.

Jon then attempted to explain to conservatives why he doesn't like Sarah Palin:

Jon Stewart gave what seemed like his final word on Sarah Palin last night, explaining to Fox News pundits that he doesn't dislike her because she's from Alaska or because she hunts, but because "when you peel back the pretty, shooty layers of the Palin onion, there's no onion. It's just a conservative boiler plate mad lib: 'Freedom is good and taxes are--ooh I need an adjective--how about, I don't know, silly?' And the worst part it's a mad lib delivered as though it were the hard-earned wisdom of a life well lived," he explained.

This is why the man is a genius and probably the only true investigative reporter in America today. And remember, he's a comedian.



Lastly, Jon brought out professional wrestler Mick Foley to offer protection to Will Phillips, the 10-year old boy who will not pledge allegiance until gays are allowed to marry. Will is being harassed by kids at school calling him a "gaywad".

*sigh* I guess I have to deal with this

"The story she tells is largely incredible if you assume a rational actor at the center of it. But we do not have a rational actor in the center of it; we have an unbalanced, delusional, ambitious fanatic whose relationship to reality is entirely instrumental and can change from minute to minute."

Andrew Sullivan on Going Rogue

Bob Cesca writes in a new piece for Huffington Post ("Famous for Being Famous") that Sarah seems like the first Celebrity Reality Contestant to make a dent into the real world. in other words, she treats the Presidency like a celebreality show. and there are enough idiots in this country to at least let her try:

I honestly believe that Bill Kristol and her other ghost handlers are cynical enough to believe that Sarah Palin could ride a celebreality rocket ship into the White House. In other words, I think they (and Palin herself) believe that there's no real need for her to be a substantive, dignified, informed, insightful public official.

They look at the climate of celebrity gossip and reality show mania and they see an opening in America's love affair with superficiality -- ready to exploit. In their view, where Ronald Reagan was a celebrity in the old-Hollywood framework, Palin is a celebrity in the vapid, celebudoof, Balloon Boy, reality show, new-Hollywood framework. Perfect match.

And it's dangerous. Idiocracy dangerous.

Adding... Regarding the Newsweek cover, if Sarah Palin wants to be taken seriously, then she needs to act like it. You can't be a winking airhead and expect people to portray you as anything other than a winking airhead.

Sarah's own advisors feel they have to step up to defend themselves from Sarah's "bizarre fixation":

Former McCain campaign staffer Nicolle Wallace tore into Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" Tuesday night, saying the book was "based on fabrications" and exhibited a "bizarre fixation" on past events.

In her book, Sarah Palin wrote that Wallace pushed her to sit down with Katie Couric to boost the anchor's "self esteem."

Wallace gave a statement to "The Rachel Maddow Show" calling the anecdote total fiction. "The notion that there was a conversation that I tried to cajole her into an interview with Katie Couric is fiction," Wallace said. "I am not someone who throws around the word self-esteem. It is a fictional description."

As for the book in general, Wallace said, "I think she has a legitimate complaint that things could have been better conceived. A book about that would have been painful, but not unfair. What she gets wrong is this personalization that Steve Schmidt and I were lone villains ... She hated me from the beginning. I try not to take it personally. The fact is, she wrote a book based on fabrications ... This book is a bizarre fixation on things that everyone else has moved on from."

All the while the very serious media trips all over themselves to sell Sarah as a superstar and a sensation, here's the truth, courtesy of MediaMatters:

● A CBS poll conducted this month found that only 23 percent have a favorable opinion of Palin; 38 percent have an unfavorable view. Only one in four Americans wants her to run for president; two out of three don't. One in four thinks she has the ability to be an effective president; more than 60 percent disagree. Only 43 percent of Republicans think she could be effective.
● An ABC poll, also conducted this month, found similar results: 43 percent have a favorable impression of Palin, 52 percent unfavorable. A whopping 53 percent of Americans would not even consider voting for her for president, and 60 percent don't think she's qualified for the job.

● A CNN poll conducted last month found that even more Americans -- 71 percent -- think Palin is not qualified to be president.

We're building up this non-story. Just like balloon boy. But this is the Presidency we're trifling with. The Presidency. Not Survivor:Juneau.

Mike Huckabee steps up

Showing the fundamentally decent Huckabee that exists when he doesn't have to grovel to the far-right wing of his party, Huckabee decried the knee-jerk reactions of the GOP to anything and everything Obama. He said:

When he [Barack Obama] was at Dover the other day, and went there to pay respect for soldiers, I heard a lot of people on the Right say "Aw, that's just a cheap photo-op." No, I think it was the Commander-in-Chief of our military paying respect to a dead soldier, and I'm grateful that he did that, and I was proud of him for doing that. And I think we all -- as Americans -- should give him credit for doing that.

When he and Michele hosted the tricker-treaters on Halloween, quit finding something wrong with that. Say "Good, I'm glad that he and the First Lady are treating children to an experience at the White House." And I just find it deplorable that some people on my end of the aisle want to find everything wrong and nothing right about the man as a man.

Fear-gasm

(Bob Cesca)

Have you noticed the new KSM photo?

Until now, every time Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was discussed on television, we'd get this picture:



The Drunken Ron Jeremy photo in which he's clearly borrowed a t-shirt formerly worn by an elephant.

But now that we're talking about bringing KSM to New York for trial and the Republicans are in full pissy pants frightened crybaby mode, they're using this photo:



Wild scary eyes in full evildoer regalia. HEEELP! This crazy bastard will be ordering egg creams and blowing up subways any second now! Just look at his scary grinning face! AAAAAH!

Boy, that seems familiar. Where could I have seen.... oh, yeah.....




By the way, when you have three guys normally referred to as far-right whackjobs telling you to knock off the fear-mongering, you might want to listen. It's like Paris Hilton telling you that you're acting like a skanky ho.

Former Republican Congressman and Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr, David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, have teamed up to urge the Gitmo detainees be taken to the U.S.

"The scaremongering about these issues should stop," Barr, Keene and Norquist wrote.

"Civilian federal courts are the proper forum for terrorism cases," they wrote. "Civilian prisons are the safe, cost effective and appropriate venue to hold persons in federal courts."

When they say Ole Miss, they mean, 'ole' like 1830-style

Ole Miss Chancellor Dan Jones has banned the Rebels' marching band from playing the fan favorite "From Dixie With Love" during football games after a group of students disregarded an edict that they stop chanting, "The South will rise again." Now his support of the student-led initiative to end the chant is drawing attention from some groups he'd rather not see on campus.

The Oxford Eagle reported Wednesday that the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan plan to march in full robes and hoods on the campus sometime in the coming weeks. Jones said the attention of the Klan and the Council of Conservative Citizens, which sent a letter to Oxford-area media supporting the chant, only cemented his decision.

"Sadly, we have also heard from a few outside our university who support the chant as an expression of values associated with the segregationist movement discredited so many years ago," Jones told the Eagle. "We cannot even appear to support those outside our community who advocate a revival of segregation. We cannot fail to respond."

And one of the school's "student leaders" was caught on a cell phone camera dropping the nuclear bomb of racial insults. We won't link to it here, but it's out there.

All the Rebel flags and Dixie stuff going on at Ole Miss must make recruiting a challenge. This can't help the cause.

Notice how it takes Mr. Frat-boy Student Leader only 9 seconds to drop the bomb.

Palin still doesn't know what she reads but is "a lover of books and magazines and newspapers"

(TPM)

During her interview with Oprah Winfrey, Sarah Palin explained her infamous gaffe from the 2008 campaign, when Katie Couric asked what newspapers and magazines she reads, and Palin responded that she reads "all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years." And Palin said that she was annoyed at someone asking about what people in Alaska read.

"Now obviously, you've read books and magazines," said Winfrey. "Why didn't you just name some books or magazines?"

"Well, and obviously I have of course all my life read. I'm a lover of books and magazines and newspapers," said Palin. "By the time she asked me that question, even though it was kind of early on in the interview, I was already so annoyed, and it was very unprofessional of me to wear that annoyance on my sleeve."

Uninsured E.R. patients twice as likely to die

A recurring talking point of the anti-health care right is that the uninsured don't need insurance because "our emergency rooms don't turn anyone away, so anyone can get emergency care".

Ignoring the obvious question of 'where does that money come from, the health fairy?' for a minute (no Barney Frank jokes, either, please), this article makes a startling find: uninsured patients are twice as likely to die in emergency rooms.

(MSNBC/AP)

Uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance, according to a troubling new study.

The findings by Harvard University researchers surprised doctors and health experts who have believed emergency room care was equitable.

"This is another drop in a sea of evidence that the uninsured fare much worse in their health in the United States," said senior author Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard surgeon and medical journalist.

...more

Lou Dobbs goes Palin

Conservative Brooks rips into Palin: "a joke", "potential talk show host"

Appearing on ABC's "This Week", conservative columnist David Brooks tore into Sarah Palin on the eve of her book release:

"She's a joke. I mean, I just can't take her seriously. We have got serious problems in the country. Barack Obama is trying to handle war. We just had a guy elected Virginia governor who is probably the model for future of the Republican Party, Bob McDonnell: Pretty serious guy, pragmatic, calm, kind of boring. The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me, it will never happen. Republican primary voters are just not going to elect a talk show host."

Conservatives piss all over American values; turn into cowards

With the decision by the Attorney General to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self- proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, in federal court in New York City, conservatives are flipping their shit in three directions.

First, they feel it's presents a security threat.

Second, they don't want to give Mohammed a forum for his extremist views.

Third, they fear that putting him into criminal court, as opposed to a military tribunal, will expose the trial process to "unforseen circumstances"

Let's go one by one and address the security issues first.

Rudy Giuliani said moving the trials to New York will create additional costs and security concerns for the city.

To refute Rudy, I present.... Rudy. On March 5, 1994, he said:

"(The verdict in the trial of the 1993 WTC bombers) demonstrates that New Yorkers won’t meet violence with violence, but with a far greater weapon — the law.

It should show that our legal system is the most mature legal system in the history of the world

I think it shows you put terrorism on one side, you put our legal system on the other, and our legal system comes out ahead."

Additionally, in 2006, he praised the civilian trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, saying he was "in awe of our system" and that we "are a nation of law."

So, at it's essence, when it's George Bush putting them on trial, our judicial system is the proper venue. When it's Obama, it's a mistake.

Hypocrite much?

Plus, Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly have declared New York ready to handle the security issues. And finally, Giuliani is acting like NYC isn't currently a terrorist target - trial or not.

Secondly, the forum argument. Sarah Palin decries allowing our Constitution to work, saying:

"Criminal defense attorneys will now enter into delaying tactics and other methods in the hope of securing some kind of win for their 'clients.' The trial will afford Mohammed the opportunity to grandstand and make use of his time in front of the world media to rally his disgusting terrorist cohorts. It will also be an insult to the victims of 9/11, as Mohammed will no doubt use the opportunity to spew his hateful rhetoric in the same neighborhood in which he ruthlessly cut down the lives of so many Americans."

Let me get this straight. We should throw away the document that makes us better than them. We should strip them of the rights and protections that they themselves would see removed from their own people. We should prove ourselves to be hypocrites and conduct a trial in secret, without the rule of law.

I always suspected that the far right wanted to be like the Taliban, this just helps prove it.

Lastly, the danger of "unforseen circumstances". Ummm..... like the waterboarding that the GOP supported to obtain confessions? The waterboarding Mohammed went through 183 times? The risk that a judge might throw out parts of the confession?

I don't like the idea either. But I like much less the idea that we'll conduct ourselves like a 4th world banana republic when it suits our needs. Our judicial system has been one of the bulwarks of our democracy for the last 218 years. We can't go ditching it now out of fear or expediency.