Bill Maher ended his show Friday with a humorous and also impassioned segment on why government is important in light of recent attacks on its place in American life. Pointing to Bobby Jindal's suggestion last week during his response to Obama's speech that government was at odds with the American people, as well as attacks on the stimulus plan as typical 'tax and spend,' Maher responded by explaining that "the people are the government": "the first responders who put out your fires, that's your government. The ranger who shoos pedophiles out of the park restroom."
Instead of wanting less government involvement, Maher said that "recent years have made me much more wary of government doing the opposite--of stepping aside and letting unregulated private enterprise run things it is plainly to greedy to trust with."
Start at 2:25
3.08.2009
Mexico's Drug War
As a nation we're so (rightly) concerned with our own problems that we're not noticing the complete disintegration of our neighbor to the south. Mexico's drug war is literally tearing the country apart and overfilling the morgues with victims. The bodies of the dead bear clear marks of almost unspeakable torture.
(MSNBC)
Death froze his exhausted face.
The attackers lashed or punctured nearly every part of his body. Then they cut off the dead man's head, wrapped it in a plastic grocery bag and dumped it with his body between two tractor-trailers on a city street.
As with most murders in Ciudad Juarez, police found no witnesses, no weapons. Only the battered corpse on the steel coroner's table carries clues to who he was and how he died.
Bodies stacked in the morgues of Mexico's border cities tell the story of an escalating drug war. Drug violence claimed 6,290 people last year, double the previous year, and more than 1,000 in the first eight weeks of 2009.
(The pathologist's) assistant, Ivan Ramos, 20, matches the head to the body. He holds it in place as Molina shoots a photograph, using a paper identifying the man by number to cover the gap in his neck. That makes it easier for loved ones who have to see the picture.
The doctor notes the rest of his injuries: broken left tibia, broken right humerus, severely bruised and cut abdomen, bruised left thigh, stabbed right thigh, sliced chin, knife punctures on lower right calf, lashes on his back. He has no distinguishable traits — no moles, no scars, no tattoos.
Molina unwraps what appears to be a tourniquet on his left biceps. She speculates it was put there by the killers to stop the bleeding from a stab wound so he would not die before they finished their torture. His knees are bruised. He was forced to crawl at one point.
(MSNBC)
Death froze his exhausted face.The attackers lashed or punctured nearly every part of his body. Then they cut off the dead man's head, wrapped it in a plastic grocery bag and dumped it with his body between two tractor-trailers on a city street.
As with most murders in Ciudad Juarez, police found no witnesses, no weapons. Only the battered corpse on the steel coroner's table carries clues to who he was and how he died.
Bodies stacked in the morgues of Mexico's border cities tell the story of an escalating drug war. Drug violence claimed 6,290 people last year, double the previous year, and more than 1,000 in the first eight weeks of 2009.
(The pathologist's) assistant, Ivan Ramos, 20, matches the head to the body. He holds it in place as Molina shoots a photograph, using a paper identifying the man by number to cover the gap in his neck. That makes it easier for loved ones who have to see the picture.
The doctor notes the rest of his injuries: broken left tibia, broken right humerus, severely bruised and cut abdomen, bruised left thigh, stabbed right thigh, sliced chin, knife punctures on lower right calf, lashes on his back. He has no distinguishable traits — no moles, no scars, no tattoos.
Molina unwraps what appears to be a tourniquet on his left biceps. She speculates it was put there by the killers to stop the bleeding from a stab wound so he would not die before they finished their torture. His knees are bruised. He was forced to crawl at one point.
The GOP's circular firing squad
(MSNBC)
Simply put, the public isn't buying what Republicans are selling right now.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this past week put Republican popularity at near historic lows. Just 26 percent in the survey viewed the party positively, compared with 68 percent for President Barack Obama, despite the economic crisis and sharp GOP criticism of his $3.8 trillion budget plan.
Republicans trailed by more than a 30-point margin on the question of which party is best positioned to end the recession.
(David Frum in Newsweek)
It wasn't a fight I went looking for. On March 3, the popular radio host Mark Levin opened his show with an outburst (he always opens his show with an outburst): "There are people who have somehow claimed the conservative mantle … You don't even know who they are … They're so irrelevant … It's time to name names …! The Canadian David Frum: where did this a-hole come from? … In the foxhole with other conservatives, you know what this jerk does? He keeps shooting us in the back … Hey, Frum: you're a putz."
Here's the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:
On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of "responsibility," and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.
And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word—we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.
Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.
But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership?
Simply put, the public isn't buying what Republicans are selling right now.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this past week put Republican popularity at near historic lows. Just 26 percent in the survey viewed the party positively, compared with 68 percent for President Barack Obama, despite the economic crisis and sharp GOP criticism of his $3.8 trillion budget plan.
Republicans trailed by more than a 30-point margin on the question of which party is best positioned to end the recession.
(David Frum in Newsweek)
It wasn't a fight I went looking for. On March 3, the popular radio host Mark Levin opened his show with an outburst (he always opens his show with an outburst): "There are people who have somehow claimed the conservative mantle … You don't even know who they are … They're so irrelevant … It's time to name names …! The Canadian David Frum: where did this a-hole come from? … In the foxhole with other conservatives, you know what this jerk does? He keeps shooting us in the back … Hey, Frum: you're a putz."
Here's the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:
On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of "responsibility," and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.
And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word—we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.
Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.
But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership?
Vatican: The washing machine liberated women
(The Independent)
As International Women’s Day is celebrated, the Vatican had a novel message for the women of the world: give thanks for the washing machine. This humble domestic appliance had done more for the women’s liberation movement than the contraceptive pill or working outside the home, said the the official Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano.
“In the 20th century, what contributed most to the emancipation of Western women?” questioned the article. “The debate is still open. Some say it was the pill, others the liberalisation of abortion, or being able to work outside the home. Others go even further: the washing machine.”
The article is entitled, “The washing machine and the emancipation of women: put in the powder, close the lid and relax”, taking its name from the Washy Talky, the Electrolux bilingual-talking washing-machine launched in India seven years ago, which would|remind the absent-minded housewife how to use the appliance.
The Catholic Church was never likely to laud the pill for its transformative power on women’s lives. Since Pope Benedict became the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics, he has published a religious document condemning contraception for “negating the intimate truth of conjugal love, with which the divine gift [of life] is communicated” and has urged pharmacists to refuse to dispense the morning-after pill. The Osservatore Romano held the pill responsible for polluting the environment and contributing to male infertility.
As International Women’s Day is celebrated, the Vatican had a novel message for the women of the world: give thanks for the washing machine. This humble domestic appliance had done more for the women’s liberation movement than the contraceptive pill or working outside the home, said the the official Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano.
“In the 20th century, what contributed most to the emancipation of Western women?” questioned the article. “The debate is still open. Some say it was the pill, others the liberalisation of abortion, or being able to work outside the home. Others go even further: the washing machine.”
The article is entitled, “The washing machine and the emancipation of women: put in the powder, close the lid and relax”, taking its name from the Washy Talky, the Electrolux bilingual-talking washing-machine launched in India seven years ago, which would|remind the absent-minded housewife how to use the appliance.
The Catholic Church was never likely to laud the pill for its transformative power on women’s lives. Since Pope Benedict became the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics, he has published a religious document condemning contraception for “negating the intimate truth of conjugal love, with which the divine gift [of life] is communicated” and has urged pharmacists to refuse to dispense the morning-after pill. The Osservatore Romano held the pill responsible for polluting the environment and contributing to male infertility.
3.06.2009
Political cartoons of the week
There's a joke in there about Rush being a political cartoon without being drawn. But I'm too adult to make it.
Very, very ungood
The economy lost 651,000 jobs in February. 104,000 Construction Jobs… 168,000 Factory Jobs… 40,000 Retail Jobs... 180,000 Professional And Business Service Jobs … 78,000 Temp Agency Jobs... 33,000 Leisure and Hospitality Jobs
That's 3.3 million in the last 6 months.
Unemployment is 8.1%, a 25-year high.
We had ALL best be pulling for the stimulus to work.
That's 3.3 million in the last 6 months.
Unemployment is 8.1%, a 25-year high.
We had ALL best be pulling for the stimulus to work.
3.05.2009
Stewart and Colbert go for the throat
Jon Stewart, fresh from being blown off by CNBC's resident screaming Lord Of the Flies populist Rick Santelli, fires back at Santelli and his network and burning them down.
"If only I'd followed CNBC's advice, I'd have a million dollars, provided I'd started with a hundred million dollars."
Meanwhile Stephen Colbert takes aim at Fox panic-meister Glenn Beck and his hysterical (in both senses of the word) doomsday scenarios. Instead of GLENN BECK'S WAR ROOM, Colbert takes us to the Doom Bunker. GHOST MALLS! HILLBILLY HEROIN!!! And FOG!!!
Peabody #2 anyone?
"If only I'd followed CNBC's advice, I'd have a million dollars, provided I'd started with a hundred million dollars."
Meanwhile Stephen Colbert takes aim at Fox panic-meister Glenn Beck and his hysterical (in both senses of the word) doomsday scenarios. Instead of GLENN BECK'S WAR ROOM, Colbert takes us to the Doom Bunker. GHOST MALLS! HILLBILLY HEROIN!!! And FOG!!!
Peabody #2 anyone?
I can't make fun of this
Really. This is just sad, what he's done to himself.
Announcing a concert in London today, the press got their first chance in several years to photograph Michael Jackson. Just a pity.
Announcing a concert in London today, the press got their first chance in several years to photograph Michael Jackson. Just a pity.
3.04.2009
Rush lies: Dems wanted us to lose Iraq
Dave Neiwert of Crooks and Liars is challenging a Limbaugh meme from his beer hall speech at CPAC. Limbaugh, trying to pull the "you did it first" line of reasoning 4th graders use, said"
Waiting....
Waiting....
That's a bald-faced lie. And Neiwert is demanding proof:Limbaugh: Did the Democrats want the war in Iraq to fail?
[Crowd shouts:] Yeah!
Limbaugh: Well, they certainly did. We were in the process of winning the war and the last thing they wanted was to win. They hoped George Bush failed.
I'd like to challenge Hannity, or Steele, or Limbaugh, to search the public record to find any leading Democrat -- congressman, senator, talking head, or otherwise -- who ever said: "I hope George Bush fails in Iraq."Where is it? We're waiting.
Waiting....
Waiting....
Are you SURE you want Rush as the face of your party?
You only need to watch the first 2:55 of this video to get a sense of the true nature of this fat, bloated, drug addict.
He mocks Michael J. Fox - who was campaigning for Claire McCaskill - and the effects of his Parkinsons. He MOCKS him. Watch. Be disgusted. And then tell me why this assclown should represent any party, any group of people or be allowed to act is if anything he says is a serious commentary on anything.
He is not a serious leader, and any Republican who thinks he is plays with the future of the GOP. Of people under 40, only 11% of Americans like him. He is listened to by rich, older white men. This gives me hope. This is a blip in time.
He mocks Michael J. Fox - who was campaigning for Claire McCaskill - and the effects of his Parkinsons. He MOCKS him. Watch. Be disgusted. And then tell me why this assclown should represent any party, any group of people or be allowed to act is if anything he says is a serious commentary on anything.
He is not a serious leader, and any Republican who thinks he is plays with the future of the GOP. Of people under 40, only 11% of Americans like him. He is listened to by rich, older white men. This gives me hope. This is a blip in time.
3.01.2009
Kanye West, Chris Brown and Rihanna are all idiots Chris Brown and O.J.
...and which of them is the biggest idiot is a coin flip.
Let's start with Kanye:
Taping an episode of VH1's Storytellers, Kanye had the following Homeric recitation to make:
Sure, O.J. might have an anger management problem, but only murdered TWO people. And it was all on ONE night. But he ran with that ball amazing well for a decade. That's gotta at least be a wash, right? No?
Now to Chris Brown. This is easy... here's Rihanna on Grammy Night. Sometimes you've gotta tell 'em twice, right Chris?
So why is the battered woman an idiot? Because SHE TOOK HIM BACK.
Let's start with Kanye:
Taping an episode of VH1's Storytellers, Kanye had the following Homeric recitation to make:
"Can't we give Chris (Brown) a break? ... I know I make mistakes in life … Michael Jackson, amazing. Michael Phelps, amazing ... He's a real fuckin' person; he makes mistakes … O.J. Simpson, amazing. Is he not? What he did, when he did, what he did. Was he not amazing though?"Oh no, he did-uhnt! Oh yes, he did.
Sure, O.J. might have an anger management problem, but only murdered TWO people. And it was all on ONE night. But he ran with that ball amazing well for a decade. That's gotta at least be a wash, right? No?
Now to Chris Brown. This is easy... here's Rihanna on Grammy Night. Sometimes you've gotta tell 'em twice, right Chris?
So why is the battered woman an idiot? Because SHE TOOK HIM BACK.
Oh no, she did-uhnt! Oh yes, she did.
Nice message to the girls who made you rich. Look for her next single "Self-Esteem Ain't Worth a Shit". I've got an idea for the album cover.
(WWTDD)
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