I Hope You're Happy

Sarah Palin Lies about Troopergate in her book

At this point I’m willing to ask the bookstores to reshelve this book as fiction. This time, the trooper involved is speaking out against her, and considering legal action. You betcha!

Andrew Sullivan: Quote for the day

“I meet with the gays here and there. They were in my house two weeks ago. I don’t mind gays. But I don’t want ‘em stuffing it down my throat all the time,” – Utah Senator Chris Buttars, explaining his opposition to allowing same-sex couples to adopt children.

New consensus on stimulus spending

New analysis says the stimulus made the economy much better than it would have been. However, it could have been better. How? More spending early on. Oh, and those Republican tax cuts and bonuses for seniors? Yeah, they were saved and not spent, so, as was predicted before the stimulus went through, we didn’t get anything out of that money.

What happens when the leader of a doomsday cult dies before doomsday?

Apparently a lot of confusion. Hmmm, much easier to just not get involved in one of these.

Teaparty against immigrant amnesty falls to practical joker

Watch as the crowd cheers to the suggestion that European immigrants be sent back to their home country.

NOTE: the headline of this article uses the word “punks” for “practical jokes”. You’ll notice I don’t use certain words on this blog, and punks is one of them. I feel anything associated with Ashton Kutcher is derogatory to real punks, a social political movement of youthful vitality. Also, I don’t use the words “Right” and “Left” for similar reasons. The “right” is so rarely correct these days, and I don’t want to encourage them.

Infographic: Tax Revenue from pot regulation

I don’t and have never smoked the stuff myself, and in fact don’t advocate it even, but the money we spend fighting pot while the drug problems grow in the country and our jails fill with pot users just doesn’t seem right. I advocate legalization and regulation of pot just from a practical sense notion of it.

Librarian censors Alan Moore Comic on her own

Sharon Cook has been fined 10 cents per day because she won’t return a copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to the library she works at. That’s ten cents per day since November of 2008. She has the copy with page markers highlighting the pages that contain explicit sexuality (and which she probably looks at every night with the privacy of her own vibrator).

Sarah Palin Slams Newsweek for being sexist for using photo she posed for

Sarah Palin posed for this photo for a running magazine (not Newsweek), and now, since she can get some political points from it, she’s being critical. Makes me wonder, Sarah, when are you going to be able to actually discuss a political issue?

Michele Bachmann’s Rally may have violated House rules

She tried to skirt around the rules by calling it a press conference, but there was no conference, no questions taken from reporters, no statements issued.

More on AT&T vs. Verizon

Verizon’s response: Even AT&T says the ads are true, and the Truth hurts.

Further proving the Republicans would rather lie, embellish, and make congress into a circus than make a practical political argument, they are now comparing the 208 pages of the health care bill to War and Peace, a novel of 1,456 pages (they aren’t very good at math either). They haven’t read it, but they taped it together and let it unroll down the steps of the capitol, they’ve reprinted it double spaced and in large font to make it look bigger than it is, they’ve even sent the NRA in to lie about it. Apparently, reading isn’t high on their skills list.

I call this the “featherless biped” approach to politics. You may recall the story of Plato attempting to define what a human is, and this is what he came up with. A rival plucked a chicken and let it loose proclaiming it to be Plato’s man. Sadly the name of the rival is lost to history, which should tell you something about the effectiveness of the counter argument.

The lesson is, it doesn’t add anything to the argument.

Now the Republicans have a counter proposal for health care reform and it’s hardly War and Peace. In fact, its only four pages. I may not have read the Democrats plan, and I may not agree with everything in it (in fact I’m sure I don’t), but I’m pretty sure our health system needs more than two pages of overhaul.

The irony is their plan, according to the GAO, would drive up prices and not insure any more people than there are currently.

The funny thing is, a lot of what I’m reading about their plan is in the Democratic plan, too.

There is this funny thing where they call for the state insurance exchanges, because the individual market is so stacked against individuals, it is unfair, and citizens need government regulation to help them with their health care. You heard that right.

Yahoo news carried this piece from The Canadian Press about a stop on the “Going Rogue” book tour, where comedienne Mary Walsh in character as Marg Delahunty (apparently characters are “in” right now. Good news for me) paid a visit. Marg caused a bit of a disturbance after asking a question. You see, these events are non-question asking affairs.

We told her we’re from Canada, and we’re just looking for a few words of encouragement for the Canadian conservatives who have worked so tirelessly to destroy the socialized medicare that we have. Four huge big burly guys started pushing, and I pushed back, but I got her attention, and she told us to keep the faith, something like that, and said we’re all trying for the same thing.

Is this a hint of what a Palin presidency would be like? you assert your free speech, and even if you are voicing a supporting position, four big guys carry you away for detention?

Well, that didn’t stop them. They went down to her bus, ro get the answer the four burly men had deprived them of.

Palin strolled over, looking down on Walsh and her crew to tell them that “Canada needs to dismantle its public health-care system and allow private enterprise to get involved and turn a profit.”

“Basically, she said government should stop doing the work that private enterprise should do,” Walsh said.

You know, the thing about Republicans is that they think everything comes down to big companies making big profits. But does that do anybody much good? Those profits have left us with an unsustainably expensive health care system that doesn’t work as well as those in other nations, where people die because the insurance companies think it economically better to drop the coverage, or that will then bankrupt families, sometimes due to one accident or illness. What do Republicans have against families, anyway?

The drive for profit is one of the most corrupting forces in the world. We can thank the drive for profit for our health care system, our economic downturn, and an incredible array of human suffering that at least matches the human suffering caused by war. When we see drinking water poisoned by chemicals

And so when Sarah Palin says Canada should dismantle its socialist health care system, she is saying that not only are we placing a value on human life, we’re requiring a profit margin on it, and we haven’t had such a horrible way to make money off a human being since the feudal system.

We should make profit on washing machines, cars (you hear that GM?), and food, not people’s health.

As far why they won’t let her answer questions, maybe it’s because she’ll say something stupid, like this. Or maybe it’s because they know some smart person in the audience will catch her in some conservative stupidity.

This house of card is going to fall, and fall soon. She doesn’t have McCain’s handlers to try to prepare her for things, and she never listened to them anyway. She’s riding on her own “You Betcha”. This is one freakshow I can’t wait to see play out.

Hi, I’m Marty, I’m a recovering Republican

A good article about how a one time Liberal hugely over corrected and became a conservative looney.

Children’s Stories

Help Mommy! The Radicals are Ruining my Country!

Looks like the Republicans, who are against the Liberal indoctrination of their children want to indoctrinate their children on paranoia, fear and stupidity. While it is against Nancy Pelosi, so I don’t mind it too much, it is just another bit of Republican hypocrisy. (worth the click just for the image)

You have to read this about “Coraline”

Now, Coraline is my 3 yr old’s favorite movie. It was written by one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, and was done by the Directors of Nightmare Before Christmas (my daughter’s second favorite movie). When Neil was still writing it, I met him, and he told us about a story that kids love, but scares the living shit out of adults. That was Coraline. Now, check out these quotes:

To others, “Mother Hulda” is a reflection of the soul-life of the people who carried the story down through the ages, an embodiment of their outlook on the world. The story extols the beauty of nature, encourages diligence and industry, and praises kindness towards people and all living things. In Goldmarie’s parallel world, each created being, whether an apple tree by the road or a bluebird singing in a rose bush, is worthy of love and respect.

Not so with Hollywood’s horrifying “Coraline” a children’s movie which Christians should have boycotted. The movie was directed by Henry Selick who made “Nightmare before Christmas” with Tim Burton. The images are disturbing enough to do permanent damage to a young soul. Let us just say in passing that the mother in the story blinds her children, replacing their eyes with buttons, a metaphorical action symbolizing the destruction of the soul in hell.

A good friend made the remarkable observation that “Coraline” is really a mirror image of Goldmarie’s story, a dark counterpart to the bright world of Mother Hulda. Indeed, this terrifying tale reverses almost every aspect of “Mother Hulda.” Coraline passes down a tunnel into a parallel universe filled with loathsome creatures. As bright as Goldmarie’s world is, and filled with love, Coraline’s world is filled with terror, darkness, and hate.

That America has fallen so far to allow such a movie to be shown to children is another matter. But what is the political significance of these two stories? Precisely this: many in Hollywood have a vision of the world terrifyingly unlike our own. Those who made “Coraline” are also likely to endorse the evils of abortion and homosexual marriage, and given a chance, could easily change America into a Soviet-style hell on earth. That is – if you will – Mother Hulda shows the soul of the Right, and Coraline, the tormented soul of the Left.

A side-by-side comparison of the two stories reveals that ours is much more than a political struggle. Ours is truly “a battle against principalities, powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Now, as an author I can tell you a few things. 1) Stories are about conflict. Stories without conflict, and hence danger and scary things, are really bad stories. 2) children’s lit, and especially young adult, is subversive by nature. It’s about gaining independence by facing something challenging or frightening on one’s own. 3) It’s my own personal belief that someone who hasn’t seen some conflict and violence because they’ve been sheltered are completely unable to handle it when they are confronted with it in their real lives.

Young conservatives ashamed of the GOP

At least they eventually learn to think for themselves.

Republican Blowhards

Glenn Beck’s lawsuit against parody site dismissed because he’s a moron

This is actually a really interesting case. After an offhand comment in a Fark.com forum, Isaac Eiland-Hall registered the domain GlennBeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com and set up a parody site where he uses Glenn Beck’s rhetorical devices against him. Glenn Beck sues him in the International Trademark court over commercial use of his brand of crazy, or maybe just his name. Yes, that’s right he didn’t sue for libel, he sued for trademark infringement, in INTERNATIONAL court, making me wonder if he can prove he didn’t rape and murder a girl in 1990. I hope he has an alibi for that year. But the judge sided against him, saying the owner of the site is making a legitimate political statement, and Glenn Beck cannot overstep the constitution and limit the owner’s freedom of speech. Nice to see the constitution enforced.

Remember when V was anti-Obama and a Republican buzzword?

Turns out the creator of the new series is a homosexual who is a huge Obama supporter, and it really is against fascism after all. Hmmmm…..Gays in Hollywood who’d have thought?

Lou Dobbs quits CNN, Runs for Pres in 2012?

Now that’s a recipe for a Roland Emmerich film….

Or he could be facing this guy

Gary Johnson of New Mexico.

Scozzafava is now a verb

To Scozzafava is to be the more moderate Republican in a race which divides the base and allows a Democrat to win.

Turns out, conservative states are not too good at family values

A lot of Red States are at the top of divorce rates.

The coming senatorial election in Florida is shaping up to be a doozy

Crist vs. Rubio. They agree on everything, except the Obama stimulus money. Looks like it’s going to be a good old fashioned feud.

They’re coming after Orly Taitz, queen bee birther

All for filing frivolous lawsuits about birth certificates. Imagine that.

Upcoming Election Outlook

Olympia Snowe, one of the few good Republicans is in electoral trouble

Polls show her losing the primary to a hypothetical conservative candidate in a landslide. Looks like it’s time for her to pull the Arlen Spector.

Deficit Spending

White House spends 787 billion, now is looking for restraint

Actually, I think this is exactly the right course, stimulus spending now, and closer to balancing the budget each year in office. Its better than this:

George W Bush increased federal spending by $1 trillion a year

Hmm, fiscal conservative my ass… and now he’s criticizing Obama.

The FDA is considering regulating on-line claims about pharmaceuticals

Because we all know nobody makes false claims on the internet. What they are very concerned about is social networking sites that put patients in contact with other patients, and the claims they could make. I could see a bot or a paid shill causing some trouble on these sites.

Economy

For Most of us, the Glass Steagull is half empty

Ten years after Glass-Steagull was repealed, how’s it look now?

One of the leading voices of dissent was Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. He warned that reversing Glass-Steagall and implementing the Republican-backed Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was a mistake whose repercussions would be felt in the future.

“I think we will look back in 10 years’ time and say we should not have done this, but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930s is true in 2010,” Mr. Dorgan said 10 years ago. “We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.”

Looks like everything wasn’t on the up and up in the BOA Merrill Lynch merger

Apparently, they said they needed a bunch of money to complete the deal when they really didn’t. They put the squeeze on us tax payers.

Newfound Freedom

The Return of the 10th Amendment

States are beginning to assert their own rights over the Federal Government. It’s giving us more freedom with guns, removing federal health care, and giving us easily accessed medical marijuana. I’m thinking in combination, guns, drugs and a lack of health care aren’t a very good idea.

Why getting high, gay marriage and going to Cuba will soon be legal

I’m not into weed, so I don’t really care, and I don’t picture myself as going to Cuba, but it’s about time it was all legal for many reasons.

Going Rogue is out and the fact checkers are having fun. Here’s a smattering.

NY Daily News

Geoff Dunn (Huffpo)

Sam Stein (Huffpo)

AP (Assuming I won’t get sued for printing their initials)

Heck, even Fox News is doing it

UPDATE: Apparently fact checking is doing “opposition research”