From Instant Tea, the official blog of the Dallas Voice:

Iowa’s right wing is pushing for a vote on same-sex marriage. They’re using a new tactic.

In their decision, the Iowa Supreme Court cited state laws such as the anti-bullying law that includes protections for LGBT students.

So two Republicans in the Iowa House, Jason Schultz and Matt Windschitl, now want to remove protection for LGBT students to pave the way for an anti-same-sex marriage vote. They have filed the Exclude Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Students from Safe Schools Law.

Opponents of equality are showing just how desperate they have become. If other tactics don’t work, file a law that tells bullies to beat up LGBT kids. Simply, incite violence to get their way.

It only stands to reason that any state that has gay marriage is going to be filled with wingnuts trying to overturn it, just as it stands equally to reason that any state Supreme Court ruling that protects LGBT students and people in general will be opposed by the same wingnuts who would seek to remove those protections.

Less Elton Johns and George Takeis and more Mathew Shepards! Huzzah!

Is anyone else waiting for the divine word to come down from on high to herd the Republicans in the showers and break out the Zyklon B or is that a bit much?

(You can learn a lot by lurking in the political forums on Craigslist.)

If you're out of work, then you're probably as sick and tired as me of being given the runaround, an attitude from kids too young to remember the New Kids on the Block who work at temp agencies or being lied to. Time again, I get called by temp agencies, agencies who, knowing how unpopular they are, lure unwary unemployed folks like me into wasting our time and energy by hiding their identity.

I just spoke to a Latina chickie with whom I'd had words last year when I was given the runaround back then. After she'd killed just about the last of my cell phone minutes by telling me how I'm not qualified to work in a QC lab with polymers (I've worked for years in QC and years more in other places making plastics but not at the same time), she abruptly ended the conversation because she remembered me having "dissed" her.

This is what I said: Temp agencies (euphemistically known nowadays as "staffing agencies") are a waste of time. The higher the unemployment rate, the snottier and pickier their clients get. The clients, up until a decade ago, had no choice but to take whomever the agency sent. Nowadays, without actually risking anything by being in the hiring process, they insist on insinuating themselves in the interview process and won't even talk to you unless you have 30-40 years of job experience, three sheepskins from Ivy League universities and, while it's not exactly a prerequisite, it would also help if you can tap dance on water.

They're essentially telling the temp agencies, "I don't trust your judgment and insist on bogging down what used to be a streamlined process without actually risking anything." In essence, they're making the temp agencies, who used to be the weeding out process, completely redundant and they'd save a pile of money by simply hiring these people directly instead of going through an agency they plainly don't trust. Why don't they just eliminate the middle man?

But just try telling this to airheads as the one at this last temp agency. They call it being "dissed" even though what I'm saying is true: The process is so cumbersome, so inefficient, it takes guys like me longer to make money, it takes the staffing agencies longer to make money because of this pickiness and the clients' orders go nowhere, hence their own customers suffer because the orders aren't getting done or invoiced. But explaining to them what's obvious to the rest of us is considered harassment.

I've never liked temp agencies even when the process was streamlined. They use you for a week or two then they jerk you out of a placement and, after promising to be in touch, you never hear from them again.

Now they're simply impossible to work with or work for. The emphasis is tilted toward their clients, the ones who deny them revenue, and not at all to we the workers, the ones who MAKE them the money. If you respond to an ad in good faith and someone from a staffing agency calls you up, tell them what I just told you and tell them Robert sent you just before you hang up on them. Shit's got to change and more and more companies are looking at training as a mere drain on their bottom line and they expect you to hit the ground running and fly-by-night outfits like the one with which I'd just spoken and other "staffing agencies" are merely fostering that self-destructive mindset. What's going to happen when the current experienced work force dies off, retires or moves on? Who'll take their place?

Now, perhaps, you'd be tempted to say, you'd be best served if you just shut your big, fucking pie hole, JP, and just take what was offered. And ordinarily, you'd be right. In normal times, you'd be able to catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. However, the flies in this case ain't buying no matter what you put out for them.

Being polite and patient has gotten me nowhere. Polite or strident, patient or impatient, I've been told time and again by one temp agency after another that I wasn't good enough or experienced enough or educated enough to hold down jobs I've held down and at which I made a good name for myself years ago. After going on ten unemployed months of unending rejection, you, too, would reach your limit and would start giving people a piece or two of your mind.

The problem is that with the unemployment rate officially at 9.7% (unofficially, it's closer to 17-20% nationwide), companies offering these 3 million scarce jobs are raising qualification standards to stratospheric levels and they feel they can afford to shrink their strike zone down to the size of a subatomic particle. I've worked in Class 10,000 clean rooms assembling medical devices. But not long enough. I've worked in QC for years. But not with the right product, despite basic ISO standards and protocols covering a wide array of manufacturing.

Last September 9th, I interviewed for a cashiering job even though I have retail management experience with two other C store chains and when I got the rejection letter from the 12 year-old who interviewed me, I was told that I was underqualified for the $10 ph clerk job for which I was vastly overqualified because they found somebody who was even more qualified than me. Despite my management experience going back to a day in which my interviewer wasn't even a hardon in her Daddy's pants (Her Dad owned the franchise, btw).

In other words, I was told I was simultaneously both overqualified and underqualified for the same low-paying, dead-end, shit job. I am literally in a situation in which I cannot win.

Meanwhile, after being given the runaround by one employer/temp agency after another for close to a year about how I'm not perfectly, exactly, precisely what they're looking for, that I'm not quite good enough or knowledgeable enough, I get in cabs where the drivers need a GPS to get me a mile and a half down the road, non-English-speaking morons get my order wrong at Dunkin Donuts or McDonalds and temp workers call me up to tell me I'm not good enough, after all, because they know their clients refuse to waste even five seconds of their precious time interviewing a guy with a long and solid work history.

Pissed off? Me?

The Quality Control job to which I'd alluded earlier was one that I'd earned through hard work on the floor at my next-to-last job. I was promoted from within after working TDY in the QC lab crunching numbers and doing wall thickness tests with Vernier calipers. The company, in fact, aggressively pursued me when a high ranking acquisitions engineer from Boeing, a great sports-loving, slap-happy mountain of a man named Bernie Everett, personally requested they promote me to get a crucial sixth set of eyes in the lab to handle the extra business Boeing was prepared to throw our way.

Others from off the street were interviewed but the HR Director told me in confidence that none of them had a chance regardless of their experience or skills. The job was always mine, due to my Boeing friend's initiatives.

Now, despite all that I learned working for an ISO 9000 company in the airline/aerospace/automotive/medical device industry, in spite of my qualification to work in many other forms of fabrication, suddenly I'm not even qualified for even an entry level QC position at two bucks an hour less than I made 8 years ago. I've applied for kennel jobs, dishwashing jobs, cashier jobs, jobs so far beneath me and my skill set that it almost physically hurt to remind myself at how far I've fallen.

And I get ignored almost every time, except when contacted by a temp agency who only called because they momentarily forgot who I was and where I'm coming from.

What's the answer? Hell, if I knew, folks, I'd probably be sitting in a corner office somewhere pulling down 6 figures a year as a consultant. But the answer will not come from Obama, the Democrats, certainly not Republicans who bark "Tax cuts" or "Drill, baby, drill!" when asked for their input on anything.

We live in dark times that only the very aged remember ever having seen, an age in which no one cares how long you've been out of work or how little you make on your dwindling unemployment or at much your self-respect has been eroded by going for jobs for which you're vastly overqualified and either being told you're still underqualified or being ignored. That's because there's no collective sense of responsibility because everyone is trapped in their own skin. You are the only common denominator, the only repository for constant, neverending failure and rejection. And they do not wish to hear your desperate pleas for a chance, let alone your criticism of how inefficient the process has become.

Economic experts are forecasting that the unemployment rate will hover at double digits for several years running, a fact that, to my way of thinking, qualifies as a depression. Jobs that we used to do and do well, jobs to which we were promoted from within and for which we were trained, are now suddenly unavailable or unattainable. The gulf between qualifications and what employers are prepared to pay you for them in return has gotten wider than the Grand Canyon.

And there's no end in sight.

Usually, I would end this blog post by making a pithy observation or proposing a possible commonsensical solution to a problem I've addressed.

But answers and words fail me now.

There are no words:

A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.

[snip]

Tabor, a soldier at the Lewis-McChord base in Tacoma, Washington, was arrested after being seen walking around his neighbourhood wearing a Kevlar military helmet and threatening to break windows.

Police discovered the alleged waterboarding when they went to his home in the Tacoma suburb of Yelm and spoke to his girlfriend.

She told them about the alleged torture and the terrified girl was found hiding in a closet, with bruising on her back and scratch marks on her neck and throat.

Asked how she got the bruises, the girl is said to have replied: 'Daddy did it.'

During a police interview Tabor allegedly admitted grabbing his daughter, placing her on the kitchen counter and submerging her face into a bowl of water.

Sergeant Rob Carlson said the punishment was carried out because the girl would not recite the alphabet.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1249191/Soldier-father-accused-waterboarding-daughter-4-recite-alphabet.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0f2IduBED

When I first saw this headline at Alternet, it read like something from The Onion. But as you can see, it isn't. I don't know if this guy is an Iraq or Afghanistan veteran, but at some point we have to look at mental illness as it pertains to both an attraction to military service and as a result of military service.

(I wonder if this guy is an anti-abortion activist too.)

Labels: domestic violence, just another outrage, You can't make this shit up

Alan Grayson may not be a shiny new object, but he reminds the media that's so busy fantasizing about fucking Sarah Palin that there's a populist who brought in a shitload of money in individual donations last month who isn't a racist, xenophobic, Christofascist zombie:

The story that everyone wants to tell is that the Democratic Party is disheartened and disintegrating. Teabagger Republicans are juiced up and on top. Or so the media says, over and over again.

But the House candidate who raised the most money in the entire country during the last FEC reporting period -- $860,000 in three months -- is not a teabagger. He is not boosted relentlessly by Fox News. He's not even a Republican. He doesn't think that the Earth was created 6000 years ago, that President Obama was born in Kenya, or that global warming is a hoax.

This House candidate also, remarkably, had the largest number of contributors. Over 15,000 individuals contributed, many of whom have given time after time, whatever they could. The House candidate who raised the most money did so without French-kissing lobbyists, without flattering the idle rich, and without reaching into his own pocket.

The House candidate who raised the most money, from the most people, is an outspoken populist who tells it like it is on the war, on jobs, and on health care. His website is called CongressmanWithGuts.com. In the 100,000 e-mails that he has received this year, the most common refrain is, "You are saying what I've been thinking."

I know who he is. Because he's me.

But no one has reported that the House candidate who raised the most money, from the most people, is a proud Democratic populist. No one.

[snip]

The political reporters camped out in D.C. often act like a giant Xerox machine for the fib factory known as the national Republican Party. Recently, they saw fit to report (and repeat, and repeat) the Republican Party's crackpot claim that we are withholding a secret poll with bad news in it for us. (We aren't; there is no such poll, but the Republican Party is soooo good at manufacturing plausible lies.) Not one word from those reporters, though, about what would seem to be an irresistible "feel good" story -- that thanks to People Power, that brash, plain-spoken Democratic Congressman from Orlando is the Number One fundraiser in the country. Nothing about that.

The fact that an unapologetic progressive Democrat could amass such support, not by trading favors for money, but by striking a chord with so many ordinary people, refutes the pervasive meme of Democrats divided and despondent. Particularly when it's a Democrat who says that "you can't beat a Republican by being one."

Here's Congressman Cojones on Wall Street pay:

Labels: Alan Grayson, Democrats with balls

A shit wagon of merry has been made by liberal moonbats about the non-issue of Sarah Palin writing on her hand during the Tea Party convention at the Grand Ole Opry (according to some inside sources, the amorphous blobs read "energy", "tax cuts", "shit first then wind watch" and "lift American spirits". Since they were smudged it may help explain the ex-Governor's creative reinterpretation of the English language).


And dissident leftists such as KagroX was making endless, disrespectful references about the interlineated and cross-hatched gubernatorial hand on Twitter, making crude jokes such as "Written on Sarah Palin's elbow: Not ass."

OK, that was funny but that's all I'll grant him. And now pinko Communist conspiracy theorists will be making fresh folly over the picture below taken of Ms. Palin at a Rick Perry rally:


Word has it that Fox News is furiously trying to prove the words "Hi Mom" on Palin's palm is Photoshopped by d r i f t g l a s s, Alicia Morgan or TheDoodAbides or any other marginally-talented left winger with a Photoshop program. Word has it that Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes have personally approached NASA and their scientist machine/computer thingies to prove the family-oriented Palin does not, indeed, need to be reminded to say Hello to her Mom or anyone's Mom in her improbable, murky and coy march to the White House.

And how is this in any way a scandal, as that conservative worthy, the Gateway Pundit asks, compared to Barack Obama, a man who has slavishly used teleprompters as had every president going back to Lyndon B. Johnson, an invention that's only been around since the 1950's?

Indeed, why shouldn't the former First Lady of the Klondike be allowed to festoon her shapely form with tattoos in a manner akin to Guy Pearce in Momento, a man who, like Gov. Palin, also suffered from short-term memory loss and needed to be told by his forgotten selves what to do, who to trust, when to shave his thighs, whom to kill, etc.?

And, really, would that be such a bad idea, considering that Guy Pearce's character, in a perfect synecdoche of the GOP itself, had worked his way backwards to get to the bottom of things?

So why shouldn't Gov. Palin be allowed to use her babe-a-licious bod to gently remind herself of crucial talking points next time she finds herself accidentally confronted by something more intellectually challenging than color-coordinating lipstick and shoes (such as the founding fathers, the Bush doctrine, shit the vice president does, etc).?

Personally, I derive no sense of security greater than imagining a President Palin sitting in the Oval Office at three in the morning with her cheat notes firmly emblazoned on her palm when a panicky president, premier or Prime Minister comes calling. There's nothing more embarrassing to a head of state than to be confused with one of his rivals (Russian President Medvedev reportedly is getting irked when other heads of state keep asking for "the other, creepier Nazi-looking guy"). There's also something comforting in the thought that President Palin could do the same with our nuclear launch codes (word has it they're quite lengthy and tend to be longer than an area code).

After all, Palin's own fan base is so oblivious to her other faults, who would notice if she lifted her leg above the news desk on Glenn Beck's show and haltingly uttered, "Tax cuts" or exposed her breasts a la Janet Jackson and read, "Tax cuts" or suddenly got up, pulled up her skirt and strained to read, "Tax cuts" off her Grand Old Posterior?

Hell, flashing her titties or mooning her base would be good for at least a few primary wins and straw poll victories, right?

That's Tim Tebow's mom and that's the Focus on the Fags Family ad that came out during the second half of yesterday's Super Bowl. If you don't have strong feelings about gay rights or abortion or any of the hot button issues on which evangelicals stake their reputations and build their platforms, then it's hard to see what the big deal was about.

It tried to fit in with the typically humorous commercials (all the way down to Tebow's mom being the victim of a CGI'd takedown a la Betty White) and, depending on your degree of social polarization, it succeeded. So, what's the big deal? It didn't feature James Dobson thundering from his bully pulpit promising fire and brimstone on those who have abortions. In fact, the word "abortion" was never mentioned.

So what was the big deal?

Well, for starters, CBS's hypocrisy in refusing to air ads by Godaddy.com featuring Danica Patrick and an effeminate football player and a self-deprecating ad for a gay dating site, Mancrunch.com.

I'll leave it up to you to decide why CBS considered them "too controversial" to air.

But gently reminding people about the evils of abortion, hey, no problem.

But the problem we have is the highly selective and ideologically partisan process of people at CBS and other networks who also don't seem to have a problem with airing ads that don't actually sell anything by entities that largely spearheaded a hate-driven movement in California on Election day 2008 to overturn the state law legalizing gay marriage.

So, while CBS doesn't have a problem with pretending that gay men don't exist, they also don't have a problem with airing commercials by entities that don't merely want to stop at ignoring gay people. Focus on the Family wants to impose its exclusionary notions of holy matrimony on the rest of us and CBS has no problem whatsoever helping them get their 12th century moral pretensions out to as wide an audience as is humanly possible.

Sure, we have the first amendment, freedom of speech and all that but the first amendment really doesn't apply anywhere, especially in corporate America and the internet. Any blog administrator or domain owner can delete content without fear of violating the first amendment. Editors can delete content from an authors book at will. You can't sue CBS or any other network for impinging on your first amendment rights by refusing to air your commercial.

But there's also such as thing as parity, equal time and the next time someone wants to preach about the evils of resurrecting the Fairness Doctrine, think of Super Bowl 44 and the precedent it provided for self-destructive, homophobic evangelical groups to spread their message of intolerance over those representing a community that it is all-inclusive and the evil that precedent presents. The LGBT community doesn't seek to deny anyone the right to do anything but just to be included with the rest of mainstream human society.

And it's a shame that FOTF's Super Bowl ad got so much more publicity than Saints linebacker Scott Fujita, a straight man, speaking out in support of gay rights.

Either Barack Obama really enjoys being kicked in the teeth, or he wants to make sure Republicans share the blame when health care reform fails. Those are the only two explanations for this:

President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.

Mr. Obama made the announcement in an interview on CBS during the Super Bowl pre-game show, capitalizing on a vast television audience. He set out a plan that would put Republicans on the spot to offer their own ideas on health care and show whether both sides are willing to work together.

“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.

Mr. Obama challenged Republicans to attend the meeting with their plans for lowering the cost of health insurance and expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Republican leaders said they welcomed the opportunity and called on Democrats to start the debate from scratch, which the president said he would not do.

Politically it may benefit Obama for the Republicans to be seen as simply obstructionist. But the longing for bipartisanship is something that does not exist in the American public, or at least it didn't until he started looking like a complete wuss for continuing to seek common ground with people who want him impeached as ineligible to be president, jailed for being a terrorist, or dead -- and that's the Republicoteabag party in a nutshell. Bipartisanship is a longing by the talking heads of the media, not by people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by ever-spiraling health care costs. Like calling for a three-year freeze in spending that would be the WORST thing to do for a still-sputtering economy, this has the smell of utter, abject, bullshit fear about it. And we all know that when Republicans smell fear, they go into a feeding frenzy.

Labels: Barack Obama, health care, Republican id-driven two-year-olds, spinelessness, wussy-ass Democrats

Athletes always like to say how God was with them and that's why they scored the touchdown/hit the home run/got the free throw in the basket/landed the quad toe loop, or whatever.

Well, if you want to believe that God influences sports contests, then I guess God wanted the Saints to win to reward Saints linebacker Scott Fujita for his outspoken advocacy of gay marriage.

Labels: a real mensch, football, gay rights, Super Bowl

This is a goodie that came out in Germany a year ago. It's a sequel to the Bush Pilot and, in light of Sarah Palin's faux palm at the Tea Baggery in Grand Ole Opryland today, I just thought it would be a good idea to revisit Palin's Palm (sized) Pilot.

More of the collected Twittered unintentional verse of Marc Maron:

I don't believe in God
but I believe vitamins work.
I think its because I can see them
and put then in my mouth.
I understand Catholicism.

Okay, okay.
This compulsive eating of ice cream before bed
has to stop.
I mean WTF.
I mean, am I some kind of lonely cat lady
with an eating disorder?

Labels: Comedians, Marc Maron, poetry, Twitterati

Grab the popcorn, folks:

During WorldNetDaily Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah’s Friday night dinner speech, which spent around 10 of its forty minutes on questions about Barack Obama’s citizenship, Andrew Brietbart was among the conservatives in back of the room grumbling audibly about what he was hearing.

After he introduced the evening’s closing entertainment — a film titled “Generation Zero” — Breitbart walked outside to the convention hall. There, I heard Breitbart criticizing Farah, and briefly talked to him about it before I noticed that WorldNetDaily’s Chelsea Schilling was already talking to him, holding up a voice recorder. I backed up to allow her to continue her interview, which consisted of questions on why Breitbart didn’t think Obama’s citizenship was a legitimate issue.

“It’s self-indulgent, it’s narcissistic, it’s a losing issue,” Breitbart told Schilling. “It’s a losing situation. If you don’t have the frigging evidence — raising the question? You can do that to Republicans all day long. You have to disprove that you’re a racist! Forcing them to disprove something is a nightmare.”

“Wouldn’t you say,” asked Schilling, “in this case, that Farah is asking Obama to prove something rather than his disprove it?”

Breitbart rejected the premise. “When has a president ever been asked to prove his citizenship?”

[snip]

“Andrew is my friend,” said Farah. “He has the right to disagree, and he has the right to say anything to a socialist newspaper that he wants. And if he wants to criticize his friend to you, and he’s dumb enough to do that…”

Breitbart raised his eyebrows. “I’m dumb to do what?”

“Criticize your friend to this socialist newspaper.”

“I was talking to her,” said Breitbart, pointing to Schilling. “I was talking to you. And I was saying that I disagreed on the birther stuff.”

“OK, well, did you know that Dave Weigel from The Washington Independent was”–

“I was talking to her,” said Breitbart. “She was asking me if I thought it was wise to bring it up, and I said, no. We have a lot of strong arguments to be making, and that is a primary argument. That is an argument for the primaries that did not take hold. The arguments that these people right here are making are substantive arguments. The elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts were all won not on birther, but on substance. And to apply to this group of people the concept that they’re all obsessed with the birth certificate, when it’s not a winning issue–”

“It is a winning issue!”

“It’s not a winning issue.”

“It is! It becomes even more of a winning issue when the press abrogates its responsibility–”

“You don’t recognize it as a fundamentally controversial issue that forces a unified group of people to have to break into different parts? It is a schism of the highest order.”

“Nothing exposes the president’s–”

“Then prove it!”

“The press isn’t asking the question–”

“Prove it!”

“Prove what?”

“Prove your case.”

More "I know you are, but what am I?" here.

Labels: "birthers", wingnuttia

If Abbie Hoffman hadn't been such a clown, and if the Yippies had been into actually threatening the United States government instead of street theatre, would they have been more effective?

Probably not. The Yippie mistake was in choosing the symbols of the counterculture rather than appropriating those of patriotism in their flags and in their rhetoric of overthrowing the government. It's hard to have an effective revolution when you have a sense of humor and you're stoned much of the time.

No such mistakes for the Tea Partiers, however. They dress up in the costumes of the 1700s, and have as their spiritual leader not a clown like Abbie Hoffman, but a lunatic who's been associated with a secessionist party in her own state, and who at their weekend convention, called for "another revolution." Because after all, if you use the flag and you dress in tricorn hats, you can advocate implementing a police state that is at constant war with everyone else in the world, and the media will buy your bullshit that you are a patriot.

And has anything actually changed? CAN it even change? The netroots has had four conventions every summer, where OUR leaders have given speeches and appeared at breakout groups -- far more of them than appeared at this conference, and Yearly Kos/Netroots Nation has been treated in as some kind of little fringe meeting with almost no media coverage, not as a massive social movement the way the Teabaggers have, for all that only about 600 people appeared at their profit-making extravaganza. And while I understand that a two-foot snowfall is unusual for Washington DC (though apparently not as unusual as it used to be since they have had two of them this season), and I also realize that the only thing to do with this much snow is have fun in it, this kind of imagery -- a netroots snowball fight organized on Facebook -- just makes me feel even more hopeless. Because I'm sure this will get more media coverage than Netroots Nation ever will.


(UPDATE: Hortense over at Jezebel liveblogged the Moose Queen for the benefit of the weak of stomach.)

Labels: false patriotism, Sarah Palin, wingnuttia

29-year-old Justin Halpern, of Shit My Dad Says fame:

CBS has picked up a comedy project based on the Twitter account, which has enlisted more than 700,000 followers since launching in August and has made its creator, Justin Halpern, an Internet star.

"Will & Grace" creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick are on board to executive produce and supervise the writing for the multicamera family comedy, which Halpern will co-pen with Patrick Schumacker. Halpern and Schumacker will also co-exec produce the Warner Bros. TV-produced project, which has received a script commitment.

The comedy's title will change if it gets on the air.

Halpern, 29, had moved back in with his parents in San Diego, and on Aug. 3 he launched "Shit My Dad Says," a Twitter feed featuring colorful -- often profane -- comments and pearls of wisdom made by his 73-year-old father during their daily conversations.

Some examples:

"Sometimes life leaves a hundred-dollar bill on your dresser, and you don't realize until later that it's because it fucked you";

"Why the fuck would I want to live to 100? I'm 73 and shit's starting to get boring. By the way, there's no money left when I go, just fyi";

"The baby will talk when he talks, relax. It ain't like he knows the cure for cancer and he just ain't spitting it out."

Shit My Dad Says is the second hot Internet property to land at a broadcast network this development season as a potential half-hour series.

Hey, CBS! I have this thing called Disciples of Joe, in which I review Trader Joe's products and reflect on their relevance to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Call me.

Labels: pop culture, You can't make this shit up

...and probably the 14th and 15th amendments.

Some of you older folks out there may well remember first hand what African Americans had to go through in order to vote. White southerners who controlled the elections felt the need to impose solely on black voters literacy, civic and history tests that even white, college-educated people would've had difficulty passing.

When African American voters peacefully protested against this blatantly racist injustice, we attacked them with police dogs, beat them, turned fire hoses and water cannons on them, in your lifetime if you're 45 or older. It was the last major spasm of a dying white America that couldn't tolerate black people being given electoral parity with their own kind. That year, Congress reacted with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and President Johnson swiftly signed it into law (which shouldn't've been necessary after the 19th century 14th and 15th amendments, the latter prohibiting a state or the federal government from denying anyone the right to vote on the basis of race, among other things).

Tom Tancredo basically would love to repeal the Voting Rights Act of 1965, because he said this two days ago while short-stroking the mouth-breathing masses at the Tea Party convention:

And then, something really odd happened, mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. People who could not even spell the word “vote,” or say it in English, put a committed socialist idealogue (sic) in the White House, name is Barack Hussein Obama. (Emphasis Eli's, but not the unfortunately-timed misspelling of "ideologue" by whoever at Media Matters transcribed it)

So Eli at Firedoglake thought it would be a good idea to draw up his own litmus test that perhaps we could impose on the voting public (especially evangelicals and other Republicans):

1) Was Saddam Hussein responsible for 9/11?
2) At the time of the invasion, did Iraq possess weapons of mass destruction?
3) At the time of the invasion, was Saddam Hussein harboring al Qaeda in the regions under his direct control?
4) Were there any successful terrorist attacks on the United States between 9/11/01 and 1/20/09?
5) Was Barack Obama born in the United States?
6) Is Barack Obama a Christian or a Muslim?
7) Is Barack Obama a committed socialist ideologue?
8) Does Barack Obama hate white people?
9) Does Barack Obama want to kill your grandmother?
10) Is liberalism a form of fascism?
11) Do tax cuts increase or decrease government revenue?
12) Is Medicare a government program?
13) Is homosexuality a lifestyle choice? Is it contagious?
14) Are all gay people pedophiles and/or “recruiters” for the gay lifestyle?
15) Is abstinence-only sex education more effective at preventing teen pregnancies and STDs than comprehensive sex education with a pro-abstinence message?
16) Is the Earth thousands of years old, or billions of years old?
17) Did life on Earth evolve naturally, or was it created as is?
18) Are human carbon emissions causing global climate change?
19) Do scientists and academics contribute anything useful to society?
20) Is individual voter fraud a widespread epidemic that is distorting our electoral process?

Now, it goes without saying that many of the tea partiers in attendance would miserably fail such a test (after all, these are the same people who every 24 months vote maniacs like Tancredo back into office election after election). Imposing such a test that would be a breeze for those in the reality-based community on tea partiers and other grassroots conservatives and would be like handing a Rubics cube to a chimpanzee.

The real test would be to see how many of our elected officials would pass such a test. My guess would be most Republicans in Congress would just as miserably fail and we've heard nothing from the right wing in both chambers that even remotely promises they'd pass such a test.

And that's precisely why Eli drew up this list. Many of these same questions and the ignorant answers to them were either proposed or relayed along by our Republican elected officials. If you were to seriously entertain some of their sweaty, bug-eyed conspiracy theories, you'd "learn" that Barack Obama is indeed a Muslim, that he wants to kill your grandmother, that he wasn't born in the US, that the president is a socialist and/or a Communist, that liberalism is fascism, that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, that global warming isn't caused by the burning of fossil fuels, that global warming is, in fact, a hoax.

The list goes on.

So if Tancredo wants to impose a civics test on dark-skinned people who supposedly can't spell the word "vote", then I unite with Eli and suggest that turnabout is fair play and impose one on them, beginning with his 20 suggestions. What other questions would you include in such a litmus test? Here's my list:

1) Is Barack Obama sleeping with your wife?
2) Was Columbus wrong and is the earth, indeed, flat?
3) Did Jesus own an AK 47?
4) Was Jesus a registered Republican?
5) Gravity: liberal myth or semi-documented theory?
6) Does earth orbit around the sun or vice versa and, don't forget, Copernicus was a Polack.
7) Are men who suck penises and women who lick vaginas merely straight people being rebellious or has the Devil possessed them?
8) How, exactly, are Ellen Degeneres, George Takei and Elton John destroying your marriage?
9) Is carbon 14 dating a liberal hoax, myth or lie?
10) Is God truly a nationalist who favors the United States with His grace?
11) Ice shelves the size of Rhode Island are breaking off Canada and the Arctic. Is this the result of global warming or Michael Moore and Al Gore jumping on them?
12) How many of each animal did Moses take aboard the ark?
I could go on and on like this all day but I think we all know how our more conservative elected officials would fare were they forced to undergo such a litmus test. Then you'd see a rapid change in the, well, complexion of the United States Congress.

Let's talk about the "R" word for a moment, shall we?

The consonant "R" could be used to start any of tens of thousands of words. There's "revenge", for instance, or the synonym "reprisal." But the "R" word mostly in the news lately has been given attention due to Sarah Palin's Facebook fatwa. That would be the word "retarded", a word that does not accurately describe those with Down Syndrome, of which former Governor Palin's son Trig suffers.

Indeed, those with Down's Syndrome can have average to above-average intelligence and those who are developmentally-disabled due to having a superfluous 47th chromosome suffer moderate mental handicaps. Down syndrome should never in any way be all-inclusively folded into mental retardation.

Yet Palin's attack on Rahm Emanuel and calling for his termination only displays her ongoing ignorance of any subject under the sun that doesn't include clothes shopping and color-coordinating her lipstick and shoes.

However, I'm here to address yet another "R" word and that word is "Republican." You see, the rules are different for even moderate Democrats such as Rahm Emanuel and Republican elephant dorks such as Rush Limbaugh. Because, to cite yet another "R" word, Sarah Palin's unwillingness to engage el Rushbo for not only using the word but for calling out the Palin camp for calling out Emanuel can best be described as "Recreant", or, according to Dictionary.com, "unfaithful, disloyal, or traitorous."

Not only does it reveal Palin to be a moral coward in being unwilling to defend her son as she sought to defend him and others with Down's syndrome, it also betrays her as a hypocrite. It also shows that the GOP establishment of which Palin pretends to not be a part both officially and unofficially genuflects at the altar of a child-molesting, racist drug addict who does a radio show from his home.

Limbaugh is himself, to continue our alliteration, a supreme recreant, a reprobate and a raging racist against any who aren't also bloated, wealthy, white WASP Republicans such as he. Yet Republican congressmen, party chairmen and other conservative media pundits continually prostrate themselves at the cloven hooves of this cock goblin and assclown extraordinaire.

Sarah Palin is no different. Whether or not one is wrong in their assumptions or beliefs, one ought to stick to them until having a logical and more correct reason for changing said assumptions or beliefs. If Palin thought it was OK to publicly attack Rahm Emanuel for using the word "retarded" when describing a liberal plan of action, then she would have been even more justified in attacking this jiggling mountain of lying cellulite for attacking her for being politically correct.

But Palin is a quitter and a coward. She has no beliefs other than that which conforms to the conservative zeitgeist, no allegiance other than to the letter "R" and her own transparent presidential ambitions in two years. Sarah Palin still holds out hope that Limbaugh will someday give his millions of airheaded listeners his endorsement of her candidacy except Palin doesn't realize that Limbaugh, a product of a dying, male-dominated America, will never endorse a woman for President no matter how qualified she may be. She has no loyalty, even her own misguided one that she's recently pretended to hold for those with Down syndrome.

Her inability or unwillingness to publicly call out Limbaugh and engage him for slapping her across the snout with the rolled-up newspaper of his radio show and bully pulpit will cost her independent votes later on. Her refusal to apply the same rules to a fellow conservative is Republican partisanship at its most craven.

Labels: IOKIYAR, Republican cowardice, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin

(This post has been guest-blogged by Barbara O'Brien at Maacenter.org)

One argument you may hear against health care reform concerns cancer survival rates. The United States has higher cancer survivor rates than countries with national health care systems, we’re told. Doesn’t this mean we should keep what we’ve got and not change it?

Certainly cancer survival rates are a critical issue for people suffering from the deadly lung mesothelioma cancer. So let’s look at this claim and see if there is any substance to it.

First, it’s important to understand that “cancer survival rate” doesn’t mean the rate of people who are cured of a cancer. The cancer survival rate is the percentage of people who survive a certain type of cancer for a specific amount of time, usually five years after diagnosis.

For example, according to the Mayo Clinic, the survivor rate of prostate cancer in the United States is 98 percent. This means that 98 percent of men diagnosed with prostate cancer are still alive five years later. However, this statistic does not tell us whether the men who have survived for five years still have cancer or what number of them may die from it eventually.

Misunderstanding of the term “survivor rate” sometimes is exploited to make misleading claims. For example, in 2007 a pharmaceutical company promoting a drug used to treat colon cancer released statistics showing superior survival rates for its drug over other treatments. Some journalists who used this data in their reporting assumed it meant that the people who survived were cured of cancer, and they wrote that the drug “saved lives.” The drug did extend the lives of of patients, on average by a few months. However, the mortality rate for people who used this drug — meaning the rate of patients who died of the disease — was not improved.

But bloggers and editorial writers who oppose health care reform seized these stories about “saving lives,” noting that this wondrous drug was available in the United States for at least a year before it was in use in Great Britain. Further, Britain has lower cancer survival rates than the U.S. This proved, they said, the superiority of U.S. health care over “socialist” countries.

This is one way propagandists use data to argue that health care in the United States is superior to countries with government-funded health care systems. They selectively compare the most favorable data from the United States with data from the nations least successful at treating cancer. A favorite “comparison” country is Great Britain, whose underfunded National Health Service is struggling.

It is true that the United States compares very well in the area of cancer survival rates, but other countries with national health care systems have similar results.

For example, in 2008 the British medical journal Lancet Oncology published a widely hailed study comparing cancer survival rates in 31 countries. Called the CONCORD study, the researchers found that United States has the highest survival rates for breast and prostate cancer. However, Japan has the highest survival for colon and rectal cancers in men, and France has the highest survival for colon and rectal cancers in women. Canada and Australia also ranked relatively high for most cancers. The differences in the survival data for these “best” countries is very small, and is possibly caused by discrepancies in reporting of data and not the treatment result itself.

And it should be noted that Japan, France, Canada and Australia all have government-funded national health care systems. So, there is no reason to assume that changing the way health care is funded in the U.S. would reduce the quality of cancer care. — Barbara O’Brien

(Note: Barbara O'Brien has guest-blogged at The Mahablog, Crooks and Liars, AlterNet, and elsewhere on the progressive political and health blogosphere, earning her the notoriety of being a panelist at the Yearly Kos Convention and a featured guest blogger at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, DC. She can be reached at barbaraobrien@maacenter.org. Her website is Maacenter.org.)

Republicans always like to talk about how they are the party of fiscal responsibility, and how opposed they are to earmarks. Perhaps, then, one of them would like to explain how holding up the President's nominations until you get the earmarks you want is fiscal conservatism:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

"While holds are frequent," CongressDaily's Dan Friedman and Megan Scully report (sub. req.), "Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal."

The Mobile Press-Register picked up the story early this afternoon. The paper confirmed Reid's account of the hold, and reported that a Shelby spokesperson "did not immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking confirmation of the senator's action or his reason for doing so."

Shelby has been tight-lipped about the holds, offering only an unnamed spokesperson to reporters today to explain them. Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke the news of the blanket hold this afternoon. Reid aides told CongressDaily the hold extends to "all executive nominations on the Senate calendar."

According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama's nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track. The two programs Shelby wants to move forward or else:

- A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: "Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals." Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.

- An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: "[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won't build" the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based "at the Army's Redstone Arsenal."

Though a Shelby spokesperson would not confirm that these programs were behind the blanket hold, the Senator expressed his frustration about the progress on both through a spokesperson to both CongressDaily and the Federal Times.

A San Diego State University professor and Congressional expert told the Mobile paper "he knew of no previous use of a blanket hold" in recent history.

I guess a corollary of the IOKIYAR rule is "It's not an earmark, it's a vital program, if you're a Republican."

Labels: assholes, earmarks, hypocrisy, Republican id-driven two-year-olds

..Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, who earlier this week, in his redundantly named "Roadmap Plan" revived George Bush's brilliant idea of privatizing Social Security:

This proposal addresses the shortcomings of the current system and strengthens the retirement safety net by providing workers with the voluntary option of investing a portion of their FICA payroll taxes into personal savings accounts. Due to the higher rate of return received by investments in secure funds consisting of equities and bonds, these accounts would allow workers to build a significant nest egg for retirement that far exceeds what the current program can provide. Each account will be the property of the individual, and fully inheritable, which will allow workers to pass on any remaining balances in their accounts to their descendants.

Yesterday the Dow-Jones Industrial Average closed down 268.37 points. Much of the gains of recent months have been wiped out.

And this isn't a one-day blip, either. The world economy is once again teetering. Latvia has 23% unemployment. Greece may need a bailout.. Portugal has debt concerns. Spain is in hock up to its eyeballs too.

So of course, with markets reeling all over the world, it's a perfect time to tell Americans that they should trust their retirement to these markets.

Labels: economic death watch, House Republicans, retirement savings, Social Security, We Are So Screwed

Who would Jesus kidnap indeed. Why am I not surprised that the leader of the group of so-called Christian relief workers who, let's face it, kidnapped 33 children in Haiti, is a bit of a grifter:

The leader of the group of Americans charged on Thursday with abducting children in Haiti is an Idaho businesswoman with a complicated financial history that involves complaints from employees over unpaid wages, state liens on a company bank account and lawsuits in small claims court.

The leader, Laura Silsby, defaulted last July on the mortgage on a house in an unfinished subdivision here in Meridian, a suburb of Boise, according to the Ada County Tax Assessor’s Office. Yet in November, Ms. Silsby registered a new nonprofit, the New Life Children’s Refuge, at the address of the house, which she bought in 2008 for $358,000.

New Life Children’s Refuge is the name of the orphanage Ms. Silsby and the nine other Americans charged in Haiti said they had planned to establish in the Dominican Republic.

Ms. Silsby lost the house in Meridian to foreclosure on Dec. 7, records show, and it now stands empty, with signs in the yard promoting a foreclosure sale.

[snip]

Ms. Silsby and her business, Personal Shopper, which provides shopping services for Internet customers, have faced multiple legal claims.

According to state records and officials, Personal Shopper has been named 14 times in complaints from employees over unpaid wages. Among the reasons cited by the employees for having not been paid were “no money for payroll” and “fully investor funded and investors have been hit hard by the economy.”

Employees won nine of the cases, forcing Personal Shopper to pay nearly $31,000 in wages and $4,000 in fines. The Idaho Department of Labor initially put liens on a company bank account to get the money.

“They didn’t like that so they said: ‘How much do we owe? We’ll pay it,’ ” said Bob Fick, a spokesman for the department, adding that unpaid wage complaints were not uncommon.

State officials said Personal Shopper had paid all the wage claims upheld by the state. But another former employee has sued Personal Shopper in civil court. A jury trial is set for Feb. 22 over a claim by the employee, Robin Oliver, that Personal Shopper owes her more than $22,000.

[snip]

Clint Henry, pastor of Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, where five of the Americans charged in Haiti attend services, said Ms. Silsby had attended his church for about two years.

“You wouldn’t find any finer Christian people than these people,” Mr. Henry said in an interview earlier this week.

Because nothing says "good Christian" like a pattern of establishing businesses and nonprofits and ripping people off.

Labels: 2010 Haiti earthquake, Christofascist Zombie Brigade, hypocrisy, just another outrage

You may remember me and others mentioning with some wryness that the Salt Lake County Republicans scrubbed James "Supergnat" O'Keefe from being their keynote speaker the day after he got busted with three of his cohorts for allegedly trying to bug Sen. Mary Landrieu's office. What we haven't paid so much attention to is with whom they replaced him for their fundraising dinner tonight.

Wonder no more: Insisting on going with the youth movement, they hastily picked none other than Guy Benson, one of the youngest wingnuts in the country to have a national radio show. At 24, he's even younger than O'Keefe and, to judge by this nonbiased wikipedia article on Benson, he apparently has as casual a relationship with the truth as does O'Keefe. However, on the plus side, he's also startlingly original, as this piece for NRO shows.

Benson not only interned at Fox (on the Hannity and Colmes show) for a couple of years right out of high school but he also achieved some brief notoriety for "discovering" a video of a 2007 Weathermen reunion that he then breathlessly broadcast on Fox. He's also the darling of the folks over at Larry Johnson's No Quarter.

It gets better: Benson is a paid contributor to another Andrew Breitbart enterprise: Big Hollywood, a forum that had no problem trashing through its promising young talent the late Howard Zinn barely a week after his death (I'm sure you'll remember that O'Keefe is a paid contributor to Breitbart's Big Government). It seems the Salt Lake County Republicans just can't quite quit Andrew Breitbart's young, white protoges.

The Salt Lake County Republicans' new Guy has also achieved some fleeting celebrity by weaving loose threads into conspiratorial wholecloth with a Beckian dexterity, such as when he inveighed on Townhall.com against Hizb ut-Tahrir and their meeting last summer in Chicago. Hizb ut-Tahrir has not, in fact, been definitively linked to any terrorist organization, insists it does not engage in terrorist activity and is not recognized by the State Department as a terrorist organization even though Mideast "experts" also on retainer at Fox are trying to get us to fear them through their unfounded suspicions.

But just the fact they'd organized two days after a car bomb went off in Indonesia was enough for Benson to suggest the conference was a celebratory affair, with AK 47's being fired into the ceiling of the posh Chicago Hilton hotel. As you can expect, Benson's sourcing for this anti-Muslim claim is none other than Fox "News", the very same scabby, hyperpartisan cabal of syphilitic cock goblins for whom Benson had interned for two summers.

Whatever Benson says, Fox believes. Whatever Fox believes, Benson repeats. Thence the echo chamber begins and we have moderate Republicans agreeing with neoconservatives in a heartburning display of bipartisan consensus.

Maybe the Salt Lake County Republicans would've been better off sticking with O'Keefe. They could've still used him for comic relief or, if they'd tried really, really hard, they could've spun his exploits in post-Katrina Louisiana as an homage to that proud Nixonian tradition of illegally spying on Democrats.

And that's all O'Keefe is, now- a punch line for liberals and an embarrassment for conservatives. Benson, despite being a glorified child trying to clomp around in big shoes once worn by Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, has several national forums and generally reaches more people.

Me, August 9, 2009:

Here's what capitulation to the Republicans will get us: President Jeb Bush.

Me, Mary 4, 2009:

Don't kid yourself that this "National Council for a New America" is about rethinking, or even rebranding, the Republican Party. This is the greed wing, the Grover Norquist wing, of the Republican Party making a pre-emptive strike against Evita Mooselini, Bobby the Exorcist Jingles, and the rest of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade that hijacked John McCain last year and now threatens to hijack the rest of the party in the upcoming midterm elections and into 2012. And while Mitt Romney has a prominent role, the savior for the interests of the wealthy that is making the Greedmeisters get all tingly in the groin is Jeb Bush.

Me, December 27, 2008:

I've been saying since 1988 that the Bush family regards this entire country as a private fiefdom that's theirs to plunder as they wish for their family and friends. We've seen over the last eight years that it isn't just the country they see as their fiefdom, it's the entire world. Did anyone really think they would go away quietly? Greedy people don't take kindly to having land they think is theirs taken away from them, certainly not by black people they no doubt think ought to be their domestic servants.

And so they, with the help of the Greed Wing of the Republican Party, which has been seeking a candidate to represent their interests in 2012 to go up against the Christofascist Zombie Brigade's Chosen One, Sarah Palin, are already positioning the Bush Family Restoration to the Throne of the United States

Associated Press, today:

When Jeb Bush left office four years ago, his public appearances were as scarce as bi-partisan man hugs.

He didn't want to upstage his successor in the governor's mansion nor his brother in the White House. Instead, he quietly cashed in by joining corporate boards and an elite speakers bureau, penned policy essays and gave infrequent interviews to conservative media.

But in recent months, as the Republican Party of Florida has grappled with a leadership vacuum, Bush's political profile has grown as fast as the national deficit.

He headlined a fundraiser for Bill McCollum's gubernatorial campaign, starred in a YouTube video touting Jeff Atwater's campaign for state chief financial officer and helped install state Sen. John Thrasher as the state party's heir apparent -- all the while looming on the sidelines of the fierce Republican Senate primary between Gov. Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio.

The capper came Thursday when, at the top of the 7 o'clock hour, right after Vice President Joe Biden, Bush made a rare network television appearance on NBC's Today Show. The intensely private Bush's interview with the overly familiar Matt Lauer rattled Florida political circles.

Was this the beginning of a Jeb juggernaut that would culminate in a 2012 presidential bid?

``My wife called me immediately and said he looked presidential,'' said Thrasher, who as the former House speaker helped Bush lay down his agenda. ``I said, `Who knows? We'll see.' I'm ready to go to Iowa any time he's ready.''

What did you THINK those "slips" by Republican operatives on television talking about "No terrorist attacks under Bush" and "Obama created this deficit" are all about? They're about recognizing a stupid and inattentive American population that can be whipped into such a frenzy of hate by their economic conditions -- conditions ACTUALLY AND FACTUALLY created by the economic policies of George W. Bush, and forgetting that those eight years ever happened. I've been saying throughout this last year that before this is all over, a plurality of Americans will believe that the last three presidents were Reagan, Clinton, and Obama.

Sarah Palin has the hearts of the teabaggers, but there is yet to emerge a credible candidate on the Republican side. Scott Brown is the flavor-of-the-month of the crushy media, but the money guys on the Republican side want their sure thing, and the Bush family wants -- and feels it deserves -- its restoration. As Grover Norquist clone hopefuls like Mark Sanford and John Ensign sacrifice their presidential ambitions on the altar of their own penii, and Tim Pawlenty and John Thune have all the charisma of telephone poles, the money Republicans are still looking for Their Guy. In Jeb Bush, they have felt ever since the administration of Saint Jebbie's wastrel brother ended, they have their guy. And now it looks like I was probably not wrong. What they WON'T mention, and hope that people won't use Teh Google to find, is this:

A government money market debacle unfolding in Florida is raising questions about former governor and presidential brother Jeb Bush's possible involvement in the mess.

Florida froze withdrawals from a state investment fund earlier this week when local governments withdrew billions of dollars out of concern for the fund's financial stability.

In the past few days, municipalities have withdrawn roughly $9 billion, nearly a third of the $28 billion fund (which is similar to a money market fund) controlled by the Florida's State Board of Administration (SBA). The run on the fund was triggered by worries that a percentage of the portfolio contained debt that had defaulted.

A majority of this paper was sold to SBA by Lehman Brothers. Bush, as the state's top elected official, served on a three-member board that oversaw the SBA until he retired as governor in January. In August, Bush was hired as a consultant to the bank. Lehman spokesperson Kerrie Cohen, speaking on behalf of Bush, said they had no comment and would not say when the bank had sold Florida the paper. SBA did not return calls.

But watch -- Jeb Bush will be painted as the Only One Who Can Save Our Economy.

Labels: Bush family, dynastic politics, Jeb Bush, the more things change the more they stay the same, Why even bother any more

I was kind of leaning that way anyway. I think New Orleans could use a Super Bowl win. But now I may have to go the full chicken-wing-and-cheering thing. Here's why:

When the request arrived in an e-mail last fall, Scott Fujita replied immediately and without reservation. A friend had asked him his opinion. He answered. That was how Fujita looked at it.

The swiftness and certitude of Fujita’s reply stunned Dave Zirin, the friend who sent the e-mail. Zirin had not made a typical request, not for an NFL linebacker. He was looking for a professional athlete to lend his name to the National Equality March, a rally in Washington for gay rights.

On Sunday, Fujita will reach the pinnacle of his football career, playing linebacker for the New Orleans Saints in the Super Bowl. Fujita describes it as “this small moment in time where you have a platform to do some good things.’’ Last fall, that included speaking out in support of gay rights, a rare step in a professional sporting culture that often turns social stances into landmines.

Fujita, who is married, the father of twin daughters, and straight, pushes against the rising trend in sports to remain mum on cultural and political touchstones. His boldness, shaped by his unusual upbringing, makes him an uncommon and effective advocate for what he believes in.

“People asked me a question and I gave my opinion,’’ Fujita said. “People say, ‘That’s so courageous of you.’ To me, it’s not that courageous to have an opinion, especially if you wholeheartedly think it’s the right thing. For me, standing up for equal rights is the right thing to do.’’

Read the whole article. This young man is awesomeness with extra awesome sauce on the side.

(h/t)

Labels: a real mensch, Athletes, football, gay rights, Super Bowl

Next thing you know, bailed-out corporations will be assigned their own saints by the Roman Catholic Church. Like St. Henry of Wall Street, patron saint of sociopathic dirtbags like AIG.

Because this is exactly what I needed to hear so soon after a close call at the end of last month when Mrs. JP and I couldn't pay our rent or buy food.

The 100 million in bonuses is going to their financial products division, the same one whose risky derivatives high wire act made the company topple and safely land in the safety net provided by Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public (a personal aside: Isn't the financial product division a misnomer since they, you know, don't actually produce anything besides mountains of debt?).

And if that isn't enough, get this: In a few months, AIG will hand out several tens of millions more in bonuses to employees at the same division. About the only way in which AIG has suffered is that some of the scumbags who got the company in hot water (and sent them to our front doors with their grubby paws held out) chose to opt out of a certain agreement or take a 20% pay cut just had to wait a little longer for their bonuses.

But let it not be said that AIG doesn't know restraint: originally, they wanted to pay out $120 million until they were impotently barked at by Congress.

It takes a special kind of person to sit through enough DVDs to compile a comprehensive collection of Sawyer nicknames.

If you ever wondered what the hold is that LOST has on viewers, you've just seen Exhibit A.

Josh Holloway had better hope someone finds a really good show for him. Because he is in serious danger of being Sawyer for-frickin-ever.

(h/t)

Labels: geekery, Lost, pop culture

It's Blogroll Amnesty Day! Forgive me if I seem a bit under the weather, but I'm a bit hung over from all the excitement last night. No, not the one where we light candles, drink a glass of Manischewitz cream white and eat latkes, then we dress in red robes, dance under the mistletoe, dye eggs, and break out the Scrabble board in preparation for the big parade today; I'm talking about the Geek Superbowl -- the season premiere of LOST. Don't tell me how it ends, I had to turn the TV off after Hour 1, but what an hour it was, and how the hell are they going to resolve EVERYTHING in one more season? And what do we watch afterwards? Sorry, but Christian Slater talking to dead people just doesn't do it for me. I already know who the winner of Survivor: Heroes and Villains is because I've read the spoilers (thus saving me from wasting twelve precious hours of my life and eyeballs on YET ANOTHER season of famewhores Boston Rob Mariano and the aptly-named Parvati Shallow).

I'm going to be waiting for the bigass box set, complete with outtakes, Dharma candybar wrappers, bloopers, all the Web stuff about Oceanic Airlines and the Dharma Initiative.

But in the meantime, it's Blogroll Amnesty Day! This year's celebration may be a bit muted, because in my current job, I have even less time than I did before to prowl around looking for insightful, funny, and just plain fun blogs that get even less traffic than I do. There's also the fact that it's difficult to even FIND blogs that get even less traffic than this one does, except when the good people at Crooks and Liars are nice enough to link here. Then we spike for a day or so and go back to the 300-400 visitors a day level.

So if this isn't exactly and consistently in the letter of Blogroll Amnesty Day, it'll be in the spirit of Blogroll Amnesty Day.

Jess over at I Was Told There Would Be Bacon, who describes herself as "a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a vest soaked with booze", on the Tebow anti-abortion ad, the message of which is "I had a choice but I don't want you to have the same one because you might make a different one." (By the way, I won't link to it because of Blogroll Amnesty Day, but even Lord Saletan at Slate, who thinks we need to find middle ground with the Christofascist Zombie Brigade on this, thinks this ad is horsepuckey, and does a nice job of explaining exactly how guaranteeing a Heisman Trophy winner if you just pray enough is really irresponsible.

Our good friend Mike Hogan continues his noble, if quixotic quest, to keep small-town politicians honest at Pascack People. Mike is battling the Big C, so if you are the praying kind, you might send a little energy his way. We need him.


Evil Mommy is an adoptive parent who explained to the Tebow family on Blog for Choice day why choice is not just about abortion.

Tata's place always makes me feel happy. And it has cats. And food.

Speaking of food, we do that too (specifically of the Trader Joe's variety), over at Disciples of Joe.

P.J. Sauter has not only kept Morning Sedition alive and kicking 24 x 7 for the last four years , but he's kept a home for Seditionisti and anyone who wants to participate, posting faithfully, every single day, since December 2005 over at Morning Seditionists. Go thank him.

I don't always agree with Jayhawk of On My Mind, nor he with me. But that's OK. He's always worth reading.

Sherry takes a critical look at the Bible.

I'll post other compendia tonight.

Labels: bloggers, Blogroll Amnesty Day