Dispatch from Cluelessistan

Mitt "Corporations Are People Too" Romney, you know, old "I'm unemployed too" -- is planning to quadruple the size of his house in La Jolla, California:

Romney has filed an application with the city to bulldoze his 3,009-square-foot, single-story home at 311 Dunemere Dr. and replace it with a two-story, 11,062-square-foot structure. No date has been set to consider the proposed coastal development and site development permits, which must be approved by the city.



The former governor of Massachusetts purchased the home three years ago. According to a description from the listing agent, the Spanish-style residence at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac is sophisticated and understated in its décor, “offering complete privacy and unsurpassed elegance.”



Tentative plans call for new retaining walls and a relocated driveway, but would retain the existing lap pool and spa.



“This offering represents a truly unique opportunity for a buyer who appreciates the scarcity of this caliber of real estate,” the listing said.



Constructed in 1936, the three-bedroom, 4.5-bathroom home was among the first built in the Barber tract neighborhood, according to the La Jolla Historical Society, and has a stretch of lawn sloping to the white sand beach.



“I wanted to be where I could hear the waves,” Romney told a gaggle of media last year at a book signing in University City. “As a boy we spent summers on Lake Huron and I could hear the crashing waves at night. It was one of my favorite things in the world; being near the water and the waves was something I very badly wanted to experience again.”

The Romneys also own a $10 million lake house in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire and a townhouse in Washington, DC.



We now return you to the endless right-wing litany of shrieking over Barack Obama's two week stay in Martha's Vineyard. Because only Republican presidents are allowed to take vacations. Especially when they wear "rancher" drag while doing it, because that makes all the manly-men of the media feel all, like, you know, manly.

And they say LIBERALS have no sense of humor?

Perhaps this is the definition of irony.

Back in the days when I was able to start my day with a good healthy dose of comedic cynicism with "Morning Sedition", Marc Maron would open the show with "Good morning geniuses, philosopher kings, working class heroes, progressive utopians with no sense of humor..." If you're familiar with the Maron oeuvre, you know that humorlessness on the left is an integral part of his work when he ventures into the political realm (which he doesn't do much anymore, since as he said on Real Time with Bill Maher this weekend, political rage is just about being angry in your own head, something he's been workinig on with his WTF podcast, which is itself a kind of atonement for the way he treated people in comedy when he was a self-destructive asshole, instead of just the garden-variety asshole he is today.

But now Marc Maron finds himself with a notoriety he would have killed for a few years ago, because of an offhand remark he made during his appearance on Real Time -- one which for anyone who knows his work, is another example of the kind of raw, rip-your-head-open-and-dig-out-the-muck musings that are an integral part of his schtick.

I'll be the first to admit that Marc Maron isn't everyone's cup of tea. At one time I'd have said that you have to be a neurotic Jew with food issues and unresolved childhood self-loathing to really "get" what he does. But there are few stand-up comics who, after a radio show that lasted only a year and a half and ended over five years ago, has kept the show's fan base to the point of breaking down the wall between comic and audience. Whether it's his live stand-up shows or live WTF broadcasts, Seditionisti and WhatTheFuckniks shower him with gifts relevant to his chaotic life and cultural references -- vegan cakes, non-vegan cookies, full butterfat ice cream, and of course cat toys. There are always cat toys, because if you've followed Maron's career since three feral stray cats were dumped almost literally in his lap in Astoria, Queens in 2004, you know about Boomer the Dirt Cat (who the now-loathed ex-wife left behind and took the much nicer Moxie the Astoria Cat in their very bitter divorce), Monkey, and LaFonda, you know that he's a Cat Guy. And another thing the fans do is create the artwork that shows up now on WTF swag.

Marc Maron has this peculiar thing that he desperately wants to be liked, but he's suspicious of anyone who likes him. If you don't necessarily like him as a person (and he's far more accessible than most stand-ups are), you should at least appreciate his work. But the thing you have to realize about Marc Maron is that when he gets up on a stage, or puts on the headphones in his garage and starts a monologue, he's not doing it for you. He's doing it for himself, because without it he'll go slowly nuts just from living inside his own head. You either get that or you don't.

Unfortunately, appearing on a popular show like Real Time means that this weekend Maron was out of the comfort zone of people who still miss Lawton Smalls and the Presidential Palm Pilot and who remain hopeful that Current will somehow put WTF on television. And now he's Public Enemy #1 on the right for an offhand remark he made (2:33 into the video below) about hoping Marcus Bachmann (who's widely reported to be a closet case, which of course, as Stephen Colbert would say, makes it "fact-esque") takes out all his rage and anger about his closeted existence into the bedroom with his wife, GOP Republican presidential candidate Michele, and has "hate sex" with her.

Watch for yourself:

I'm waiting for the feminist blogosphere to weigh in with trigger warnings and all the rest of the fragile flower baggage that comes with framing your entire life and entire being around having been a victim of rape at one time. But so far it's mostly on the right that the outrage is taking place, which is hilarious because for a year and a half, Marc Maron was on terrestrial radio for fifteen hours a week during morning drive time, being FAR more inflammatory to the right wing than an offhand remark on one episode of a show on premium cable, and the right never bothered to listen and never uttered a peep. But let him muse for ten seconds about something that probably goes on in many bedrooms around the country (incluing probably many Republican bedrooms), and the right goes nuts.

What's funny is that the right, often justifiably, has poked fun at the political correctness of the left. What you don't see in the video clip is Marc Maron explaining how he gave up talking about politics because of the humorlessness of the left, and how he'd say something and someone would say he didn't really get into the concerns about the transgender community. For decades the right has railed against political correctness, saying vile and hateful things about Hillary Clinton and Michele Obama and Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic high-profile women. But let a comedian make an offhand remark about a Republican woman, and they go nuts.

What Marc Maron does by digging into his own head is take us to places that most people don't want to go. He rips aside the curtain of American hypocrisy and pokes fun at it, and he does it without Jon Stewart's need to be nice. It's what all the great stand-up comics of the last half-century have done. It's what Carlin did, it's what Pryor did, it's what Lenny Bruce did. Maybe you've never had "hate sex". But you can bet your life that all the people on the right who are having the vapors today have. And if they haven't, they sure as hell want to.

And while Peter King is investigating Muslims....

White self-identified Christian racists (yes, racists -- take THAT, James O'Keefe...I paid property taxes for your highschool, you sniveling little rat-faced git) get to intimidate with impunity:

A Stevens County man charged with the attempted bombing along the route of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane has links to a neo-Nazi group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Kevin William Harpham, 36, was a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance in late 2004, Mark Potok, director of the center's Intelligence Project, said following Harpham's arrest Wednesday.

[snip]

Harpham has been charged with one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and one count of knowingly possessing an improvised explosive device, according to a complaint unsealed Wednesday. The weapon of mass destruction charge carries a penalty of up to life in prison.

Now WHO are the terrorists again?

(via)

I look forward to Darrell Issa's investigation of this

We already know that Darrell plans to investigate the President and all Democrats for whatever he can, even if all he finds is that Harry Reid uses two paper towels instead of one in the men's washroom. We know how cancer survivor Tom Coburn held out for $2.2 billion in cuts to the Zadroga bill to help his party's political props who risked their lives (and many of them will end up giving them) in the Ground Zero cleanup before he'd let it go through. Because Tom Coburn, like all Republicans, fancies himself a fiscal conservative who cares deeply about government waste, fraud, and abuse.

In case Mr. Coburn and Mr. Issa have forgotten, I'd like to remind them about one example of such waste that has been bothering me for a long time:

Audit: U.S. lost track of $9 billion in Iraq funds

January 20, 2005

Nearly $9 billion of money spent on Iraqi reconstruction is unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management, according to a watchdog report published Sunday.

An inspector general's report said the U.S.-led administration that ran Iraq until June 2004 is unable to account for the funds.

"Severe inefficiencies and poor management" by the Coalition Provisional Authority has left auditors with no guarantee the money was properly used," the report said.

[snip]

The $8.8 billion was reported to have been spent on salaries, operating and capital expenditures, and reconstruction projects between October 2003 and June 2004, Bowen's report concluded.

The money came from revenues from the United Nations' former oil-for-food program, oil sales and seized assets -- all Iraqi money. The audit did not examine the use of U.S. funds appropriated for reconstruction.

Auditors were unable to verify that the Iraqi money was spent for its intended purpose. In one case, they raised the possibility that thousands of "ghost employees" were on an unnamed ministry's payroll.

"CPA staff identified at one ministry that although 8,206 guards were on the payroll, only 602 guards could be validated," the audit report states. "Consequently, there was no assurance funds were not provided for ghost employees."

I'm not holding my breath.

Don't expect Congress to do anything about the TSA

Why should they? THEY're exempt:

Representative John A. Boehner, soon to be the Speaker of the House, has pledged to fly commercial airlines back to his home district in Ohio. But that does not mean that he will be subjected to the hassles of ordinary passengers, including the controversial security pat-downs.

As he left Washington on Friday, Mr. Boehner headed across the Potomac River to Reagan National Airport, which was bustling with afternoon travelers. But there was no waiting in line for Mr. Boehner, who was escorted around the metal detectors and body scanners, and taken directly to the gate.

Mr. Boehner, who was wearing a casual yellow sweater and tan slacks, carried his own bags and smiled pleasantly at passengers who were leaving the security checkpoint inside the airport terminal. It was unclear whether any passengers waiting in the security line, including Representative Allen Boyd, a Florida Democrat who lost his re-election bid, saw Mr. Boehner.

At a Capitol Hill news conference after Election Day, as Mr. Boehner began laying out the changes he would make when he becomes House Speaker, he announced that he would continue to fly commercial airlines (usually Delta) back to Ohio. It was a not-so-subtle dig at the outgoing Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, who had been criticized by Republicans for flying military airplanes when she returned home to San Francisco.

“Over the last 20 years, I have flown back and forth to my district on a commercial aircraft,” Mr. Boehner said at the time, “and I am going to continue to do that.”

And so on Friday, he did. But not without the perquisites of office, including avoiding those security pat-downs that many travelers are bracing for as holiday travel season approaches.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for the Republican leader, said in a statement that Mr. Boehner was not receiving special treatment. And a law enforcement official said that any member of Congress or administration official with a security detail is allowed to bypass security.

And just like Andy Harris wanting HIS health insurance on day one upon taking office but campaigned on a platform of repealing acces to health insurance for "the little people", Congress isn't going to take on something that doesn't affect them personally.

And yet Ted Kennedy found himself on a no-fly list. Funny how these things work, isn't it?

Saturday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: Matt Taibbi, weighing in on the Olbermann foofarah.

Money quote:

We had a whole generation of journalists who sat by and did nothing while, for instance, George Bush led us into an idiotic war on a lie, plus thousands more who spent day after day collecting checks by covering Britney's hair and Tiger's text messages and other stupidities while the economy blew up and two bloody wars went on mostly unexamined... and it's Keith Olbermann who should "pay the price" for being unethical? Because, and let me get this straight, he donated money, privately, to politicians?

I guess Phil Griffin wants to replace him with Christine O'Donnell

That didn't take long.

Phil Griffin, who heads up MSNBC, has suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely without pay for donating his own money to political candidates.

As Kos points out, Pat Buchanan donated money to Republicans between 2005 and 2008 (not to mention what a virulent hatemonger he is) and he's still on Morning Schmoe on a regular basis.

This morning Meredith Viera had a cuddle with Christine O'Donnell, who in case anyone forgot, LOST her election bid on Tuesday, but is somehow still a more valuable commodity on television than the guy who actually WON.

I can add 2 + 2, can you?

Meanwhile, Faux Noise doesn't seem to care about its on-air talent advocating for candidates on their own time with their own money. Here's a list of Sean Hannity's donations.

UPDATE: I'm shocked, I tell you...shocked...SHOCKED...and APPALLED...that Joey the Intern Killer Scarborough donates to Republicans -- but Phil Griffin has no problem with that.

UPDATE #2: Greg Sargent calls bullshit.

What's a little Nazi sympathizing among friends?

I'd love to hear how the teabaggers, who march in -- dare I say it? -- goosestepping unison with their ideology even when actual reality shows them something different, differentiate between the Hitler mustaches they draw on posters of Barack Obama and their possible future House Majority Leader stumping on the campaign trail for a guy who thinks the Waffen SS was fighting for its freedom against evil Bolsheviks:

Why is anyone surprised that John Boehner decided to campaign for Ohio congressional candidate Rich Iott, one of the GOP's assortment of extremist 2010 candidates, which includes a Marine who killed two unarmed Iraqi prisoners, a guy whose security detained reporters at a public school event and one whose volunteers stomped a MoveOn volunteer?

Iott's in a category by himself, as someone who admits he's enjoyed attending Nazi history re-enactments dressed up in an SS Waffen uniform. But he's not a Nazi sympathizer! "It's purely historical interest in World War II," Iott told the Atlantic's Josh Green. "I've always been fascinated by the fact that here was a relatively small country that from a strictly military point of view accomplished incredible things. I mean, they took over most of Europe and Russia, and it really took the combined effort of the free world to defeat them. From a purely historical military point of view, that's incredible."

Remember the outrage that ensued when Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan declared Adolf Hitler "wickedly great?" Imagine if Obama was stumping for an NOI member who'd praised Nazi Germany. You can't, right? That's where we are, folks, less than a week before this crucial and possibly crushing (for Democrats) midterm election.

Still, it makes a kind of political sense in 2010. With only a few days left, there's a real chance Republicans can take back the House. Boehner wants to be speaker, he can taste it, Marcy Kaptur's seat is a possible pickup for his party – so he's not going to let a little Nazi re-enactment stand in the way. That's John Boehner.

Time to yank their tax exemption

If I can't get a tax deduction for supporting candidates I choose, why should these churches continue to get a tax break when they are becoming essentially arms of the GOP?

Nearly 100 pastors across the country planned to take part in Pulpit Freedom Sunday, an in-your-face challenge Sunday to what the government says can and cannot be said in church.

This Sunday, 100 U.S. pastors, including seven from Tennessee, will stand before their congregations and break the law, on purpose.

The pastors, along with the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based nonprofit Alliance Defense Fund, are reacting to a law stating that churches are not allowed to support politicians from the pulpit, according to the ADF.

The growing trend is a challenge to the IRS from the churches, and may jeopardize their all-important tax-exempt status. But some pastors and church leaders said they are willing to defy the law to defending their right to freedom of speech.

Mr. Holder? These are people who are never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to vote for this President. Time to yank their tax exemption. And while you're at it, yank the tax exemption for the Family Research Council and the Catholic Church too.

At last: A call for Christians to denounce "Burn a Quran Day"

If all Muslims in this country has to proclaim loudly to the skies, 24 hours a day, for the rest of their lives, how outraged they are about the 9/11 attacks, then shouldn't Christians have to do the same about "Burn a Quran Day" about to be held in Gainesville, Florida (it's always Florida, isn't it?) next weekend?

Since 9/11 many American Christians have been asking why Muslims who oppose Islamist radicalism don't do more to counter it. Today I suspect more than a few Muslims are looking at Christians in America wondering why Christians don't try to dissuade the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida, led by Pastor Terry Jones, from hosting Burn a Quran Day.

What is the responsibility of religious believers in a given faith to engage fanatics advocating ideologies of hate while claiming to act in the name of this faith?

Quran burning does not equate with murdering thousands in terrorism. However, these are similar in being ideological expressions of hatred which identify themselves with Abrahamic faiths better known for their emphasis on God's mercy toward all humans.

Both are independent movements evoking the name of far larger, broader religions. The Dove World Outreach Center is an independent church. Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda is an independent movement. Just as millions of Christians peacefully attend churches with no affiliation with the Dove World Outreach Center, millions of peaceful Muslims have no affiliation with al-Qaeda and associated movements.

Among Muslims there are emerging efforts beyond press releases to engage Islamist fanatics and Muslims, especially young Muslims, at risk of radicalization. Examples include the Quilliam Foundation, a Muslim counter-radicalization think-tank in the U.K., and the video Believers Beware: Injustice Cannot Defeat Injustice, released this summer by the Muslim Public Affairs Council based in Washington, DC, featuring Muslim leaders speaking Muslim-to-Muslim against religious fanaticism.

[snip]

There is a mess brewing inside Christendom. Some American Christians might be thinking, "Terry Jones and his church - ahem, his "church" - have nothing to do with me because I am Catholic/Methodist/fill-in-the-blank." And yet the only thing a flood victim in Pakistan, likely Muslim, is probably going to hear about this story is, 'American Christians put their energy and resources into Quran burning, not into helping us in our hour of dire need.'

Moreover, if American Christians don't try to reach out to Terry Jones, then who will? Press releases will not be enough.

Word.

I don't know about you, but I haven't heard a peep out of any mainstream Christian denomination about "Burn a Quran Day." I guess that means they condone it. Sauce, goose, etc.

Why am I not surprised?

It has always seemed odd to me that so many so-called conservatives who hate government, hate civil service workers, and hate anything government does to help people, are so eager to get in there and get a government paycheck themselves.

In the case of Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle (Hypocritical Wingnut Party), the hypocrisy and the double standard are elevated to an art form, because her household is ALREADY supported by a federal pension:

Sharron Angle, the queen of Tea Party extremism, may be the worst hypocrite in a political party that never fails to take hypocrisy to new levels. Angle’s political positions are well documented: she wants to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and practically the entire social safety net, except when it applies to her. Angle has no job of her own at the moment and is living off her husband Ted Angle’s federal pension. Ted Angle worked for the Bureau of Land Management for 25 years and I’m sure his pension is well deserved, just like the 400,000 people in Nevada who deserve the Social Security benefits that they receive after paying into the program all their lives.

The idea that people are too dependent on the federal government to provide for them is the keystone of Sharron Angle’s campaign, yet apparently she cannot support herself without the federal government. Of course like many other detestable Republicans, her hypocrisy does not end there. Prior to the Reid campaign illuminating Angle’s own reliance on the federal government, Angle tried to attack Reid for the benefits he will collect through his retirement account that he enjoys as a Member of Congress.

Nevadans deserve this lunatic nimrod if they vote for her. The problem is that she's going to have influence that far outstrips her junior Senator status. And this is the price we pay for Harry Reid being so utterly useless.

Word.

Stanley Fish:

It is wrong, we hear, to regard the proposed mosque or community center as an ordinary exercise of free enterprise and freedom of religion by the private owners of a piece of property. It is, rather, a thumb in the eye or a slap in the face of the 9/11 victims and their families, a potential clearinghouse for international terrorist activities, a “victory mosque” memorializing a great triumph of jihad and a monument to the religion in whose name and by whose adherents the dreadful deed was done.

But according to the same folks who oppose the mosque because of what it stands for, Michael Enright’s act doesn’t stand for anything and is certainly not the product of what Time magazine calls a growing “American strain of Islamophobia.” Instead, The New York Post declares, the stabbing is “the act of a disturbed individual who is now in custody,” and across the fold of the page columnist Jonah Goldberg says that “one assault doesn’t a national trend make” and insists that “we shouldn’t let anyone suggest that this criminal reflects anybody but himself.”

The formula is simple and foolproof (although those who deploy it so facilely seem to think we are all fools): If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon.

How could she?!?!? And at such a time, too!!

How dare a First Lady go jetting off to Europe with one of her daughters and an entourage at a time when so many people are suffering? It's an outrage, I tell ya...an OUTRAGE!!

Laura Bush begins solo European tour
May 14, 2002 Posted: 9:50 AM EDT (1350 GMT)

Laura Bush, a onetime librarian from Texas who married into a politically ambitious family, embarked on her first overseas tour as first lady Monday, heading to Europe to make her mark on the world stage.

The soft-spoken Texan, who has emerged as a poised, low-key and calm presence in the Bush administration, is scheduled to give a speech Tuesday before the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, where she will talk about the importance of education for children.

Traveling with Jenna, one of her college-aged twin daughters, Laura Bush also is scheduled to visit Hungary and the Czech Republic. In Prague, she will participate in a roundtable on Afghanistan before she joins her husband, President Bush, on May 22 in Berlin.

"She's not going to have any trouble at all," predicted Letitia Baldrige, the social secretary and chief of staff for first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

[snip]

Laura Bush, 55, has often said she is not trying to emulate any of her predecessors, including her mother-in-law Barbara Bush and the widely traveled Hillary Clinton, who spoke out often on major policy issues.

Laura Bush's trip, however, sparked a new round of commentary on the airwaves and in newspapers about what kind of first lady now occupies the East Wing.

"Laura Bush is not the traditionalist that I think a lot of people thought she was going to be," said Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a presidential historian, who has written a book about first ladies. "She has a graduate degree and a very serious lifelong interest in early childhood development."

That's AP, talking glowingly about Laura Bush just eight months after almost 3000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, as she headed off to Europe with then-party-girl Jenna, presumably at taxpayer expense.

Now read about the double standard when the First Lady is a black Democrat:

As Mrs. Obama and her entourage toured the picturesque southern city of Ronda on Saturday, the blogosphere has been filled with commentary about what many saw as a tone-deaf trip in the same week the United States reported the loss of 131,000 more jobs. “A modern-day Marie Antoinette,” scolded a New York Daily News columnist.

The White House was reluctant to discuss Mrs. Obama’s trip. The only official comment came from Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, at a briefing last week when he said that Mrs. Obama “is a private citizen and is the mother of a daughter on a private trip. And I think I’d leave it at that.”

Privately, officials note that the first lady is paying for her own room, food and transportation, and the friends she brought will pay for theirs as well. The government pays for security, and the Secret Service, not the first lady, determines what is needed.

Officials said some reports of the trip had been exaggerated. Mrs. Obama is not traveling with 40 friends, one official said, but with two friends and four of their daughters, as well as a couple of aides and a couple of advance staff members. The staff is with her because she will pay a courtesy call on King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía on the island of Majorca on Sunday before flying home to Washington.

Every first lady in modern times has flown on government planes with a sizable security detail, and it is hard to pinpoint the cost to taxpayers. The Air Force jet she flew costs $11,351 per hour to operate, according to several reports, meaning a 14-hour round trip would cost nearly $160,000. The first lady would reimburse only the equivalent of first-class commercial tickets for herself and her daughter Sasha, the rest of the seats being occupied mainly by Secret Service. Officials said their friends flew on separate commercial flights.

Laura Bush took vacations without her husband each year of George W. Bush’s presidency, traveling with her Secret Service detail on a government plane to meet friends for camping in national parks. But that never generated as much furor, in part because vacationing in the United States is not as politically delicate for American leaders and their families as doing so in foreign countries.

Really? A vacation in fucking SPAIN is controversial? Now if she were vacationing in Dubai and holding hands with some sheikh while wearing a hijab, I could see the heads of wingnuts exploding. But for cryin' out loud, people! Spain? I guarantee you, right now there are cruise ships loaded with Republicans docked in Barcelona.

It has ALWAYS been a perk of the thankless task of being First Lady to travel overseas and meet dignitaries. These jaunts are ALWAYS quasi-diplomatic trips. There's Jacqueline Kennedy's 1961 trip to France. Laura Bush also visited Nigeria. Hillary Clinton traveled a great deal, which prepared her for her current job. Pat Nixon traveled extensively. So what is the big deal about Michelle Obama? Is it simply that there is now this shrieking echo chamber full of Malkins and Breitbarts and other lunatics? Or is there perhaps a double standard -- that First Ladies only get to represent us when they're white?

Monday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: Blue Girl, who has had quite enough of the media drawing false equivalency between the merely opinionated left and the batshit crazy violent right.

Money quote (it's a long one, but go read the whole thing and show BG some love in the comments...or even better, donate over there:

So I have some questions for Howard.  

I wonder if he would care to share some information with us that he seems to have in his possession that the rest of us have missed. How many fringe lefties who hang on every word of Maddow or Olberman have walked into Holy Roller churches and opened up on the parishoners with a shotgun because they "hate conservatives"? Where is our Jim D. Adkisson, who was a die-hard O'Reilley and Hannity devotee? I missed that story, somehow.

And remind me how many lefties have gotten into shootouts with cops? Where is our Richard Poplawski? He's the man in Pittsburgh who armed himself to the teeth, donned body armor and laid in wait.  He met the two officers who responded to his mother's domestic violence call at the door, and he murdered them in cold blood, shooting both of them in the head, then he shot dead the policeman who tried to get to his colleagues and help them.   Two more police officers were wounded.

During the four-hour standoff, hundreds of shots were fired and neighbors hid in their basements until the suspect, 23-year-old Richard Poplawski, was taken into custody.  

His best friend was interviewed and said that Poplawski feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon."

Or how about Jerry and Joe Kane, the so-called sovereign citizens who died in a shootout with the police in Arkansas after killing two law enforcement officers? Yep...right wing, anti-government zealots.

Where is the left's James Cummings? He was the Maine man who was shot dead by his abused wife before he could make and detonate a dirty bomb. That was in January 2009 - he went over the edge as soon as Obama was elected, and set his plot in motion before he was even sworn in.  After his death, four 1-gallon containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon were removed from the residence, as well as the instructions to assemble a dirty bomb.

Or how about Byron Williams? Last month the paroled bank robber from northern California loaded up his mom's Toyota Tundra with guns he stole from her safe, donned body armour and headed for San Francisco where he intended to kill staffers at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU to "start a revolution" because he was sick of Congress shoving their "left wing agenda" down America's collective throat.  Where is our Byron Williams, Howard?

Or how about Timothy McVeigh? He murdered 168 people in cold blood because he hated the government as soon as a Democrat was elected. He said he was set off by Waco, but if that hadn't happened it would have been something else.

Where is the lefty who has done any of those things, Howard?

Don't bother looking, you fucking asshole. There isn't one. Not a one of them has a left-leaning counterpart. And so long as that remains the case, Kurtz and the rest of the Village Idiots will not merely remain part of the problem, they will be the arsonists pouring accellerant on an already raging fire.

Where was the outrage when Pat Buchanan defended Hitler?

I'm really more saddened than outraged about Helen Thomas. I wish she'd been able or willing to express her outrage at the recent Israeli attack on a flotilla delivering aid to Gaza in a way that wasn't so, well, just plain outright cruel. It's probably appropriate that she retire, not because she spoke up against Israel, but because of the "Go back go Germany" sentiment. You can make the argument that the establishment of the state of Israel after World War II was the Allied powers' way of assuaging their guilt over having looked the other way for years while Hitler was massacring Jews in Germany and Eastern Europe; and that it was probably not a great idea. But what are you going to do now? Dismantle it? Arguably this is what Helen Thomas was calling for. But when you have other opinion columnists like Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg and other knee-jerk supporters of EVERYTHING Israel does, no matter how heinous, still working, I have to wonder why only this particular statement warranted forcing a 90-year-old woman off the stage while those who have advocated nuking the Middle East, racially profiling all Muslims, and invoking the Crusades are still walking around.

If it's just about being offensive to Jews, what about Pat Buchanan, then? He's been a rabid anti-Semite for years, and he's still a beloved, if less frequent, fixture on Joe Scarborough's show on the supposedly liberal MSNBC.

Media Matters has a rundown of the Jew-hatred of Pat Buchanan:

During his time in public life, Buchanan has defended Adolf Hitler -- repeatedly. He has peddled Holocaust denial claims and compared suspected Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk to Jesus Christ. 

Buchanan has reminisced fondly about his childhood in segregated Washington, DC, and complained that “Old heroes like ... Robert E. Lee are replaced by Dr. King." He wrote that “integration of blacks and whites” was likely to result in “perpetual friction, as the incapable are placed … side by side with the capable.” Buchanan's anti-integration views were so hard-core, even Richard Nixon characterized Buchanan’s them as “segregation forever.” When 67 blacks were shot to death by South African police, Buchanan dismissed the massacre as “a few South African whites mistreating a couple of blacks.” In 1989, Buchanan defended Bob Jones University’s ban on interracial dating. 1989!

In 1983, Buchanan wrote that "homosexuals ... have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution." (During his 1992 presidential campaign, he stood by that view, insisting "AIDS is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature.") He has compared gays to alcoholics.

He has accused David Duke of stealing his ideas, and he has appeared -- just two years ago -- as a guest on a “pro-White” radio show that was streamed live on a self-described “White Nationalist” web site.

Buchanan’s comments have been denounced even by conservative leaders like William F. Buckley (who found it “"impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination, the military build-up for the Gulf War, amounted to anti-Semitism,”) Charles Krauthammer ("There's no doubt he makes subliminal appeals to prejudice”) and then-RNC chairman Rich Bond (who said Buchanan was “heading toward a low-road message of anger, hate and race-baiting.”).

It is important to remember that, although Pat Buchanan’s nasty comments about a wide variety of minorities are very much of the past, they are not in the past.  He has defended Hitler within the past year. His complaint that “Old heros like … Robert W. Lee are replaced by Dr. King” came within the past year. Just last month he was busy counting the Jews on the Supreme Court -- and concluding that there are too many. The month before that, he insisted that “both sides were right" during the Civil War.

And if it's about being offensive to Jews, how about Glenn Beck's endorsement of the work and ideology of Elizabeth Dilling, who was such a rabid anti-Communist that she excused the encampment and gassing of Jews during World War II because many of the Jews exterminated were Russian? Where's the outrage about that, and why isn't there an outcry among the very journalistic organizations that called for Helen Thomas' head to have Glenn Beck removed from the airwaves? Thomas was an opinion journalist, no longer a news reporter. What's really the difference, except for the fact that Thomas has long spoken out about the worst of Israeli thuggery?

NO ONE, not even in the blogosphere, is excusing what Helen Thomas said. As someone from a family who had members go up in smoke in Hitler's camps, I find the "Go back to Germany" sentment as offensive as for white people here telling black people to "Go back to Africa", or racists in Arizona telling children born here to go back to Mexico. I wish that Thomas had found a more artful way to express her sentiment, though I could also argue that at 90, you've earned the right to express your sentiments however the hell you want. And it's quite possibly time for Thomas to leave the public scene. I just wish that it weren't on this kind of note, and I also wish that in pushing her out of the public scene, the organizations expressing outrage at what she said reserved some of their outrage for the racists and Nazi sympathizers who continue to spew their own brand of bile in the newspapers and over the radio and television airwaves every day without impunity.

Friday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: Brad Friedman, who wonders when we're going to see James O'Keefe in his pimp costume outside the offices of Blackwater/Xe.

Domestic terrorists can get a slap on the wrist -- if they are right-wing domestic terrorists

In Kansas, a terroristic murder may be punishable by only five years in prison -- if the murder is a wingnut misogynist zealot:

Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of Scott Roeder, who is accused of killing a Kansas doctor known for performing late-term abortions.

Police and prosecutors say Mr. Roeder walked into the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita last May 31 and shot Dr. George Tiller once in the head.

Mr. Roeder has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. But in phone calls from jail, he has told news organizations that he killed Dr. Tiller -- an act he said was justified to protect unborn children.

In a pretrial hearing Friday, Kansas Judge Warren Wilbert said he might allow the defense to present evidence that Mr. Roeder acted in defense of others -- in this case, fetuses -- whom he believed to be under imminent threat. The judge said he would make that call as the trial proceeded, on a witness-by-witness basis.

"He said it's probably a very tough burden for us to meet, but he didn't rule it out," said defense lawyer Mark Rudy, adding that he was satisfied with the ruling.

Judge Wilbert also said he was open to the defense presenting evidence that Mr. Roeder might be guilty not of first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison, but of the far lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, which carries a sentence of about five years.

It may not be "fair", but yes, Democrats DO have to be cleaner than Republicans

There's the world as we'd like it to be, and then there's the world as it is. We might want to live in the utopian world we'd like, but instead we live in the hypocritical, double-standard world that exists now. In this world, a successful terrorist attack that kills 3000 people shows George W. Bush is a strong leader and a failed one that kills no one shows Barack Obama is a pussy. In this world, John Ensign can remain in office after his parents pay off his mistress' husband and still oppose gay marriage, David Vitter can utilize the services of paid prostitutes to dress him in diapers and still preach about family values and morality, and Mark Sanford can use state funds to fly first class to do the horizontal mambo with his Argentine sweetie and not be removed from office. And this is all OK because they are Republicans. Just like the clean-slate Christianity they follow; the same one that Brit Hume says offers the best deal at the lowest price for Tiger Woods to achieve redemption, Republicans are held to a different standard. They're held to a different standard by the media, and therefore they're held to a different standard by most Americans. The IOKYAR doctrine is the de facto law of the land, and it is not going to change.

There are many reasons this is the law of the land. Some of it is about the corporations that run the media; corporations that instinctively prefer Republican governance. Some of it is undoubtedly due to whatever it is in our nature that makes some of us care what happens to our fellow human beings, and others of us join the "I got mine and fuck you" brigade; guys like Rush Limbaugh who declare that the health care system is fine because HE, with his $400 million contract that's bankrupting Clear Channel, can afford the best insurance and the best care money can buy. But whatever it is, when Republicans are caught in major scandals, they tough it out, and when Democrats are caught in minor scandals, they throw in the towel.

A great deal of hosannas have been expressed on the left at Rick Sanchez' "evisceration" of John Ensign on ethics issues the other day, but I didn't see it as an evisceration at all. Kudos to Sanchez for confronting this hypocritical asshole, but at the end of the day, Ensign stuck to his story and went back to the Senate.

Today, the New York Times reports that Sen. Chris Dodd will not seek re-election, and that even though there was no actual wrongdoing, the "appearance of impropriety" is enough when you're a Democrat to cause your approval ratings to go down the toilet:

Mr. Dodd has been a fixture in the Senate since his election in 1980 and had been at the center of the contentious recent debates on overhauling the health care system and financial regulation. In November he proposed an overhaul that included consolidating bank regulators, creating a consumer financial protection agency and imposing new restraints on exotic financial instruments and credit rating agencies.

But his standing in Connecticut had been on the decline starting when he made an unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2008 — moving his family to Iowa — and when questions arose about a disputed loan he took from Countrywide Financial, the fallen subprime company.

On the Republican side, Mr. Dodd faced the prospect of running against Linda McMahon, a political novice who was prepared to use her vast personal fortune to beat the incumbent senator. Also challenging the senator was former Representative Rob Simmons, a Republican.

Mr. Dodd’s troubles escalated in 2008 when he was one of two Democratic senators — the other was Kent Conrad of North Dakota — who had been accused of receiving improper discounts from Countrywide Financial. In August, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics ruled that it had found “no credible evidence” that the senators had violated gift rules in accepting the loans.

But the committee criticized Mr. Dodd and Mr. Conrad for not avoiding the appearance of impropriety.

Both Mr. Dodd and Mr. Conrad had been members of the “Friends of Angelo” V.I.P. program at the bank, named after Angelo R. Mozilo, the chief executive of Countrywide.

Polling in Connecticut suggested that Mr. Dodd had been hurt both by his association with Countrywide and by criticism for his role in legislation that appeared to clear the way for bonuses to be paid to executives of American International Group, the insurance firm that received a government bailout.

I'm not excusing Dodd for clearing the way for AIG bonuses; it's yet another example, right up there with the money Democrats are taking from insurance companies to prevent Americans from being protected from insurance company excesses, of how money corrupts Democrats just as much as Republican. I think much of Dodd's downfall is about the Countrywide loan, though I'm not convinced that a bank program called "Friends of Angelo" is necessarily anything more than a marketing ploy by a company trying to make its CEO the public face of the company to make it look more cute and cuddly. The problem is that when you're a member of such a program, and THEN you clear the way for executives of a company that insures banks to get big fat bonuses after a bailout with taxpayer money, at BEST you're showing a tin ear to the concerns of your constituents.

But the reality of our society, and our political system is that John McCain gets to survive being one of the Keating Five and then run for president as a "great American hero", but Chris Dodd has to leave office.

The challenge right now isn't the Senate seat in Connecticut, however. It's what we do about a system in which no scandal is heinous enough to force out a Republican, and no scandal is trivial enough for a Democrat to survive. Perhaps Democrats by nature lack the finely-honed scumbag gene that allows them to justify any kind of lapse strongly and vociferously. Perhaps it's that the kind of money required in our system to run a successful campaign can only be acquired by being on the take, and that the system is rigged against Democrats being on the take BECAUSE we're supposed to care more about the have-nots or the have-lesses. But the bottom line is that Democrats have to find a way to be 100% squeaky clean and still pull in enough money to be successful, or else find the arrogance that Republicans have in weathering such storms. But if they do the latter, then what will there be about them to support?

Caturday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree DougJ over at Balloon Juice, commenting on how the Washington Villagers are once again having the vapors over someone who isn't part of their little club.

Money quote:

But what this article is really saying is that Desiree Rogers isn’t the right kind of person. That’s what Socksgate and Travelgate and all that other bullshit was about too—the Clintons weren’t the right kind of people. It’s what all the bullshit about Michelle Obama’s iPod and bare arms is about too.

I hate to go on and on about this, but it’s pretty remarkable that the media insisted the Clintons being investigated for using White House postage to send letters form from their cat and that the Obama White House be investigated because two weirdos crashed a White House party, but that the Bush White House should never be investigated for torture, politicizing the DOJ, falsifying intelligence, and (not that that I think this one is important but it is similar to the kinds of trivialities that are deemed important when they happen under Clinton or Obama) having a male prostitute show up to lob softball questions at White House briefings.

And now a random cat video that shows why cats rule the world. Now with bonus adorable puppies:

I guess this is why Mike Huckabee is leaning against running for president

Yesterday I was surprised to see that Mike Huckabee, who would appear to be the front-runner at this point for the 2012 presidential nod for those for whom Sarah Palin is just too batshit crazy, was leaning AGAINST a presidential run. At first I thought it was because it's far more fun to be a talk show host than to actually DO anything (something Mrs. Palin should consider as well). After all, no one cared during the 2008 campaign that Huckabee had pardoned a rapist after urging by lunatic wingnuts because the victim was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton, and that said rapist went on to rape and kill another woman. We already know what the right wing thinks about women and rape.

But now it turns out that the suspect in yesterday's shooting ambush of four police officers in Seattle was also pardoned by Mike Huckabee:

A man with an extensive criminal past -- whose 95-year prison sentence was commuted in Arkansas nearly a decade ago by then Gov. Mike Huckabee-- was being sought Sunday as a "person of interest" in a deadly ambush on four police officers who were gunned down inside a coffee shop.

Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told reporters that Maurice Clemmons, 37, was one of several people investigators want to talk to and that he could not be called a suspect at this point.

In a news release, the sheriff's office said Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas, including aggravated robbery and theft. Clemmons was also recently was arrested and charged in Pierce County, Washington state for third-degree assault on a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child.

According to The Seattle Times, Clemmons was released from the Peirce County Jail last week, despite facing eight felony charges. Clemmons posted $15,000 with a bail bondsman, who paid the remainder of the man's $150,000 bail.

In 1989, Clemmons, then 17, was convicted in Little Rock for aggravated robbery. He was paroled in 2000 after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted Clemmons' 95-year prison sentence. Huckabee, who was criticized during his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 for the number of clemencies and commutations he granted, cited Clemmons' age at the time of the sentence.

After his release from prison, Clemmons violated his parole and was returned to prison in July 2001. He was released March 18, 2004, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper

Republicans haven't camppaigned on "law and order" for a long time. It's hard to do that when you are the party of Jack Abramoff and trumped-up wars. But I can see where, if one is safely ensconced in wingnut talk television, that it might be preferable to having to explain to those people who in 1988 responded to the Willie Horton ads just why TWO people you released from prison went on to commit more heinous crimes.