Early morning chase starts in Des Moines, ends in Warren County
...he incident began when a Des Moines police officer stopped the Dodge Neon on Fleur Drive and asked the driver for his name and information.
When the officer went back to the squad car to verify the driver’s name, the Neon sped away. The chase began about 5:20 a.m. and continued through Des Moines.
A Dodge Neon? Next time try outrunning the cops with a lawnmower. Of course, if you read the story, the chase doesn't exactly cover the police in glory.
We have besmirched the other people of the world with our uncouth language and f-bombs instead of our awesome regular bombs!
But the Oscars, being a global affair, were telecast elsewhere in the world with Leo's words uncensored. Viewers who watched the show on Star Movies, a major channel available throughout Asia, heard the F-word loud and clear.
I look forward to Glenn Beck blaming Barack Obama and George Soros this evening.
I have to admit, though people who know me would certainly not be surprised, I know little of the world of fashion. But the cause celebre in the world of the bizarrely dressed because they are fashionable is the suspension and subsequent defamation suit brought by a design exec alleged to have gone all anti-semetic at a restaurant. Well, though it's another country, I am a law-talkin' guy and getting caught on video saying those remarks is not a very good piece of evidence if you're the plaintiff.
The UK's Sun has obtained this video, recorded at La Perle, wherein Christian Dior creative director John Galliano spews anti-Semitic remarks at a couple at the adjoining table. The moment was captured by a friend of the couple. In it, Galliano is seen slurring his words, but clearly stating: "I love Hitler" and "People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f****** gassed."
A fitting tribute to Arizona, Republicans, and, of course...
Their loathing of women, in a week that was full of it:
An Arizona state senator involved in an apparent freeway-shoulder scuffle with his girlfriend was not detained because he has immunity from arrest while the legislature is in session, police said...
Bundgaard, a Republican and the state senate's majority leader, was allowed to go -- although prosecutors will review the case and could later file charges, Thompson said. Ballard was arrested on suspcion of misdemeanor assault and taken to jail...
Bundgaard said the dispute began on the way home from a charity "Dancing with the Stars" fundraiser, after Ballard accused him of "inappropriately touching" his dance partner.
Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin—who last year proposed making rape and domestic violence "victims" into "accusers"—has introduced a 10-page bill that would criminalize miscarriages and make abortion in Georgia completely illegal. Both miscarriages and abortions would be potentially punishable by death: any "prenatal murder" in the words of the bill, including "human involvement" in a miscarriage, would be a felony and carry a penalty of life in prison or death.
It is so insanely malicious and demonstrably wrong it's almost impossible to fashion a response.
Boy that Howard Kurtz is really on top of that Roger Ailes story and the media's coverage of the Wisconsin governor being in the Koch Brothers hip pocket isn't he?
No wonder Twitter has an interesting "similar to..." recommendation.
A Georgia Republican said Friday he didn't immediately condemn a constituent who asked about assassinating President Barack Obama because he was stunned by the question and didn't want to dignify it with a response.
Uh-huh.
His office refused to say whether it had audio or video footage of the exchange.
I saw this at driftglass' place. Don't know when it originally ran, but I thought it was important.
Oh, it also seems like Howard Fineman jumped on the clue train since he went HuffPo (although I supposed it's possible that he learned all of this from Shepherd Smith).
Newt Gingrich: Obama Could Be Impeached Over Gay Marriage Reversal
...if President Obama doesn't change his mind and order his Justice Department to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, Republicans in Congress should strike back and even consider impeachment proceedings.
"I believe the House Republicans next week should pass a resolution instructing the president to enforce the law and to obey his own constitutional oath, and they should say if he fails to do so that they will zero out [defund] the office of attorney general and take other steps as necessary until the president agrees to do his job," said Gingrich. "His job is to enforce the rule of law and for us to start replacing the rule of law with the rule of Obama is a very dangerous precedent."
“At the grossest financial level, it’s just savings. You can cut the government worker, save the salary and still maintain the service, and you’re providing a skill for when [the prisoners] leave.”
Of course when "they leave", there will always be more prisoners to fill the jobs, so there's a bit of a disconnect there, but those are just minor details.
A person at a Tuesday town hall with Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., got up and asked, "Who is going to shoot President Obama?"
The exact wording of the question is not clear because, the Athens Banner-Herald reports, there was a lot of noise at the event. Perhaps more significant than the question was the response of the crowd and Broun, who is a member of the Tea Party Caucus and one of the most right-wing members of Congress.
The question prompted a "big laugh" from the crowd, in Oglethorpe County, Ga., according to the Banner-Herald. Broun, for his part, did not object to the question.
Mark Farmer of Winterville, Georgia went to the meeting on Tuesday to ask a question about Social Security reform, and said in an e-mail to TPM he was "shocked by the first question and disgusted by the audience response."
"I was gravely disappointed in the response of a U.S. Congressman who also laughed and then made no effort to correct the questioner on what constitutes proper behavior or to in any way distance himself from such hate filled language," Farmer wrote.
Within seconds, the digital vote system on the wall announced 51 ayes and 17 nays, and voting was suddenly closed. With a total of 96 members, that got to a majority for the bill but left 28 members who hadn't had a chance yet to vote.
At that point, the Democrats got up, chanting "Shame! Shame! Shame!" and similar exclamations, as the Republicans filed out of the room.
There were many Democrats I spoke to and overheard in the chamber, who said they didn't get a chance to vote, or that they were pushing the "No" button at their desks as hard as they could -- keep in mind that a majority of their 38-member caucus was recorded as casting no votes at all.
After the publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was fired by HarperCollins in 2006, she claimed that a senior executive at its parent company, News Corporation, had encouraged her to lie to federal investigators two years before.
The investigators had been vetting Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who had been nominated to become homeland security secretary and who had had an affair with Ms. Regan...
The goal ... was to keep the affair quiet and protect the then-nascent presidential aspirations of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani...
Who was this person?
Why it was none other than Roger Ailes!
What is more, the documents say that Ms. Regan taped the telephone call from Mr. Ailes in which Mr. Ailes discusses her relationship with Mr. Kerik.
It is unclear whether the existence of the tape played a role in News Corporation’s decision to move quickly to settle Ms. Regan’s lawsuit, paying her $10.75 million in a confidential settlement reached two months after she filed it in 2007.
Well time for the Howard Kurtzs of the world to quietly shuffle this story off the stage.
So paying out more than $10 million on hush money? No wonder Ailes and Bill O'Reilly get along so well.
Behind the scenes, aides say, talks have taken on an even more ominous tone. According to sources familiar with the discussions, Republican negotiators have said that the only way they could build support within their own party for reducing the size of the cuts -- even in the stopgap measure -- would be to let the government actually shut down.
Moammar Gadhafi’s regime controls $32 billion in liquid assets around the world, including hundreds of millions of dollars invested in U.S. banks, according to a confidential cable written by the U.S. ambassador to Libya last year. The leaked diplomatic message was distributed through WikiLeaks.
The same cable reported that Libya had been approached by two men accused of running huge Ponzi schemes, Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford, but had resisted offers from them to invest Libyan funds with them.
Meanwhile, in America we give the banksters billions (*shakes fist* CITIBANK!), cut taxes for them - not for you - and bust unions and our elected officials will always be willing to talk to any rich crank any time. So we're obviously awesome.
Animal Planet has greenlit a series called “Hillbilly Handfishin’,” about an Oklahoma man who teaches city dwellers the excitement catching catfish without the aid of a hook or fishing line
When are they going to start using Puppy Bowl losers for bait (what, too soon?) -- the Schnauzer loses every year, it's the Minnesota Vikings/Buffalo Bills of breeds.
Note, in classic "hillbilly" fashion, catching catfish by hand is also known as "catfisting".
Well, surely the public is sure to stay quiet while this bill, this awesome bill, passes.
A Senate proposal that has become known as the Internet "kill switch" bill was reintroduced this week, with a tweak its backers say eliminates the possibility of an Egypt-style disconnection happening in the United States...the name of the bill has been changed to include the phrase "Internet freedom."
It will surely soon turn into a lovelyEaster-basket of Freedom, or if you are otherwise inclined perhaps a Passover of Freedom would be more appropriate?
But similar in kind of the relationship between a U.S. Supreme Court justice and unreported payments by conservative money laundering think tanks.
Ciavarella, who took the stand in his own defense, acknowledged to jurors that he failed to report the payments on his tax returns and hid them from the public, but he denied any plot to take kickbacks or extort money.
The problem ;people have with Union members is that they don't have to achieve what they have on their merits and through their own hard work and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
Like me.
So, in essence, says the guy who has a job because his daddy runs the paper.
But somewhere Charles Lane is appalled at your lack of class in refusing to condemn the right of workers to collectively bargain because, after all, he's sure you'd agree with him.
The earthquake was a 6.3, but like the Haitian earthquake was very shallow magnifying its intensity at the surface. At least 65 are dead. That will undoubtedly grow, but undoubtedly and thankfully because of better construction will not reach the scale of Haiti's devastation.
Meanwhile our new Republican Congress has demonstrated its priorities. After voting to prevent funding Planned Parenthood for family planning, the same Congress moved to fund "family planning" for horses.
Good to know where the American people stand with the Republican Party...well not standing really, more prostrate actually.
Hard to believe that far more people would show up on the side that is the opposite of the one Joe the Plumber and Andrew Breitbart are on.
Plus, I do love the novelty of "Don't Tread on Me" flags being used to support government against the workin' class.
The governor made things worse for himself by going on CNN and announcing that he had received 19,000 e-mails from the “quiet majority” of Wisconsinites since he made his proposal and claimed that most of them were supportive...
...Mahlon Mitchell, the president of the Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association, which has been a high-profile participant in the demonstrations, surveyed the crowd while recounting Walker’s boast about the 19,000 e-mails.
“I think I have 19,000 people behind me,” said Mitchell.
Pointing to one edge of the massive audience arrayed before him, he said: “And 20,000 there.”
He pointed to the other edge of the crowd: “And 20,000 there.”
Finally, he pointed down State Street, the thoroughfare that stretches from the Capitol to the University of Wisconsin campus, which was packed with students who have backed the unions: “And 20,000 there.”
Congressman Jackie Speier is a goddamned hero. And she's tougher than pretty much the entire GOP House delegation. Not only for her bravery in the face of the odious misogyny but this little nugget.
Speier served as a congressional staffer for Congressman Leo Ryan. Speier was part of the November 1978 fact-finding mission to investigate allegations of human rights abuses by the Reverend Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple followers, almost all of whom were American citizens who had moved to Jonestown with Jones in 1977 and 1978. Speier was one of only two members of the mission who were concerned enough about potential violence to make out a will before traveling to Jonestown. Several Peoples Temple members ambushed the investigative team and others boarding the plane to leave Jonestown on November 18. Five people died, including Congressman Ryan. While attempting to shield herself from rifle and shotgun fire behind small airplane wheels with the other members of the team, Speier was shot five times and waited 22 hours before help arrived.
And I bet douchebags like these Republican congresspersons did nothing but talk shit about her behind her back after this speech.
Human Rights Watch yesterday reported that at least 24 demonstrators had been killed in Libya over the last two days, and some speculate that that number could be much higher. In terms of communication and the availability of reliable news, Libya closer resembles North Korea than many of its neighbors.
And all those rallies of the last few years featuring FoxNews viewers wearing teabags don't seem to carry the weight that a spontaneous demonstration of the traditional Democratic base.
Authorities say an estimated 25,000 people are protesting anti-union legislation at the Wisconsin state Capitol, and nine demonstrators have been arrested.
Republican Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan compared the protests in his state's capital to those in Egypt that led to the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Pity the poor Despots of the GOP. I guess they've re-modified the revolutionary slogan they used the last couple years already to be "I'll Tread on Thee".
It would take one hell of a morally depraved group to continue an international sporting event in the wake of a brutal dictatorial crackdown.
But we're talking Formula One hear...so I imagine they'll follow the glorious precedent of the International Olympic Committee which never found a little thing like the slaughter of large numbers of people to be all that important.
MANAMA, Bahrain — Without warning, hundreds of heavily armed riot police officers rushed into Pearl Square here early Thursday, firing shotguns, tear gas and concussion grenades at the thousands of demonstrators who were sleeping there as part of a widening protest against the nation’s absolute monarchy.
At least five people died, some of them reportedly killed in their sleep with scores of shotgun pellets to the face and chest
And furthermore, don't use Reynold's Wrap on your head!
So Glenn Beck is willing to trust the "fine folks at Goldline" but not use "the Google"?
Because "Google" is a tool of the American Government. First of all, crazy; second, what government does he want to "control" a search engine? That's not very patriotic.
Is he getting sponsored by "Bing"? Lord knows we want to be controlled by Microsoft over any government right? Fuckin' Beck, I bet he owns a goddamn ZUNE and powers his PC with Microsoft-Bob. Or maybe he's still using a Tandy?
Somebody needs to make sure his Q-rating stays high:
Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time of the Iraq invasion, has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein's bio-weapons capability.
Because the time to do that is definitely eight years later, not before you personally go out and base your case for war upon it.
"It has been known for several years that the source called Curveball was totally unreliable," he told the Guardian . "The question should be put to the CIA and the DIA as to why this wasn't known before the false information was put into the NIE sent to Congress, the president's state of the union address and my 5 February presentation to the UN."
Oh it's "delightful" how willfully naive old hands get to appear in this country for the sake of their own reputations. Somehow all the policy-makers are both blameless and guileless in manufacturing this crap at the time. And then they pretend to demand answers a generation later.
This is modern America Mr. Powell, the one you helped make. The Village never looks back on the old lies, they just move on to pushing the new ones.
It is apparently Kim Jong-Il's 69th Birthday today (fill in your own dirty damn joke!).
It should be a festive occasion, full of all manner of shades of gray. I understand everyone gets a free ration of ramen. What do you get the man that owns everything?
The fact that Laura Logan was sexually assaulted is bad enough (and the fact rapes are common across all faiths and cultures sucks obviously) but the reaction of some to it just adds to the general horror.
...the ever-heinous Debbie Schlussel was quick to jump on her regular line of racism, noting how the assault happened in a "country of savages," because that never ever happens anywhere else, and it's never committed by light-skinned people! She then twisted the knife by going after Logan herself, saying, "So sad, too bad, Lara. No one told her to go there. She knew the risks. And she should have known what Islam is all about. Now she knows... How fitting that Lara Logan was 'liberated' by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the 'liberation.'" Debbie Schlussel, what's it like to be so liberated from the burden of having either a mind or a soul?
So in summary Schlussel believes no America, nay, Christian society has ever had a rape problem.
They had been previously ignored because they had been labled as "space films" instead of 3D ones. Oddly enough one film, a musical titled So Real You Can Touch It, featured shots of sizzling Bratwurst.
Of course, like Werner Von Braun, the United States (and/or Canada) eventually took advantage of one the pioneers of this technology:
He's pretty much been known as a liar for years, but the Guardian newspaper (one of those foreign publications that practices journalism as opposed to repeating what someone tweets) landed an interview with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, aka "Curveball", the man who's lies about Saddam's WMD program the Bush Administration used to sell the war. See interview excerpts here. Meanwhile, the Washington Post's coverage of "curveball" is found in Thomas Boswell's baseball column.
It was quite the mutually beneficial and deceitful arrangement between al-Janabi his German intelligence handlers [the BND], the British and the U.S.
He portrays the BND as gullible and so eager to tease details from him that they gave him a Perry's Chemical Engineering Handbook to help communicate. He still has the book in his small, rented flat in Karlsruhe, south-west Germany.
"They were asking me about pumps for filtration, how to make detergent after the reaction," he said. "Any engineer who studied in this field can explain or answer any question they asked."
When you see the interview, you'll notice that "Curveball" has something in common with his boosters in the Bush Administration. He has few regrets, not about the lies and the needless deaths, but about the loss of some of his conveniences, like his German Government supplied cellphone.
Oh, sorry he actually lost "something" because he lied and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. That's something that hasn't happened to anyone from the Bush Administration.
Though one wonders just how apeshit right-wingers would go if this involved a "mexican" drug gang instead of some asshole right-winger:
On Monday, a jury in Tucson found former beautician Shawna Forde guilty of killing nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father Raul in a bizarre paramilitary raid on the Flores home in 2009. Forde, the leader of a group called "Minutemen American Defense," is what you might call an anti-immigration activist, if you include murdering fourth-graders under your definition of "activism"
Brisenia Flores was gunned down at point-blank range in her own home in Flores, Arizona, as her terrified mother Gina Gonzalez, who had also been hit, played dead on the floor.
She sobbed as the court was told how she had heard Brisenia's desperate pleas as her killer stood over her.
'I can hear it happening,' Mrs Flores told the court describing how her daughter said: 'Why did you shoot my dad? Why did you shoot my mum?'
'I can hear her telling him to "please don't shoot me."'
Although it would make the time hiding from depth charges more entertaining considering the cargo. Das Blow
/colombian drug lords did the sensible—and trendy—thing: they spent 4,000 million pesos (approx $2.2 million) to build their own drug-trafficktacular submersible.
I seem to recall a cheaper version of a submarine being available during my childhood...and I'm sure it was completely legit.
(first pic via REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga, second from here)
The second largest earthquake since Mount St. Helens erupted -- a magnitude 4.3 shaker -- rocked a fault line six miles north of the volcano Monday morning. People felt it as far away as Astoria, Lake Oswego, Hood River and even Bremerton, Wash., near Seattle.
Democratic protests are one thing in Egypt, but not there:
In the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, thousands of demonstrators marched to call for reforms to their hereditary monarchy and clashed with police, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets. In Yemen, a key U.S. counterterrorism ally, government supporters armed with sticks and knives attacked pro-democracy demonstrators calling for the ouster of the country's dictatorial president, in the fourth straight day of protests in that troubled Arab nation.
But these oppressive dictatorships are our "freedom friends"! Just like Egypt.
And in Bahrain the first middle eastern nation found to have oil...and the first to see it start to run out...these protests threaten something truly important. Ironic symbolism, the year's first F1 race.
Normally out in the world there are so many rocks he could potentially crawl under, but there wasn't much doubt this weekend where you could find Andrew Breitbart.
Andrew Breitbart, the owner of several conservative Web sites, was served at the [CPAC] conference on Saturday with a lawsuit filed by Shirley Sherrod, the former Agriculture Department employee who lost her job last year over a video that Mr. Brietbart posted at his site biggovernment.com.
While small violins played metaphorically...
Mr. Breitbart said in a statement that he “categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech.”
As was likely true of most things at CPAC this must be the work of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said Friday that he was willing to mobilize the state's National Guard force in order to address the potential repercussions of his stated proposal to eliminate collective bargaining rights for state employees.
Well Wisconsin, you asked for it.
Personally, as a Minnesotan, I choose to blame the Packers organization.
Mubarak is gone and though obviously all the credit should go to the brave protesters of Cairo and other Egyptian cities but compared to how John McCain any other Republican or even Hillary Clinton would have handled the matter are President, I'm glad it was Obama over them.
Last Saturday afternoon, President Obama got a jarring update from his national security team: With restive crowds of young Egyptians demanding President Hosni Mubarak’s immediate resignation, Frank G. Wisner, Mr. Obama’s envoy to Cairo, had just told a Munich conference that Mr. Mubarak was indispensable to Egypt’s democratic transition.
Mr. Obama was furious, and it did not help that his secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Wisner’s key backer, was publicly warning that any credible transition would take time — even as Mr. Obama was demanding that change in Egypt begin right away.
Seething about coverage that made it look as if the administration were protecting a dictator and ignoring the pleas of the youths of Cairo, the president “made it clear that this was not the message we should be delivering,” said one official who was present. He told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to take a hard line with his Egyptian counterpart, and he pushed Senator John Kerry to counter the message from Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Wisner when he appeared on a Sunday talk show the next day.
"I refer, of course, to the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of indulgence," he added. "It is the new Red Menace, this time consisting of ink."
Daniels previous job was as George Bush's budget director, where a huge surplus was turned into a gigantic deficit.
Not that it's anyone's fault but the Democrats, of course.
I imagine Broder got what passes as a chubby for him over this.
A producer of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" reality series is listed in an application seeking film production tax credits from the state.
The heavily redacted 2010 document names Maria Baltazzi as executive producer of the unidentified production.
The Alaska Film Office does not disclose specifics about productions seeking tax credits until final approval. The Palin show, which debuted in November, is not among those listed as approved by the office.
If the Palin series tapped into the tax credit program, it would mean the show would retroactively be subsidized by the state.
...underhanded and surreptitious campaign waged by a lobbying firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a right-wing association representing big business. The report detailed how Hunton & Williams, a lobbying firm hired by the Chamber, solicited “private security” companies to investigate the Chamber’s political opponents, including ThinkProgress, the labor coalition Change to Win, SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com. Their tactics included planting false documents, creating fake personas, and targeting opponents’ families and children.
It would be wrong to speculate one of our frequent trolls is on the payroll, it would be wrong not to. You'd just think they'd take more pride in their work.
To Driftglass and Blue Gal two lefty bloggers brought together by their mutual love of linking (which sounds kind of dirty).
May they be happy...and if they so choose, have future obsessive compulsive tweeters together...or not, I'm not here to judge, direct or watch (I'm not a Republican Congressman).
I, of course, maintain my determination to court ladies only through chain letters. But I'm old-fashioned in that way.
CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf told the House Budget Committee on Thursday that the health care law will reduce employment by 0.5 percent by 2021 because some people will no longer have to work just to afford health insurance.
This is held out by the GOP as "job killing" naturally.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A thunderous gas explosion devastated a rowhouse neighborhood, killing five people, and suspicion fell on an 83-year-old cast-iron gas main. The fiery blast was latest natural-gas disaster to raise questions about the safety of the nation's aging, 2.5-million-mile network of gas and liquid pipelines.
I bet he then left to speak to a convention of bankers about how awesome it is to blackmail your way into being bailed out of pending bankruptcy, repeatedly. They learned it all from him.
Knowing Glenn, I bet what angers him the most is the quality of his enemies. Really? The road to riches is advocating for someone the majority of the country thinks is a traitor? How stupid do you have to be to believe this shit? That has to be a let-down to know that you are up against a clown car full of wingnut internet sleuths who can’t even figure out the basics about you. It’s like learning that you thought your arch-rival was Ernst Blofeld but is actually Andy Dick.
Oh, and Bank of America's crusade against criticism gets even more melodramatically and malevolently funnier (via a h/t from Jane Hamsher):
"Bank of America has snapped up hundreds of abusive domain names for its senior executives and board members in what is being perceived as a defensive strategy against the future publication of damaging insider info from whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. According to Domain Name Wire, the US bank has been aggressively registering domain names including its board of directors' and senior executives' names followed by 'sucks' and 'blows.'"
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah told U.S. President Barack Obama that his country would prop up Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak if the United States withdrew its aid programme, The Times said on Thursday.
America’s closest ally in the Gulf made clear that the Egyptian President must be allowed to stay on to oversee the transition towards peaceful democracy and then leave with dignity.
Because who knows more about how to properly foster "democracy" and "dignity" than the House of Saud? A family that named a country after themselves and treats democracy like it treats pornography.
Not just for Steve King, but for the entire state of Iowa.
And these are the people that somehow will manage to remember to breathe for the next year until they convene in Caucus to select their exemplar of stupid as their Presidential candidate.
Now you know why, as an Iowan, I'm counting on you New Hampshire.
Oh BP was there no bit of moral turpitude beyond your grasp last year? Guy in jail for killing 270 people by bombing a jet over Lockerbie, Scotland pales in comparison to an oil drilling deal:
BP, Europe’s second-largest oil company, successfully lobbied the government to get Al-Megrahi included in a prisoner transfer agreement after the Libyans warned they would pull out of deals if he were left out.
British government ministers secretly advised Libya on how to get convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi released from a life sentence in a Scottish prison, American documents published by WikiLeaks allege.
We cannot let the little matter of international terrorism and mass murder get in the way of our precious corporate profits -- that's what limiting peoples' civil liberties are for.
Good thing the American government doesn't do stuff like this (casual whistling ensues). And that last statement is true because being an American, history usually matters only when it can be used on various sports teams' message boards, or worshiping a version of the "founders" they'd laugh at three-fifths of the time. Besides, we'll never get to see those Cheney Energy Task Force notes anyway.
Re-writing history and cults simultaneously Republicans fantasize about Reagan on Mount Rushmore:
"Is he of that stature? The answer is yes," said Grover Norquist, chairman of the Reagan Legacy Project. "Reagan was the most successful president of the twentieth century. He took a country that was in economic collapse and militarily in retreat around the globe and turned it completely around."
Yeah, he was so much more successful than that complete failure Franklin Roosevelt. All that SOB FDR did is prevent a revolution, restore the economy, create social security, the minimum wage, and help win the greatest military conflict in world history from his wheelchair. What a douche!
Tell you what Grover, let's compromise, there's a mountain carving in the Philippines that would do the trick, it just needs to be touched up a tad* and it will look just like your guy. Peggy Noonan can go there an rub herself raw below it.
The latest "Mrs. Gingrich" has the far-away look of a long-time hostage...but then again peroxide poisoning will do that to a person as it soaks through the roots.
Over at FoxNews. Man, I'm going to miss the Guggenheim and the slightly less interesting half of Niagara Falls.
Meanwhile, some folks are going to be thrown overboard in an attempt to right the sinking ship:
Egypt's Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud issued a travel ban for a handful of former ministers as well as a prominent member of the ruling National Democratic Party.
The bank accounts and assets of those barred from leaving the country have also been frozen, according to reports.
Ex-interior minister Habib El-Adly, former housing minister Ahmed El-Maghrabi and former tourism minister Zoheir Garannah are among those banned from travel.
And if this is accurate, no amount of bailing will ever save the regime.
Oh, if only they had been grapes. That's how you maintain those body issues ladies.
Oh, and feel free to boo how "W" continues to be the world's free-loader. No wonder Madden is exchanging junk pictures with Brett Favre and keeping his distance from Condi.
Meanwhile, no one at EBay has met my reserve price of a buck-fifty
And to think not even the Koch Brothers are willing to underwrite K-Lo's virginity blog.
The Huffington Post, which began in 2005 with a meager $1 million investment and has grown into one of the most heavily visited news Web sites in the country, is being acquired by AOL in a deal that creates an unlikely pairing of two online media giants.
The two companies completed the sale Sunday evening and announced the deal just after midnight on Monday. AOL will pay $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock.
In a bit of cloying irritation Fox and the NFL managed to salute the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan yesterday during the pre-game festivities to the Super Bowl.
And why not, after all who better to salute the Gipper than another group of billionaires who are going to lock-out their workers and get people to call it a strike?
As Charles Pierce noted, the Super Bowl occurred just prior to January 30th, 1982 the Centennial of Franklin Roosevelt's birth, and that was met with crickets. But then all he did is guide the nation through a Depression and the Second World War.
But he never made a movie with a Chimp so I guess he'll just have to settle for being a far greater President than Reagan.
He's managed to take those military contracts we've paid him over the years and turn those kickbacks into tens of billions while his people are dirt poor.
Oh, and he and his family own a lot of Chili's Restaurants (I bet Karzai has his in Applebees).
Apparently as part of the Super Bowl pregame festivities (between new super expensive male enhancement ads) the NFL and Fox (naturally) are going to note it is nearly Reagan's 100th Birthday.
As Charles Pierce noted you may have missed the 100th Anniversary noting of the far greater President's, FDR, 100th birthday by the NFL in 1982 because it didn't happen.
The Catholic Cardinal in Egypt was witnessed hand in hand with a Muslim cleric, both in their religious dress with the pro-democracy demonstrators. He was speaking about national unity, stating that the myth of sectarian strife is only made by the failing government security apparatus and urge people to unite as Egyptians. The Muslim cleric also stated the same.
The Obama administration is discussing with Egyptian officials a proposal for President Hosni Mubarak to resign immediately and turn over power to a transitional government headed by Vice President Omar Suleiman with the support of the Egyptian military, administration officials and Arab diplomats said Thursday.
Suleiman, as you might expect, is a real prince. It may, however, be a "relatively" fairly broad coalition so the Right in this country can still go remain insane.
But it's not like Mubarak will not be leaving without the traditional parting gifts of a long-time tyrant who has benefited in part from the West's largess:
Egypt’s embattled President Hosni Mubarak’s and his family’s net worth is estimated to be between U.S. dollars 40 and 70 billion, a media report said. The wealth of the Egypt’s first family was built largely from military contracts during his days as an air force officer...
For some reason this argument is more compelling than Leviticus
Which I often say over a nice dinner of crabcakes.
In Iowa, the GOP is slobbering to try to outlaw same-sex marriage -- rather than y'know helping the economy and shit like that. Well, here's a 19-year who pretty much has come to dominate the debate.
I know that many will still hold out Neville Chamberlain as an example, but surely Tony Blair's statements yesterday before Mubarak's thugs took to the streets will merit some eternal mark in the Hall of Shame and Ignorance:
Tony Blair has described Hosni Mubarak, the beleaguered Egyptian leader, as "immensely courageous and a force for good" and warned against a rush to elections that could bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power.
Say what you will about the Obama Administration's customary fecklessness, it beats a pair of false claims straight out of a Glenn Beck rant. Or maybe just John McCain's playbook.
Meanwhile, somewhere the Ghost of Hannah Arendt surely noticed this happening seemingly right after Blair's statements about this "immensely courageous" "force for good":
In one almost medieval scene, a small contingent of pro-Mubarak forces on horseback and camels rushed into the anti-government crowds, trampling several people and swinging whips and sticks. Protesters dragged some riders from their mounts, throwing them to the ground and beating their faces. The horses and camels appeared to be ones used to give tourists rides around Cairo.
"We didn't even do that. He was too busy watching Fox News, he didn't want to cuddle."
"Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Camille Grammer telling Joy Behar on Monday what went wrong in her marriage to her estranged husband Kelsey Grammer
I guess it's better than what usually happens when Kelsey Grammar rams things, exchanging insurance information.
"I believe that I can make a case in the end that there are three powers that you will see really emerge. One, a Muslim caliphate that controls the Mideast and parts of Europe. Two, China, that will control Asia, the southern half of Africa, part of the Middle East, Australia, maybe New Zealand, and God only knows what else. And Russia, which will control all of the old former Soviet Union bloc, plus maybe the Netherlands. I'm not really sure. But their strong arm is coming. That leaves us and South America. What happens to us?"
