The original Dick

I really do think the GOP should reconsider its "Dick" policy (but what other platforms do they have?)

While previous recordings have detailed Nixon’s animosity toward Jews, including those who served in his administration like Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser, these tapes suggest an added layer of complexity to Nixon’s feeling. He and his aides seem to make a distinction between Israeli Jews, whom Nixon admired, and American Jews.

Oh...wait...a minute. That's pretty much American Foreign Policy, especially but hardly universally the GOP, in a nutshell.

Oh here's the kind of headline that will rally the base

Just the sort of political operator that makes you wish for Bob Shrum to come back:

Meanwhile, in celebrity news

Well, the man is a prominent Republican, so naturally Kelsey Grammer has a sex tape. Although if you want to see that guy fucking people, watch him drive a car.

And, oh Adult Film Industry, your complete lack of creativity is inspiring, I bet Stedman is buying this on Blu-Ray.

And this corruption goes little mentioned by the media

Oh, if only they could allege this is a nefarious Kenyan plot by the "usurper":

Halliburton May Pay $500 Million To Nigerian Government To Settle Case And Keep Cheney Out Of Jail

The Awards of being an asshole

Via Digby:

As Don Blankenship prepares to give up control of Massey Energy after the nation's worst mining disaster in four decades, angry shareholders who have been agitating for the coal executive's ouster aren't sure whether to celebrate or lament.

That's because corporate filings are revealing the staggering cost of his departure -- a golden parachute that will provide Blankenship with $2.7 million upon retirement, a free house for life, millions more in deferred compensation, and a "salary continuation retirement benefit" of $18,241-a-month that will continue for 10 years after his departure at the end of the year.

Digby mentions that this is the "invisible hand" at work, but that hand always seems to contain an upraised middle finger.

I'm getting worried

That the Obama Administration is planning to make a trade with the Tennessee Titans for Randy Moss.

The tell that it was doomed

Is when Lieberman said he had 60 votes.

Top Ten Reasons Leno is an unlisted agent of Al Qaeda

There is evidence.

Broadcast uncensored and with Arabic subtitles alongside sitcoms such as Friends on Saudi Arabia's MBC 4 channel, the shows are being allowed as part of the kingdom's "war of ideas" against extremist elements. According to a secret cable titled "David Letterman: Agent of Influence", they have been proving more effective than Washington's main propaganda tool, the US-funded al-Hurra TV news channel.

Here's the unvarnished truth about most aspiring terrorists

They're almost always pretty damned stupid.

Of course, most of the population is happy to consider them a more brilliant and less brash form of Bond Villain as perpetually pushed by our media overlords.

So who is really the bigger idiot?

But, of course

Golly, the man who wants a non-American arrested for treason like Joe Lieberman, seemed to have no problem with some Americans arguably doing the same damn thing, or worse starting phony wars.

What do Scooter Libby and Joe Lieberman have in common? A lot of rich friends, apparently.

Following closely on the news that Joe Lieberman's biggest public apologist, Marty Peretz, had joined Libby's Defense Fund, we learn that the Chair of Libby's Defense Fund, Mel Sembler, is hosting a pricey fundraiser for Holy Joe. Sembler, you'll remember, also happens to have been the Ambassador to Italy when SISMI started sending bogus Niger claims to the CIA.

It cannot be a good sign

When both you and your dog are having the same digestive issues.

That's it, I'm NEVER eating Science Diet again!

I'm a bit worried as I haven't had either a rabies or distemper shot.

The Dumb also rises

Completely qualified to speak on scientific matters like say, evolutionary theory, as the woman clearly knows basic science.

On leaving her hunting camp one morning, Ms Palin pointed to the horizon and declared "Let's go west." There followed an awkward pause. "That's east," noted her father.

Priceless

Apparently Wikileaks can have its credit card payments ended by Visa or Mastercard.

But the Ku Klux Klan?

No problem.

"It had a better editor, man"

The powers of the Google have failed me as I have been unable to find what a younger Joe Lieberman, not yet fully-flowered into his present decrepitude, had to say about the Pentagon Papers at the time. But I'm pretty sure that now, he'll happily initiate the vibrating of his jowls to this line from Todd Gitlin of the New Republic (where else really?):

When Ellsberg published—made public—the Pentagon Papers nearly 40 years ago, he released a historical book—a more or less coherent, linear, systematic study of decision-making during the Vietnam war, commissioned by Robert S. McNamara when he was secretary of defense, and a systematic revelation of a pattern of government lies and distortions repeatedly issued to the American people.

I'm trying to decipher what the hell that means other than the Pentagon Papers had a more compact narrative, and more importantly, that it happened 40 years ago?

There's one guy who doesn't see a hell of a lot of difference and I think he'd be in a position to know:



[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Banned Words of 2011™: Countdown to the Final 10

Updated below!

It's time to submit final entries, debate the existing entries, and to cull the 2011 list. New items in bold. Please add your suggestions in comments.

Because it's never too early to put the world on notice...

1. Frenemies
2. Social Media
3. Sexting
4. Obamabot
5. How's that workin' out for ya?
6. Establishment
7. Mainstream
8. Lamestream
9. Emboldened
10. Litmus Test
11. Blowout preventer
12. Top Kill
13. Real Housewives of ___________
14. Gaga
15. Junk Shot
16. Enthusiasm Gap
17. Mixologist/Mixology
18. Folks (when uttered by any politician)
19. Elites
20. Hysterical
21. Breathless
22. Fee Fees
23. Structural Unemployment
24. Epistemic Closure
25. Hippie Punching
26. Bipartisan (itchy brother, from comments) "Bipartisan" made the 2009 List, but clearly, the banning did not take; so it needs to be banned again.
27. The American People (when uttered by any politician) (Jill from comments) (Remember Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel lecture: "Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable.")
28. Homeland (Major Woody from comments)
    

Here are your 2010 and 2008 lists.

Where Were You?

...when you heard that John Lennon had been murdered?

Tell me in comments.

I didn't know until the next morning. I was getting ready for school and when I turned on WNEW, Beatles songs were playing without commercial interruption. I knew something was up, but I didn't know what it was. Finally, Scott Muni spoke and delivered the sad news. One of my high school teachers (a man who was just the right age for Lennon to have been his hero) was overcome and we spent class discussing music instead of world religions.

I Make Phone Calls

Okay, I just called my House representative and Senators and suggested that as part of the tax package, they insert legislation designed to close the IRS loophole that allows managers of investment partnerships (including hedge funds, private equity firms, and others) to pay capital gains (as opposed to ordinary) tax rates on income from their activities.

I'll probably follow up (like tomorrow) with letters to this effect, too.

You could contact your House representative and/or Senators, too.

You stay classy

Elizabeth Edwards death was, of course, sad. She'd endured one hell of a lot in the last few years, from losing a teen-aged son, to fighting cancer to a draw, to her husband's very public infidelity, to the renewed battle against the Big C that took her life before she reached much over 60.

In regard to her son's death more than a decade ago she had made peace with her faith:

You've kept God out of the public discussion of your situation. Why?

I had to think about a God who would not save my son. Wade was—and I have lots of evidence; it's not just his mother saying it—a gentle and good boy. He reached out to people who were misfits and outcasts all the time. He could not stand for people to say nasty things about other people; he just didn't want it. For a 16-year-old boy, he was really extraordinary in this regard. I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't. You'd think that if God was going to protect somebody, he'd protect that boy. But not only did he not protect him, the wind blew him from the road. The hand of God blew him from the road. So I had to think, "What kind of God do I have that doesn't intervene—in fact, may even participate—in the death of this good boy?" I talk about it in the book, that I had to accept that my God was a God who promised enlightenment and salvation. And that's all. Didn't promise us protection. I've had to come to grips with a God that fits my own experience, which is, my God could not be offering protection and not have protected my boy.

It's easy for people like me who are not religious when terrible shit happens, in that I don't have to try to apologize for some sky-Jesus and rationalize it.

But such mature rationalizations of faith as made by Mrs. Edwards are just not good enough for a right-wing idiots. Who think by not mentioning the Almighty specifically and thanking him for the Cancer that Elizabeth Edwards is the Stevie Johnson of now deceased people.

Real Classy fella.

My God

The HORROR, the HORROR!

This is really happening:

...a gentleman named Rupert Munch Jr. is making a sequel to Manos: The Hands of Fate, made infamous as one of the worst movies ever made by its inclusion on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

There's a poster and everything...



2013? I'm kind of hoping the Mayans are right.

And now I shall yell at clouds

In the past two days I've seen two product placement ads within already existing insurance company ads.

I know this has been going on with fast-food restaurants for years...as a way to have children browbeat their parents into some cheap-ass Star Wars or Shrek toy, but this is going too far.