Well, that will teach it

Sun snuffs out comet...better it hit there than here, obviously.

In other tales of courage

Paul Ryan's new plan for getting rid of medicare is to whine that Democrats have pointed out he wants to get rid of Medicare.

How dare they.

Courageous. Almost as courageous as looking like a contestant at Ronald Reagan Night down at the drag bar.

What passes for Courage?

On the one hand, if it involves killing somebody:

President Barack Obama made a “very gutsy call” to send Navy SEALs into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden, outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

"I worked for a lot of these guys. And this is one of the most courageous calls – decisions — that I think I’ve ever seen a president make,” Gates told CBS in a wide-ranging interview aired on “60 Minutes.”

On the other hand, if it involves something "boring" like fiscal sanity and government working and taking care of things like, oh, Americans -- courage is in short supply:

The advisers are deeply concerned about winning back political independents, who supported Obama two years ago by an eight-point margin but backed Republicans for the House this year by 19 points. To do so, they think he must forge partnerships with Republicans on key issues and make noticeable progress on his oft-repeated campaign pledge to change the ways of Washington.

Anybody think the GOP is getting less crazy, smarter, or easier to deal with through this "political" negotiating strategy?

It turns out the six-month spending bill Congress passed in April increased discretionary outlays through the remainder of the fiscal year by a bit over $3 billion.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

"The underlying thematics are beginning to be universalizable in a way that has taken years of work."

Is that English?

What does it mean?

Need it in context? The rest is here.

This should be fun to watch

Please enjoy his fellow asylum residents running for President try to dodge this question as Teabaggers start to almost become self-aware:

Ron Paul Calls Social Security and Medicare Unconstitutional, Compares Them to ‘Slavery’

The lamest story ever blogged

If nothing else, you do have to admire John Engign's chutzpah...his really really stupid, hypocritical chutzpah.

On Christmas Eve, they met in Ensign's home office where the senator cried and both he and Cynthia said the affair would stop. Both couples told their children, and the next day, the families celebrated Christmas together.

But Ensign began texting Hampton again the next month, and the affair picked up. The senator gave her $3,000 in cash for hotel rooms and items for herself, and told her more than once that he wanted to marry her -- once at the National Prayer Breakfast.

When he traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan with Doug Hampton on a congressional delegation trip in February 2008, Ensign called Cynthia several times, running her phone bill up to nearly $1,000. Aware of the contact between Ensign and his wife, Hampton asked to borrow the senator's phone to call Cynthia and watched him scroll down to "Aunt Judy" instead of her real name.

Aunt Judy?

Kinky...offputting...but kinky.

The man is correct

Atrios blogged yesterday if the Japanese will be like Americans and throw out the old "Noboby could have predicted" line. Because we all know in the place historically most famous for epoch tsunamis the best place to build a nuclear power plant is on the shore.

Residents leave 2 more Fukushima towns

These two towns are 30 km away from Fukushima.

Meanwhile,

A worker at Japan's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant died on Saturday, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said, bringing the death toll at the complex to three since a massive earthquake and tsunami in March.

Maybe something else was involved as the worker was in his 60s...he started on Friday and was within an hour.

He's not worth the Salt of His Tears

In the words of Admiral Akbar, it's a trap:

"Rather than thinking of this as a crisis, I think of this as an opportunity to come together," [John Boehner] said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that he would not support tax increases as part of the deal...

Aw, he wants to deal...right, the Republicans are always willing to deal...

On “Face the Nation,” Boehner invited President Barack Obama to join him in tackling entitlement spending, alluding to the House GOP budget that made major cuts to Medicare.

But, of course, as long as the poor and needy get screwed, it's all good...stepping on the "little people" makes sense to Republicans because they leave less of a stain on the carpet.

And what can the President expect in return?

Boehner has also ruled out tax increases as part of a deal for grappling with the long-term deficit

Ah, nothing.

This does seem right up Obama's alley though, I'm just surprised Boehner didn't wait for Obama to come up with it without asking.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Sports

I know little-to-nothing about any of them, but this seems like a really big deal.

Good for him -- and good for sports.

(Just as an aside, Welts is fifty-eight? Wow. He looks good.)

One of Those Things

So I'm sitting here, slack-jawed, reading a news accounts of the IMF managing director who has been accused of sexual assault and I click over to his Wikipedia page and see that the popular press (in France, I guess) refers to him as DSK, which reminds me of BHL, which in turns reminds me of this pointless NYT article about Tina Brown (who thinks that Bret Easton Ellis qualifies as a "new writer"), which includes this passage:

As her guests said goodbye, Brown and Evans looked eager to get their furniture back. Suddenly the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy wafted in, dressed in black and trailing a cloud of cologne and his mistress, Daphne Guinness, who was wearing a revealing black cat suit and heelless Alexander McQueen platform shoes. Lévy was fresh from Paris, where, he proceeded to tell Brown and a few stragglers, he had just single-handedly persuaded his old friend President Nicolas Sarkozy to go to war against Col. Muammar el Qaddafi of Libya. (A few days later, Steven Erlanger of The New York Times reported that this had, improbably enough, been the case.)

And I wonder two things:

First, why the hell are the women with whom people like BHL step out on their wives invariably heiresses, and, second, when are all these damn people going to be loaded onto tumbrels and marched to the scaffolds?

Sheesh.

Well, I guess Jesus said "Meh"

Mike Huckabee out of the GOP nomination.

Leaving the GOP with a mixed cast of loud and crazy people, and boring people that will play along.

Once again, the Republicans are the best friends Obama 2012 has.

There are no Democrats available

They must be in Church or something...yet there's always a fundy proclaiming Republican available. It's almost as if major television news organizations are run by Republicans...hmmmm

ABC’s This Week: Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC). Roundtable: George Will, Cokie Roberts, Amy Walter. Economic Roundtable: Paul Krugman, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, Former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman, Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Then, Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations, Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution and Anthony Shadid of The New York Times on the Arab spring.

CBS’ Face The Nation: House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

CNN State of the Union: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan. Then, Joe Lockhart and Michael Gerson. Plus, Adm. Dennis Blair (Ret.) and John Negroponte.

Fox News Sunday: Fmr. Gov. Mike Huckabee. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). Then, Senate whips Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). Roundtable: Brit Hume, Nina Easton, Kim Strassel, Mort Zuckerman.

NBC’s Meet The Press: Newt Gingrich. Roundtable: EJ Dionne, Mark Halperin, Peggy Noonan, Helene Cooper.

I wonder if Dancin' Dave will ask Gingrich how he keeps the magic alive in a marriage?

For those who haven't seen it yet

SNL had a funny skit again, bring back an old favorite with celebrity appearances...naturally Robert Smigel was behind it.



It did lack subtlety.

ARUGULA!!!

Remember that elitist Obama liking a salad that wasn't just an iceberg wedge and ranch dressing.

Well, Ol' Freedom Fries had an interesting experience while his successor was killing Osama.

"I was eating souffle at Rise Restaurant with Laura and two buddies,"

Yes, and in the role of Stephen A. Douglas...

What a flatulent clown.

Republican Newt Gingrich told a Georgia audience on Friday evening that the 2012 presidential election is the most consequential since the 1860 race that elected Abraham Lincoln to the White House

Golly, amongst conservatives in GEORGIA I wonder how that is taken?

Bigger Meltdown

Fukushima or Trump?

(Although maybe we shouldn't be making Fukushima jokes)

Least shocking headline of all time

And not just because I predicted it.

As a data storage amount becomes larger the odds of porn being present approach 100 percent, no matter how big the repressive hypocrite [let's call it ATTATURK'S LAW (I'm calling it)]...and really, hypocrites don't come any bigger than bin Laden.

A stash of pornography was found in the hideout of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. commandos who killed him, current and former U.S. officials said on Friday.

Besides, who is better at discovering a porn stash than an American soldier?

This just in....

ALL MY GOOD IDEAS, HELL ALL MY IDEAS, COME BEFORE 8 A.M.!!!

THANKS BLOGGER!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

It was disgusting when it happened after Mission Accomplished, it's disgusting now -- although at least so far I don't see the DNC pushing it at the 2012 convention like the GOP did Bush in 2004.

And so the run of horrible Osama bin Laden commemorative death merchandise begins in earnest, with this ridiculous doll depicting President Obama as a Navy SEAL. And from the grotesque grin to the massive assault rifle to the very idea of the doll itself, there’s something here to anger just about everyone. Except your seven-year-old. He’ll love it.

Well, that's just awesome

Surely no reason to doubt a serious person's noble intentions here:

Meredith Attwell Baker, one of two Republican FCC commissioners, voted in late January to approve the merger of Comcast and NBC. Less than four months later, she announced that she is leaving the FCC to become a lobbyist for the merged company.