Awesome

So this becomes an excuse to stay and have it happen some more, right?

Five American troops were killed Monday in central Iraq, U.S. officials said — the single largest loss of life for the American military in Iraq in the past two years.

The military said in a brief statement that the five were killed Monday, giving no additional details about where the incident occurred or how they died.

Good news everyone

Tasers are totally safe...

"There is no conclusive medical evidence in the current body of research literature that indicates a high risk of serious injury or death to humans from the direct or indirect cardiovascular or metabolic effects of short-term CED exposure in healthy, normal, nonstressed, nonintoxicated persons."

...except if you're the kind of person who normally ends up getting tasered.

"You people have to understand, we're the United States of America"

"And you're not"

The Wall Street Journal reports that this "coup for the U.S." could also help backers of drone strikes in the U.S. government "push back against calls from some Obama administration officials to scale back the attacks," because they are widely hated by Pakistanis, who see them as a violation of sovereignty...

...People in Pakistan continue to be "angry" about the unpopular attacks.

Hard to believe, another country firing missiles that not only kill bad people, but also innocent people would be unpopular.

I'm pretty sure if another country country launched missiles into the United States that took out Charles Manson at the expense of killing a couple dozen innocent Americans we'd be cool with it, no?

The not-so-great Crusade

One thing you have to hand it to the far right about, there's really no topic too trivial to get worked up into a nice Santorum lather about. Take the quickly becoming middle-aged virgin Ben Shapiro. He's totally "FoxNews style" outraged about the liberal, homosexual leanings, of Big Bird on Castro District Sesame Street. Clearly the only way to deal with this dangerous agenda are tax cuts, medicare cuts [and apparently "Supercuts"] with a dash of poisoned suet.

This is especially true, and follows just as logically, because as Sarah Palin will modestly tell you, it is somewhere between the one-hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. Tens of thousands of Americans along with a couple Brits and maybe one Canadian (Gordie Howe?) landed in France to liberate Europe from Hitler's anti-Second Amendment agenda. Thousands died that day in bloody fighting (or as the Russians called it just another "Tuesday"). All this occurred, of course, against the wishes of the "Democrat Party" head, that guy on the dime.



Look it up, it's all on Wikipedia people...or soon will be.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Assidental Tourist

I understand that Sarah Palin spent a half-hour in Gettysburg the other day, which which is two score and 17 minutes less than symbolically necessary.

I understand she summed it up this way:

"Well you know, the two sides were up here telling each other that they were being warned about, y'know guns and they weren't going to allow the British to come in here and take their guns away. And then Pickett put it on his credit card by charging it and runnin' up that there deficit and yellin' rebels at each other about not wanting death panels so they fired at each other and died to protect us against socialism."

They won't stop

Until it is illegal to have sex, period.

A fringe anti-abortion group, Personhood USA, has been startlingly successful at pushing forward legislation across the country that would redefine life as beginning at the moment of fertilization, effectively outlawing contraceptives like birth control pills.

...and I'm sure they are great advocates of privacy rights too.

In other things we don't hear much about any more...

Not looking good in Japan:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday it has detected radiation of up to 4,000 millisieverts per hour in the building housing the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant...

The radiation is so high now that any worker exposed to it would absorb the maximum permissible dose of 250 millisieverts in only about four minutes. Tepco said there is no plan to place workers in that area of the plant and said it will carefully monitor any developments.

Drone

Who knows who else got taken out...and how innocent they may be...but apparently a drone strike took down a prominent Al Qaeda leader and bin Laden replacement -- and ending, if nothing else, a promising career as a Zach Galifianakis impersonator.

What puts the "ape" in ape-ricot?

Apparently Rick Santorum is not going to go with "Google Me" or "I keep a fetus in a Jar!!!" as a campaign slogan?

No, he's going with "Courage".

To be later replaced by "So, you Googled me?"

Dear Florida,

How has electing a comic-book villain Governor worked out for you so far?

Gov. Rick Scott May Personally Benefit From New Law That Hands Medicaid Program Over To Private Companies

How Did Attaturk Miss This?

What the hell is Richard Cohen talking about?

Apparently, not even he knows.

Timothy Egan

I always enjoy his "Opinionator" posts. Check them out, especially today's Fall of the Wild.

I shudder before the sheer genius

Listen my children and you shall hear, of the reinvented ride of Paul Revere:

PALIN: He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed.

I believe that somehow she thinks Revere was the lead character in Red Dawn.

(pic from here)

Tender and caring

What the "luminaries" of the far right believe (I can't say "think" considering the source) via Iowa's shame Steve King:

Labor is a commodity just like corn or beans or oil or gold

Although I don't foresee Glenn Beck hawking things for Labor-Line.

HACK

Perhaps in all forms of the word.





Please click to embiggen.

The Hacker

While Rupert poo-poos events in this country, FoxNews continues to not report just how much hot water he is in in England.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Ali Dizaei, the controversial former senior Scotland Yard officer whose conviction for corruption was quashed earlier this month, has been told by Metropolitan police detectives that he could have been a victim of phone hacking by the News of the World.

Rupert's newspaper was spying on Scotland Yard.

Dear Chris Christie

Snooki and your waste of taxpayer resources aren't the only things giving New Jersey a bad name.

Woman is injured in Hamilton graveyard by falling tombstone during 'extracurricular activities'.

Um, respect for the dead?

xxx....res

P.S. You took a car 100 YARDS from that helicopter to the ballfield?

Ever Been to Grand Junction, Colorado?

Where should The GC and I eat?

Double Game

I know, I know, I keep telling you about Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower. So read it already, and I'll shut up. But I was catching up on New Yorkers and now you have more Wright to read. This time it's his article about Pakistan, The Double Game. Read it and then tell me ...

What is/are the failure(s) here?

(a) Faulty assumptions?

(b) Failure to think one, two, ten or one hundred steps ahead?

(c) Doing anything to begin with?

(d) Inability/Refusal to understand other cultures?

(e) Arrogance?

(f) All of the above?

(g) Some of the above?

(h) None of the above?

Their tender feelings

Not bad...please show backbone:

Rep. Paul D. Ryan, architect of a Medicare overhaul aimed at slashing the cost of the popular entitlement program by reducing the government's open-ended commitment to seniors, accused Obama of "mis-describing" his plan and implored the president to ease up on the "demagoguery."

In reply, Obama said he was no stranger to cartoonish depictions, reeling off a list of conservatives' favorite attack points: "I'm the death-panel-supporting, socialist, may-not-have-been-born-here president," Obama said, according to people familiar with his remarks.