On Tuesday, Cheney, serving in his role as president of the Senate, appeared in the chamber for a photo session. A chance meeting with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, became an argument about Cheney's ties to Halliburton Co., an international energy services corporation, and President Bush's judicial nominees. The exchange ended when Cheney offered some crass advice.
"Fuck yourself," said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.
Not sure, in classic debating guidelines, that is acceptable, however, for Darth Vader, it is his proudest moment;
On Dennis Miller’s radio show today, Cheney suggested that his Leahy f-bomb was “the best thing” he had ever done:
MILLER: By the way, my, I also want to thank you, on the list of things I feel I should thank you for, almost kicking Patrick Leahy’s ass. Thank you very much.
CHENEY: Hehehehe.
MILLER: I love that move. One of my favorite stories. Muttering that.
CHENEY: You’d be surprised how many people liked that. That’s sort of the best thing I ever did.
Exposing a covert CIA agent, for the purpose of getting back at her husband, for his exposing of your lies, would have grabbed the top spot ...
Your lackey, Little Scooter, almost went to jail for that one ...
The fact that you said this, with Dennis Miller, perhaps, and we'll have to check into it, the Has-Been Miller was simply auditioning new chimps to be his sidekick.
Compared to the long list of heinous acts he perpetrated against this country, he's right. Being a total ass is the best thing he's ever done.
While Cheney can pat himself on the back, that using an invective was his greatest accomplishment, we, as a country, will have to wait a bit longer for ours.
The Air Force launched a secretive space plane into orbit last night from Cape Canaveral, Florida. And they’re not sure when it’s returning to Earth
[snip]
The Air Force has fended off statements calling the X-37B a space weapon, or a space-based drone to be used for spying or delivering weapons from orbit. In a conference call with reporters, deputy undersecretary for the Air Force for space programs Gary Payton, space programs did acknowledge much of the current mission is classified. But perhaps the most intriguing answer came when he was asked by a reporter wanting to cover the landing as to when the X-37B would be making its way back to the planet.
“In all honesty, we don’t know when it’s coming back for sure,” Payton said.
Payton went on to say that the timing depends on how the experiments and testing progress during the flight. Though he declined to elaborate on the details. The vague answer did little to quell questions about the ultimate purpose of the X-37B test program.
A classified program, and a flying space plane, with the slightly ominous name of X-37B, it's likely a safe bet it's not a benign skywriter.
I recall, last week, Lowden, for her Healthcare platform, suggested "bartering", which most in the press gave her a pass, the benefit of the doubt, saying she must have meant "haggling", doing a little wheeling-and-dealing on the price.
Sue Lowden was the front-runner for the GOP nomination for US Senate in Nevada. She was favored to defeat Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid and go to Washington in just under a year.
I’m putting this in the past tense after her statement to a local station in Nevada that should, at least, be disqualifying for any public service job.
I’m telling you that this works. You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor, they would say I’ll paint your house. I mean, that’s the old days of what people would do to get health care with your doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I’m not backing down from that system.
This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard from a candidate for statewide office. If there wasn't a video, I might not even believe it. According to nearly every recent poll, Lowden is the clear favorite to defeat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) in November, but that was before she started talking about trading livestock for medical care. It's a permanent credibility-killer. It's one thing to be a confused, far-right candidate. It's another to be a laughingstock.
James Carville is reported to have said, "When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a bitch an anvil." Lowden slipped into a bit of water, but she's not drowning yet; as I said a while back, the notion of barter isn't regarded as completely crazy by a lot of people.
But it is crazy in this case, for a lot of reasons. One is that it offers no help to people in desperate life-or-death situations that require far more treatment than painting a house could possibly offset. The other is that she hasn't thought through the implications of just what some people might offer in trade for health care -- nor have most of the citizens of Nevada.
Somebody needs to make the implications explicit. That's the anvil. And you'd better believe that if the parties were reversed, some GOP-friendly operative wouldn't hesitate to do just this.
Lowden could very plausibly be representing Nevada in the US Senate a year from now, so it’s worth noting how terrible this would be. Checkups for chickens might work if we were all farmers, but what’s a blogger supposed to do? Maybe I could offer the guy free publicity with a few posts touting his services. A Web designer could build a website for the doctor. But what does the designer do if he needs to see the doctor again? Or what if the doctor needs to run a test that costs money, do you mail a chicken to the lab? It’s frightening that anyone this ignorant of how a modern economy works could be anywhere near political power.
While we don't want to see the Democrats majority dip in the Senate, on one hand, we pray, we get down on our hands-and-knees, to beseech the high heavens, to get Sue Lowden elected.
You gotta believe the "chickens for healthcare" only scratches the surface.
Courtesy of Fordham Sports Info - Audio is supplied by Gregg Caserta - WFUV From Tuesday night's Fordham-Iona college baseball game. Fordham rallies from 9-1 down to tie game. With score tied at 9 in the bottom of the 8th and bases loaded, Chris Walker (#4) puts Fordham ahead with game-winning hit. The baserunner at first, Brian Kownacki (KAH-nack-ee), scores by leaping over Iona catcher James Beck, and landing on home plate with a handstand, to put Fordham ahead 12-9, which was the final score
Well, there was quite the adventure, that has all the tech blogs abuzzin'.
Mind you, Redwood City (California) will never, ever, ever be mistaken for in Marrakesh, however there was every bit of cloak-and-dagger intrigue there recently, as the vaunted, legendary, super-secret, cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die Apple Security, especially around a new product, was breached.
And, no reports that Steve Jobs, or anyone else at Apple, had to sing "Que Serra Serra", so the lost next-generation iPhone could whistle back, like little Hank McKenna, in the classic Hitcock film we lifted our the title of our post from, in order to be found.
Here's the deal;
A young Apple engineer was out with the new, next-generation iPhone, at a bar in Redwood City, pounded down a few beers, and, ended up leaving it behind...
So, maybe, this lost next-generation iPhone happened to be a bone tossed out.
Apple bet, correctly, that it would end up in the hands of a tech geek, who would, upon deconstructing and examining it, trumpet it out on the World Wide Web, all the techies get boners, and all is well in the iWorld again.
Much like the outing of Valerie Plame, we will, likely, never know the full story here.
Oliver Willis rings in on this, in his "Hey Tech Journalists! Are You Even Trying To Cover Apple?";
But what really troubled me as a consumer of tech news and as an Apple fan, was the kind of shockwave that went through the tech press at news about Apple coming out from a non-Apple event. Imagine that, news can be broken about Apple without Steve Jobs wearing a turtleneck and telling us how “magical” and “easy” the device is to operate (and yes, I do want an iPad… it’s magical!). The tech press has much of the same ailment that affects the political press, a willingness to sit on their hands and be spoonfed press releases. So much of tech news consists of covering releases and trade events, without enough investigation inbetween.
Apple isn't likely to unveil the new iPhone officially until its Worldwide Developers Conference, which usually takes place in June. And the new phone probably won't go on sale until June or July.
But it appears to have several features that will be worth the wait. So unless you absolutely need a new iPhone now, we'd wait.
Oh No!
Will we soon see headlines of "iPhone Sales Plummet!"
A certain former half-term governor appears to be drifting even further away from the American mainstream. Over the weekend, appearing at an evangelical Christian women's conference in Louisville, Sarah Palin rejected the very idea of separation of church and state, a bedrock principle of American democracy.
She asked for the women -- who greeted her with an enthusiastic standing ovation -- to provide a "prayer shield" to strengthen her against what she said was "deception" in the media.
She denounced this week's Wisconsin federal court ruling that government observance of a National Day of Prayer was unconstitutional -- which the crowd joined in booing. She asserted that America needs to get back to its Christian roots and rejected any notion that "God should be separated from the state."
[snip]
The amusing aspect of this is the notion that the United States would return to its roots with support for National Day of Prayer observances. That's backwards -- Thomas Jefferson and James Madison explicitly rejected state-sponsored prayer days. I'll look forward to the conservative explanation of how the Founding Fathers were godless socialists.
I also can't wait to hear how right-wing voices who want smaller government believe it's appropriate for the federal government to issue decrees encouraging private American citizens to engage in worship.
But I’ve got a full transcript of Palin’s remarks, and it’s worse than you might have thought: She cited the Founding Fathers as proof that God shouldn’t be separated from the state. Peter Smith, the Courier-Journal reporter who broke the story, sends over the full context of her remarks:
I beg you, Women of Joy, to bring light and be involved, loving America and praying for her. Really, it is our solemn duty. Praying for true spiritual awakening to overcome deterioration. That is where God wants us to be. Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, our Founding Fathers, they were believers. And George Washington, he saw faith in God as basic to life.
This is substandard history. In reality, the separation of church and state, thanks in part to the efforts of those very same Founding Fathers, is enshrined in the Bill of Rights
[snip]
There was a time when this sort of thing would provoke widespread media mockery and perhaps even be seen as a potential disqualifier for the presidency.
Ahh, not when you have a "Prayer Shield" there, Greg.
Where do you get a "Prayer Shield" - Home Depot, Lowes, Lands End Catalog?
Or, is a government thing, something provided by the Secret Service?
Today, it's an astonishing, even eerie, scene: the icon of modern American conservatism, whose rise to political prominence was galvanized by the cultural rebellion of the 1960s, fighting off an attack-at-gunpoint by the quintessential modern American rebel. But when "The Dark, Dark Hours" episode of General Electric Theater aired live from Hollywood on December 12, 1954, Ronald Reagan and James Dean were just two actors yet to find the roles that would define them.
No one has seen this episode in the decades since; the kinescope has been locked away, until now. My friend Wayne Federman, a writer for NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, unearthed the broadcast, condensing it from its original 23 minutes (without commercials) into the six-minute version you see below. (Federman is planning a retrospective of Reagan's television career for next year's Reagan centennial.)
[snip]
A decade before Reagan's political career took off, with a nationally televised speech supporting Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign, and months before Dean started filming Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, both of these Midwesterners seem to be rehearsing future roles—Reagan as the happy warrior who could, in a moment, turn fierce ("I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green!") and Dean as teenage angst writ large ("You're tearing me apart!").
[snip]
Less than a year after this episode aired, Reagan was a major primetime presence whom millions tuned in to see each week. Dean was a tragic, what-might-have-been figure, dead at age 24 from an automobile crash.
The origin of the term 420, celebrated around the world by pot smokers every April 20th, has long been obscured by the clouded memories of the folks who made it a phenomenon.
The Huffington Post chased the term back to its roots and was able to find it in a lost patch of cannabis in a Point Reyes, California forest. Just as interesting as its origin, it turns out, is how it spread.
[snip]
The flyer came complete with a 420 back story: "420 started somewhere in San Rafael, California in the late '70s. It started as the police code for Marijuana Smoking in Progress. After local heads heard of the police call, they started using the expression 420 when referring to herb - Let's Go 420, dude!"
It had nothing to do with a police code -- though the San Rafael part was dead on. Indeed, a group of five San Rafael High School friends known as the Waldos - by virtue of their chosen hang-out spot, a wall outside the school - coined the term in 1971. The Huffington Post spoke with Waldo Steve, Waldo Dave and Dave's older brother, Patrick, and confirmed their full names and identities, which they asked to keep secret for professional reasons. (Pot is still, after all, illegal.)
The Waldos never envisioned that pot smokers the world over would celebrate each April 20th as a result of their foray into the Point Reyes forest.
[snip]
It goes like this: One day in the Fall of 1971 - harvest time - the Waldos got word of a Coast Guard service member who could no longer tend his plot of marijuana plants near the Point Reyes Peninsula Coast Guard station. A treasure map in hand, the Waldos decided to pluck some of this free bud.
The Waldos were all athletes and agreed to meet at the statue of Loius Pasteur outside the school at 4:20, after practice, to begin the hunt.
"We would remind each other in the hallways we were supposed to meet up at 4:20. It originally started out 4:20-Louis and we eventually dropped the Louis," Waldo Steve tells the Huffington Post.
The first forays out were unsuccessful, but the group kept looking for the hidden crop. "We'd meet at 4:20 and get in my old '66 Chevy Impala and, of course, we'd smoke instantly and smoke all the way out to Pt. Reyes and smoke the entire time we were out there. We did it week after week," says Steve. "We never actually found the patch.
We should have known better, should have dug around, it was there ... It was there.
We wrote last evening;
I don't believe it has happened yet, but if this does drag on, you can plan that some Right Wing Freak Show Flying Monkey, Teabagger, or Faux News will find a way to blame this on Obama, the Democrats, mock Climate Change or, incredulously, tie it in to how the government is taking of heatlhcare (we can, perhaps, count on our seminal Ignorant Dolt, Michele Bachmann)
We were off, but not by that much, as this morning brings the news, thanks to Think Progress;
Yesterday, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh talked about the volcanic eruption that’s affecting air travel over much of Europe, saying it was “God speaking” in response to the passage of health care:
You know, a couple of days after the health care bill had been signed into law Obama ran around all over the country saying, “Hey, you know, I’m looking around. The earth hadn’t opened up. There’s no Armageddon out there. The birds are still chirping.” I think the earth has opened up. God may have replied. This volcano in Iceland has grounded more airplanes — airspace has more affected — than even after 9/11 because of this plume, because of this ash cloud over Northern and Western Europe. At the Paris airport they’re telling people to head to the train station to catch trains out of France, and when people get to the train station they’re telling people, “There aren’t any seats until at least April 22nd,” basically a week from now. It’s got everybody in a shutdown. Earth has opened up. I don’t know whether it’s a rebirth or Armageddon. Hopefully it’s a rebirth, God speaking.
Somehow Think Progress has no trouble seeing that Obama had to be joking when he said "There’s no Armageddon out there" but when Rush Limbaugh pointed to the Icelandic volcano that could only be crackpot religion.
This is what the President said, after signing the healthcare bill, which came after the War-Of-The-Worlds with the PartyofNoicans, the Teabaggers, and the Flying Monkeys of the Right Wing Freak Show, who called it a government takeover, death panels, and, of course, Armageddon;
“I’m not exaggerating. Leaders of the Republican Party called the passage of this bill Armageddon. Armageddon! End of freedom as we know it,” he told a rally in Iowa City.
“So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling, some cracks opening up in the earth? Turned out it was a nice day. Birds were chirping. Folks were strolling down the Mall,” he said.
This is what the Flying Monkeys do.
They ignore facts.
Nice try there Ann, but the President didn't pull his riff out of thin air - you left out the context.
And, I think we covered the "crack-pot religion" thing up above.
The Cheeseburger That Sweats (h/t Barry Crimmins) said it, which means Matt Sludge will, likely, scream it on his headlines, the Right Wing Freak Show will start picking it up (as evidenced with Althouse), Faux News will be chirping about it, and, before you know it, some mainstreamer, like a David Gregory, or Jake Tapper (or Mike Allen - He'll print anything!), will insert it into a comment, ask an administration official to confirm or deny it, and off we go ...
Minister: (rising) Mr Pudey, (he walks about behind the desk in a very silly fashion) the very real problem is one of money. I'm afraid that the Ministry of Silly Walks is no longer getting the kind of support it needs. You see there's Defense, Social Security, Health, Housing, Education, Silly Walks ... they're all supposed to get the same. But last year, the Government spent less on the Ministry of Silly Walks than it did on National Defence. Now we get £348,000,000 a year, which is supposed to be spent on all our available products. (he sits down) Coffee?
Mr Pudey: Yes please.
Minister: (pressing intercorn) Now Mrs Two-Lumps, would you bring us in two coffees please?
Intercom Voice: Yes, Mr Teabag.
Minister: ... Out of her mind. Now the Japanese have a man who can bend his leg back over his head and back again with every single step. While the Israelis... ah, here's the coffee. Monty Python's The Ministry of Silly Walks
Now add taking a taxi to the Minister's woes.
He can lump it in with all the other troubles the Icelandic volcano ash is causing.
Being that he is already "disheartened", that fans in England think it "the 15th greatest comedy sketch of all time", John Cleese, likely, is not going to be happy with all the references to the Monty Python "Minister of Silly Walks" sketch.
LONDON — For the man who worked at the Ministry of Silly Walks, travel chaos across the Continent was only a modest hurdle.
John Cleese, who starred in the high-stepping sketch for Monty Python, was stranded in Oslo on Friday after appearing on a television talk show. With flights grounded by the volcanic ash over northern Europe, Mr. Cleese found another way home to London: He caught a cab.
With no planes flying and no way to get back by train or boat, Mr. Cleese’s agent in Norway, Kjetil Kristoffersen, called a friend who drives a taxi, and he agreed to take Mr. Cleese to Brussels.
[snip]
Mr. Cleese’s journey, with a fare of about $5,140, may have been costly, but it was not necessarily the most cumbersome trip travelers endured. With flights canceled and trains running out of space, many people resorted to their own ingenuity.
You can already hear the bevy of keyboards clicking, wannabe writers penning a "Made-for-Television' movie of this cab ride, or, what surely will be, scores of other off-beat tales that will settle in with the volcanic ash.
However, as Science Fair noted previously, the Eyjafjallajokull volcano isn't necessarily the main problem. It's Katla, Iceland's noisier neighbor, that's the concern. If lava flowing from Eyjafjallajokull melts the glaciers that hold down the top of Katla, then Katla could blow its top, pumping gigantic amounts of ash into the atmosphere.
Cleese was lucky to have a connection, others are not;
Demand for train tickets between Paris and London caused the Eurostar Web site to crash several times Friday morning, and long lines formed at ticket counters at Victoria bus station in London, where buses leave for Paris, Amsterdam and Munich via the tunnel under the English Channel.
[snip]
Some people resorted to a digital version of the old-fashioned hitchhiker’s thumb. Liftshare.com, a Web site based in Britain that matches drivers with passengers, experienced “a very marked increase” in international destinations served since British airports shut down, featuring destinations as far afield as Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, Stockholm and Croatia, said Cecilia Bromley-Martin, the communications manager.
I think we might have only one solution for this problem - Chuck Norris.
The Great Wall of China was originally created to keep Chuck Norris out. It failed miserably.
When Chuck Norris does a push-up, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the Earth down.
The Bermuda Triangle used to be the Bermuda Square, until Chuck Norris Roundhouse kicked one of the corners off.
Chuck Norris does not kick ass and take names. In fact, Chuck Norris kicks ass and assigns the corpse a number. It is currently recorded to be in the billions.
Chuck Norris once shot down a German fighter plane with his finger, by yelling, "Bang!"
As President Roosevelt said: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself. And Chuck Norris."
